So Tome Thursday has turned more into a Saturday than anything else. I blame it on the holidays coming up, because not one of my days has been remotely slow recently!
In any event, I went back to my bookshelves and dug out my old copy of Robert Ludlum's most famous works: I have an omnibus featuring The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, and The Bourne Ultimatum. It took me a while, considering everything, to get back into it and manage to sit down long enough to read through the first book in the trilogy - since I've sort of refused to read any more novels regarding Bourne, considering the story finished when the author originally thought it over, but I might change my mind. It is, however, a challenging book to read.
And no, the movies do NOT do the series justice.
Basically, what you get with The Bourne Identity is a lot of pages full of seat-gripping action, anxiety, and a basket case of nerves. It isn't for the faint-hearted, that's all I can say. I don't mean that it's because there are so many bodies flying around, or blood, or anything of the sort, but the amount of tension Ludlum conveys with just a simple lineup of words is almost unbelievable.
Cain is for Charlie and Delta is for Cain.
That's one sentence you have to remember throughout the whole book, because, essentially, it IS Bourne's identity ... in a very warped, very twisted way.
I'm not sure I can recap the book properly in so many words: you have a man, riddled with bullets, who is fished out somewhere off the coast of Marseille, brought to a doctor (who is also a drunk), who puts him back together, discovers a number for a bank account in Zűrich, and that his patient effectively has amnesia. That's where the story takes off - taking Jason Bourne to Switzerland, into France (Paris, to be precise), with Marie St Jacques by his side on his quest to figure out who or what he is - more importantly, why does he want or need to find Carlos, and why every second person wants him (Bourne) dead.
Sounds confusing? It gets worse.
Because Jason Bourne, as it turns out, is NOT Jason Bourne. He is Delta, an ice-cold field operative right out of the jungles of Vietnam, from an operation called Medusa. And, as we've said before, Delta is just another name for Cain ... which, in military lingo, stands in for Charlie ... which is the Anglicized name for Carlos. With me so far?
Bottom line: the man called Jason Bourne was to take over Carlos' place. And Carlos, the world's most infamous assassin, is having none of it.
So Carlos is out for Bourne. But an organisation springing right out of Medusa's head like one of its snakes, Treadstone, is after him, too, because they think - due to six months silence, since they have no clue what happened - that he's turned on them, and, to quite the book 'he is a man with more secrets inside his head than ten sterile computers'. In other words, he needs to be eliminated.
Everybody is after Bourne, including himself. All he gets are flashes and spasms, a face triggers a memory, or a word someone speaks in the street. And he doesn't understand a thing.
He penetrates Carlos' organisation in Paris, bringing down the wrath of the assassin; Marie siphoons off the money from his account, raising flags in Washington; Alexander Conklin, a spook for the CIA with enough secrets in his head for fifty sterile computers, doesn't believe a word Bourne says; and the race for a man's life is on.
And it's one heck of a race as Cain and Carlos have a showdown worthy of O.K. Corral right at the heart of Treadstone ... with Carlos escaping, Marie convincing the Treadstone handlers that Bourne's truth is the truth, and Jason Bourne getting himself back (in a fashion):
His name is David Webb, and he was a foreign intelligence officer in the Far East, with a Thai wife and two children, who died in a freak bombing from a plane no side ever identified. That caused him to turn, and become Delta. And years later, Delta would take on the mantle of a myth named Cain, created to flush Carlos out into the open ...
You'll have to read the book to make sense of anything I just said. It's riveting, and you need two hundred percent brain power on it. People have complained because the style seems symplistic, or certain phrases are repeated, or italics are used a lot, symbolising the main character's thoughts. I disagree. We are brought into the world of David Webb, alias Jason Bourne, alias Delta, alias Cain, and that's the way he thinks. There are sentences that keep popping up into his head, without him knowing why. As a reader, you're placed into his shoes - and the author did it magnificently.
I highly recommend the books over the movies. I respect Matt Damon and the director, but they did not do the books any kind of justice. At all.
And with that, I will see anyone who is reading this after the holidays, sometime in January.
xoxo
No comments:
Post a Comment