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Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: The First Novel By Quentin Tarantino Paperback – 30 June 2021
Quentin Tarantino (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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Enhance your purchase
- Print length320 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherW&N
- Publication date30 June 2021
- Dimensions11.2 x 2.8 x 17.6 cm
- ISBN-101398706132
- ISBN-13978-1398706132
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Product description
Review
The book is a distinct experience - rangier, sexier, bloodier ... Classic, sparks-flying Tarantino ... The start of a new direction for this relentlessly inventive director. ― Washington Post
The rollicking debut novel by Quentin Tarantino is a seamless, seamy blend of fact and fiction ― The Times
The rat-a-tat pace of a screenplay ... Tarantino's concern here is world-building, luxuriating in an era and a genre that he is clearly fascinated by ... with undeniable flair ― Evening Standard
This book boasts some tremendous scenes, with magical dialogue, that I wouldn't have missed for the world ― Daily Telegraph
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Product details
- Publisher : W&N; 1st edition (30 June 2021)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 320 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1398706132
- ISBN-13 : 978-1398706132
- Dimensions : 11.2 x 2.8 x 17.6 cm
- Best Sellers Rank: 16,445 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 22 in TV Tie-In Humour
- 24 in Media & Communication Industries
- 38 in Sports & Entertainment Industry
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

With his vibrant imagination and dedication to richly layered storytelling QUENTIN TARANTINO is one of the most celebrated filmmakers of his generation. He made his directorial debut in 1992 with RESERVOIR DOGS, and then co-wrote, directed and starred in one of his most beloved films, PULP FICTION, which won his first Oscar® for Best Screenplay. Followed by the highly acclaimed films JACKIE BROWN, KILL BILL VOL. 1 and VOL. 2, and DEATH PROOF, Tarantino then released his World War II epic, INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, DJANGO UNCHAINED (which won his second Oscar® for Best Screenplay), and the HATEFUL EIGHT. Tarantino’s most recent film, ONCE UPON A TIME...IN HOLLYWOOD, was nominated for five Golden Globes, ten BAFTAS, and ten Academy Award nominations.
Customer reviews
Top reviews from Australia
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The most satisfying part of the novel for me was a further exploration of Cliff's backstory.
Be warned a sizeable chunk of the second half of the novel is devoted to the intimate details of the Lancer project, reflective of a different narrative structure to the film.
Quentin is a surprisingly gifted writer and his knack for storytelling is on great, bold, feathery display in this masterpiece.
This holds much more character detail and none of the gory violence (excepting the death of Cliff's wife) that Quentin is known for.
People call Once upon a time... In Hollywood Quentin's love letter to Hollywood, but they are mistaken... This is it. Every chapter is a work of art. Each character defined in such detail you'd think this art was graphical rather that literature.
Quentin's knowledge and love of old Hollywood shines as bright as the sun in this novel, and leaves you with that old Hollywood feeling of happy satisfaction as the sun sets in the west.
I thoroughly enjoyed it so much I could not put it down and was continually intrigued at every chapter.
If you have seen the film you will gain a new appreciation for the expanded nuance of these characters.
If you have not seen the film yet, when you eventually do see it you will likely feel that the film is a loose adaptation of the book due to the book itself being so intricate.
Quentin Tarantino can have a very long and enjoyable career as a novelist if the time comes that he does truly hang up his Directing hat!
Once you start reading, it's difficult to put it down.
Top reviews from other countries

The physical appearance of the book is important - it is meant to resemble a 1970s-era mass-market paperback, the sort of cheap book you used to find in an American supermarket (and possibly still do for all I know). It looks and feels like a cheap book - which is what it’s meant to be. Pulp fiction, to coin a phrase.
For those who have seen it, the book version of a washed-up TV star differs from the film in several ways, which I won’t spoil, but there is a new, terrifying scene involving one of Charles Manson’s cronies. Elsewhere, QT digs deep into Manson’s failed but weirdly promising music career and stuntman Cliff Booth’s backstory is filled in. Also, Tarantino indulges himself with excellent passages about acting, B movies, sex scenes in films, foreign movies etc. You can tell he enjoyed writing this book.
Tarantino is not out to impress us with the intricacy of his sentences or the nuance of his psychological insights - he is not out to endear himself to Guardian readers. This is grossly funny and often violent book, and Tarantino writes (and films) some of the best/worst violence out there. It is sophisticated but rough. If he’d written it better, he’d have written it worse. It’s a mass-market paperback that reeks of mass-market paperbacks, and is all the better for it.
Better than the film? Possibly. It certainly doesn’t defame it by existing. It expands the story in a way that does it visceral justice. Tarantino has defied expectations (mine included) by writing a page-turner that is brutally titillating, shockingly salacious and quite, quite brilliant.


Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 June 2021
The physical appearance of the book is important - it is meant to resemble a 1970s-era mass-market paperback, the sort of cheap book you used to find in an American supermarket (and possibly still do for all I know). It looks and feels like a cheap book - which is what it’s meant to be. Pulp fiction, to coin a phrase.
For those who have seen it, the book version of a washed-up TV star differs from the film in several ways, which I won’t spoil, but there is a new, terrifying scene involving one of Charles Manson’s cronies. Elsewhere, QT digs deep into Manson’s failed but weirdly promising music career and stuntman Cliff Booth’s backstory is filled in. Also, Tarantino indulges himself with excellent passages about acting, B movies, sex scenes in films, foreign movies etc. You can tell he enjoyed writing this book.
Tarantino is not out to impress us with the intricacy of his sentences or the nuance of his psychological insights - he is not out to endear himself to Guardian readers. This is grossly funny and often violent book, and Tarantino writes (and films) some of the best/worst violence out there. It is sophisticated but rough. If he’d written it better, he’d have written it worse. It’s a mass-market paperback that reeks of mass-market paperbacks, and is all the better for it.
Better than the film? Possibly. It certainly doesn’t defame it by existing. It expands the story in a way that does it visceral justice. Tarantino has defied expectations (mine included) by writing a page-turner that is brutally titillating, shockingly salacious and quite, quite brilliant.



Unfortunately, he is not a novelist. The sentences are clunky in places, to the point of being distracting and I just could not get on with the "present day tense" he utilised.
"Rick walks into the room."
"Marvin answers his phone."
It's like he has taken the directions from the script and thrown it into this book and just called it a novel. Give it a go if you want but, this was not for me at all and if present tense would bother you (in quite a thick book with small font) then you might want to swerve it.
A shame.

Reading chapters that were seen on screen is great, but there are quiet a number of differences in the book and extra side stories added on, which makes the story work even more. It feels like this book was written from a director's cut of the film, which makes reading it all the more special.
This may sound crazy, but for me, part of the experience of reading a story from a book is the smell and feel of the book itself. This book smells terrific and the size of it makes it sit in the hands perfectly.

In his book? a chance to flesh out his people ,an extra dimension to his characters we "Thought" we knew and loved, it's a perfect medium for what seems his natural storytelling, in short, a great book by someone who knows these characters inside out, Quentin takes us on a drive through of both the film industry and the gossip that follows it like suckerfish feeding on a great white, Quentin captures all the ups the downs of the Hollywood machine of the late 60's early 70's , the downward spiral, the up and coming starlets and the working stiffs of its period, and captures it within that ever turning imagination of his. To put it Simply If you enjoyed the movie, then you'll love the book, Tarantino given the chance to let his overactive imagination run wild and without edit is a journey I'm glad to have experienced and I for one, hope it isn't his last , because if he indeed, decides to finish his film career with one more movie, my suspicion is the man will need an outlet for the characters in his head and going by this book novelization this is a perfect outlet for them.

Novelisation has fallen out of fashion but what QT has done is a tad different: in the book-of-the-film we are showing the extensive back stories of the principal characters which Tarantino had already written before filming, like any good novelist would do *and* he gives a number of ‘lectures’ on the history of film. And you might think that ‘lecture’ would mean dull, plodding exposition and you’d be wrong. It is a total delight, erudite and profoundly understood (he probably wrote most of it from memory because he really is Mastermind Champion on movies, especially westerns).
Since devouring this book I’ve found a YouTube interview between QT and a US television news channel; in it he lets the world know three things:
1 he intends to do more novels based on his screenplays (I can’t wait to read Inglorius Basterds – the novel)
2 he’s written a stage play but won’t say what about – given his terrific dialogue writing skills that’s going to be one to watch
3 his movie-making career is likely to come to an end – he’s always said he’ll only make ten pictures and OUATIH was his ninth – afterwards he intends to become ‘a man of letters (his own words).
The novel of OUATIH is covers the same general ground as the movie but with many extensions and expansions, and the scenes in a different order.
Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) the stunt double for fading actor Rick Dalton (DiCaprio) gets the lion’s share of the novel and develops into a fascinating character study.
Buy it.