Cliff Booth in the book, on the other hand, is a goddamn psychopath.
Let’s start with the obvious: Any ambiguity about whether Cliff murdered his wife, Bobbie, with a shark gun on a boat in the middle of the ocean is resolved swiftly in favor of “Yup, absolutely.” Tarantino’s novel hedges
slightly Cliff’s own narrative says he’s not entirely sure if he pulled the trigger or just twitched his finger in anger and Cliff is very sorry for having done it. (Tarantino provides a loving description of Booth holding the “torn in half” Bobbie together for six hours in an attempt to keep her alive, one of the most absurdly grotesque passages in the entire book.) But he unquestionably killed her, one of multiple stories the author delights in telling about Booth getting away with murder on American soil. (See also: The dog-fighting partner he got his beloved pup, Brandy, from, and some random gangsters he once shot in the head in Cleveland.) Beyond that, Book Cliff is also an