Brief synopsis: Mary's tired of the subpar life she's been living. So, when the opportunity arises for her to snag $40,000 (over $300,000 today), she takes it and hits the road. When she stops one night in a motel, she meets Norman Bates, a 40-year old man who has lived with his mother his entire life. They own a motel near their home, which hasn't gotten much business recently because of the new highway that was put in. It's a small town and everybody knows Norman's mother has been dead for 20 years. Norman knows better. And mother knows best.



We all know the basic story of Psycho, but for those of you who don't - I won't spoil it. The book came out in the late 1950s, but it's one I could definitely see coming out today. The book has switched perspective narrators throughout, which is something super popular today in thrillers and horror novels. Since the novel was written almost 60 years ago, it is a novel of its time in the fact that there are obvious sexist ways of thinking. The sexist ideas would be expected from Norman, but even the women characters tend to share the same ways of thinking. Like I said before, it's obviously due to the time period, and those being pretty standard ideas, but that turned me off a bit.

I went into this book expecting it to be all about Norman Bates, who was actually based on serial killer Ed Gein. But truthfully, the book is a bit more well-rounded than that. I felt that the book was actually all about Mary, which was pretty interesting.

What was also fairly interesting to me is that even though the entire novel was only about 176 pages, I kind of struggled through it - it took me about three days to get through it. I just wasn't very enthralled. I did enjoy the story-line and seeing where the movies came from, and of course my favorite Bates Motel. The novel just wasn't incredible. I'm glad there was actually a pretty good plot, though.