Jaws (novel) Jaws (novel) Jaws is a 1974 novel by American writer Peter Benchley. It tells the story of a great white shark that preys upon a small resort town and the voyage of three men trying to kill it. The novel grew out of Benchley's interest in shark attacks after he learned about the exploits of shark fisherman Frank Mundus in 1964. Doubleday commissioned him to write the novel in 1971, a period when Benchley struggled as a freelance journalist. Through a marketing campaign orchestrated by Doubleday and paperback publisher Bantam, "Jaws" was incorporated into many book sales clubs catalogues and
Jaws (novel) plot. It's boring, pointless, listless; if there's a trite turn to make, "Jaws" will make that turn." An article in "The Listener" criticized the plot, stating the "novel only has bite, so to say, at feed time," and these scenes are "naïve attempts at whipping along a flagging story-line." Andrew Bergman of "The New York Times Book Review" felt that despite the book serving as "fluid entertainment", "passages of hollow portentousness creep in" while poor scene "connections [and] stark manipulations impair the narrative." Nevertheless, some reviewers found "Jaws"'s description of the shark attacks entertaining. John Spurling of the "New Statesman"