This post originally appeared Oct. 15, 2010.
So, in my last post, I discussed how Dan Brown grabbed me with The DaVinci Code by giving me a fast-moving plot that kept twisting and turning and revealing its secrets to the point where I couldn’t stop reading.
I love a good surprise. With that in mind, I’m going to do my best not to give away any spoilers here.
I’m not big on scary movies, but I did make it through The Sixth Sense, and wow, what a payoff! If you haven’t seen it, all I can say is brilliant, because there’s a twist in that movie that was foreshadowed throughout, and yet when it was revealed, I about jumped out of my chair.
Sometimes the reader or audience is in on the secret, while it’s kept from other characters. Any fan of Shakespeare knows the immense fun of The Comedy of Errors, where we all know there are two Antipholuses and two Dromios, but no one else in Ephesus recognizes it. Or all the “girl in breeches” stories/plays, such as Twelfth Night, As You Like It, or the more contemporary twist on that theme in Dustin Hoffman’s role of Tootsie.
Alfred Hitchcock was a master of surprise. Remember Psycho? Or his brilliant movie version of Daphne du Maurier’s haunting Rebecca. In both cases, we come to grips with the surprise right along with the main character. (In Janet Leigh’s case, she didn’t exactly come to grips. ***Spoiler*** In fact, she didn’t even make it out of the shower…)
A recent book with a gripping twist is Therese Walsh’sThe Last Will of Moira Leahy. Walsh tells the tale of a young woman haunted by the tragic events ten years before that led to her losing her twin. Experiencing Maeve’s journey as she comes to terms with and frees herself from memories of her sister is cathartic and energizing (oh, yeah, I cried too, but it was a good cry). And I swear to you, there’s a twist in the story that I should have seen, and when it hit I wanted to shout the way I did as a child when my brother would pretend to pull a coin from my ear.
Okay, your turn—try not to spoil the surprise, but can you name a book, movie, play, story of any kind that provided a twist that genuinely surprised you—and you loved it?