The Invasion of the Body Snatchers

The Invasion of the body snatchers / Jack Finney; read by Kristoffer Tabori.-- [Ashland, Or.] : Blackstone Audio ; [Boulder, Colo. : Made available electronically by] NetLibrary, 2007

1 sound file : digital, wma file (95808 KB) : (6 hr., 40 min.)

ISBN: 9781433283901 (electronic audio bk.)

1. Extraterrestrial beings -- Fiction. 2. Horror fiction. 3. Human-alien encounters -- Fiction. 4. Mill Valley (Calif.) -- Fiction. 5. Science fiction.

813.54

There’s something rotten in Mill Valley and Dr. Miles Bennell and his girlfriend Becky are going to find out what it is. People are convinced that their relatives and friends are not really their relatives and friends, even though they speak, act, and look exactly like them. At first it’s just a few, and then more and more, and then suddenly everyone decides that they were wrong and everything is all right now. But the clever reader knows (because he or she has read the title of the book) that it’s really not all right; it’s really all wrong and Miles and Becky are in big trouble unless they get out of town fast.

This is a pretty good thriller. Reader Kristoffer Tabori gives Miles a tired and tense voice that helps convey the character’s sudden and vacillating alterations from skeptical disbelief to horrified realization that everyone’s about to be replaced by a pod person from outer space. Although set in 1976, the book has more of the atmosphere of small-town America in 1955, the year of its publication, than the year of the bicentennial. The 1956 film version of the book is justifiably famous, but be prepared for a different ending in the original. Interestingly, reader Tabori is the son of that film’s director Don Siegel.