Kubrick's Game

Kubrick's Game by Derek Taylor Kent

It's been a while since I've read a page-turner and I forgot how much fun they are. This was exciting, if slightly baffling in spots.

15 years after Stanley Kubrik's death, several students at different film schools receive a letter from him with a cryptic message they must decipher. Once they do, it leads to a further clue and then another, with increasingly difficult challenges that will test their knowledge, deductive capabilities, and physical and mental courage.  

Deciphering the messages involves many hours of watching Kubrick's movies, searching for hidden symbols or connections to other movies and then racing to whatever location those things reveal before competing teams get there. It's quite a complex game that I could more or less follow, until close to the end where I got completely lost for several pages. After that it sorts itself out as the game wraps up and comes to a not totally unexpected, reasonably satisfying, ending.

It left me with questions, but then page-turners are all about action-packed plots, not tying up details. This plot is pretty wild, taking turns that elicited a number of right-out-loud "Yikes!". The main character is Shaun, an 18 year old film-wiz on the autism spectrum, whose straightforward manner and difficulty relating to people endeared himself to me right from the start. Some of the others, though interesting, are written with less depth and so are less relatable.  But again, this one is about plot.

I learned a good deal more about Stanley Kubrick's movies than I ever knew before, which you'd think would have tempted me to watch or re-watch some of them, but no. He was brilliant and made movies chock full of symbolism and other tricks to send your brain into overdrive, but with this book I think I've had my fill, for now anyway. His most recognizable titles are Spartacus, Lolita, Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, and Eyes Wide Shut, all of which are used within the game. You don't need to be familiar with them to enjoy the book, but if I was to read it again I'd watch 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange first.