Kathy wrote in with this question:Our book club is focusing on books made into movies. We read fiction, no murder mysteries. I would like to keep either the book or the movie fairly current.
Beloved is as far back as I would like to go. I thought about
Wonder Boys and then heard
The Mysteries of Pittsburgh is now a movie. We read
Homecoming so we will probably do
The Reader. My idea about books to movies is to compare the two mediums so I suppose the movie adaptation would not have to be topnotch.Three of our contributors had some recommendations for Cathy. We'll start with
Emily, who covers both fiction and memoir:
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: This
beautiful, lyrical movie, directed by American painter and filmmaker
Julian Schnabel, was based on
a 1995 memoir written by the French journalist
Jean-Dominique Bauby. Bauby was 43 and the editor-in-chief of
Elle magazine when he suffered a massive stroke and fell into a coma. When Bauby awoke from the coma, he could only move was his left eyelid. His memoir, from which Schnabel's movie takes its name, was written using the French language frequency-ordered alphabet. An assistant slowly recited the special alphabet (the letters ordered by frequency of use in French) over and over again, and Bauby blinked when the assistant reached the correct letter. He wrote his book letter by letter, blink by blink, composing the whole in his head. The memoir recounts both the anguish of being locked inside a corpse (the diving bell of the title), and the liberating pleasures of the imagination (the butterfly) that allowed Bauby to escape the confines of his prison-like body. Schnabel's movie is breathtaking - one of the most visually lush, visceral film experiences I've had in a long time. It is also a testament to the power of the imagination.
Oscar and Lucinda (
1988 novel by the Australian novelist
Peter Carey, also the winner of the Booker Prize for that year; 1997
film adaptation by
Gillian Armstrong with
Ralph Fiennes and
Cate Blanchette): This is another beautiful movie, and though I haven't read this novel of Carey's, I loved
Jack Maggs and
The True History of the Kelly Gang.
Oscar and Lucinda is the story of Oscar Hopkins (Fiennes), a young Anglican priest, and Lucinda Leplastrier (Blanchette), a young Australian heiress who buys a glass factory. These two lonely eccentrics meet sailing to Australia and discover that they are both obsessive and gifted gamblers. The crux of the story concerns the transportation of a glass church made in Lucinda's factory in Sydney to a remote settlement in New South Wales. Carey's novel was influenced by the 1907 memoir
Father and Son by the literary critic and poet
Edmund Gosse. Gosse's book recounts his painful relationship with his father, the self-taught naturalist and fundamentalist minister,
Philip Henry Gosse. Gosse Sr. is the model for Oscar's father.
This Boy's Life (
1989 novel/autobiography by
Tobias Wolff;
1993 movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Barkin, and
Robert De Niro). Wolff's memoir of his growing up is by turns funny and horrifying and very much in the tradition of Gatsby-esque self-reinvention. The book follows the wanderings of adolescent narrator and main character, Toby Wolff (who, inspired by
Jack London, changes his name to Jack) and his hapless mother (who has a thing for abusive, damaged men). After an itinerant existence driving around the country (usually fleeing or in search of one of his mother's bad-news boyfriends), Jack and his mother settle in Chinook, Washington where Jack's mother marries Dwight. Dwight (De Niro in the film) turns out to be a vicious, tyrannical bastard once Jack and his mother are settled into his household. Wolff's prose is strong, lean, and unsparing and De Niro, Barkin, and DiCaprio all give impressive performances in the adaptation.
For another excellent film/novel pair also in the dysfunctional family vein (and also starring Leonardo DiCaprio), check out
Peter Hedges' 1991 novel What's Eating Gilbert Grape? Hedges wrote a screenplay version of the novel for
Lasse Hallstrom's 1993 adaptation, starring
Johnny Depp and
Juliette Lewis. The cinematography by the legendary Sven Nykvist is spectacular, as is Leonardo DiCaprio's performance as the mentally challenged Arnie (he earned an Oscar nod for it). For a third paring in this vein, consider
Augusten Burroughs' memoir Running With Scissors, and the
excellent film version of the same name (with
Brian Cox, Annette Bening, Alec Baldwin, Gwenyth Paltrow, and
Evan Rachel Wood). Finally, for an English book/movie take on the eccentric/dysfunctional family, there's
Dodie Smith's novel
I Capture the Castle and the
film version of the same name (with
Bill Nighy and the lovely
Romola Garai, who is also in the
film version of
Atonement).
If you're in the mood for
American Beauty-esque lambasting of the American dream, consider
Revolutionary Road (
movie) or
Little Children (
movie). Both film versions star the gifted
Kate Winslet, and both tell the tales of the sadness and frustration hidden away in grand colonial homes surrounded by green lawns and picket fences.
Little Children also features a smashing book group discussion scene. The book under discussion is
Madame Bovary and if one wanted a primary and a secondary text to read alongside the movie,
Flaubert's novel might make a nice complement. For a third slightly different take on the deceptions of American family life, consider
David Cronenberg's deeply disturbing and violent (but masterful)
A History of Violence (2005), based on the 1997
graphic novel of the same name by
John Wagner and
Vince Locke. The movie stars
Maria Bello, Viggo Mortensen, and
Ed Harris.
Possibly my favorite adaptation of a novel is the late
Anthony Mingella's 1999
The Talented Mr. Ripley, based on
Patricia Highsmith's 1955 novel. Its ensemble cast -
Cate Blanchette, Jude Law, Gwenyth Paltrow, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and
Matt Damon - is one of the finest ever assembled, and the tale is a darker version of Gatsby myth: Tom Ripley, played by Matt Damon in the movie, decides that he wants the leisured life of his rich friend Dickie Greenleaf, no matter what the cost. Tom's worshipful longing for well-made clothes and objects, travel, culture - a charmed, leisured life - is a kind of strange love story, and one of the most affecting and infectious depictions of desire I know. You want Tom to win even as he reveals himself to be utterly amoral and self-interested. Mingella's reading of his source text gives Highsmith's book a more tragic cast than I found the novel to have, and it also draws out homosexual undercurrents that I think Highsmith was more subtle about, but his version is just as captivating as the original. The movie is also a gorgeous period piece - necessary for a story about the irresistible power of material beauty and comfort.
Don't be put off by the title of this last one:
Wristcutters: A Love Story. This 2007 movie directed by
Goran Dukic is based on a short story called "Kneller's Happy Campers" by the Israeli writer
Etgar Keret (available in translation in the collection
The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God and Other Stories). Basically, it's about where you go after you commit suicide. But it's not gothic or heavy-handed or overdone. The place that you go is pretty much like our world, only slightly cruddier and more run down - kinda how I imagine things were in Soviet states (scarcity, disrepair). After committing suicide, Zia (
Patrick Fugit) finds himself in this world and befriends fellow suicide and former Russian punk band member Eugene (played by
Shea Whigham), whose character is modeled on Gogol Bordello front man
Eugene Hutz. Zia hears a rumor that his former girlfriend has also committed suicide and so is now in their alternate world, and Zia sets out to find her, accompanied by Eugene. Their adventures include an encounter with a self-proclaimed messiah (played by
Will Arnett, GOB from "Arrested Development") and another with a quasi-magical camp leader (played by
Tom Waits). There's a touch of
Beckett about this movie, but there's also something quietly humane and understated about it. It's refreshing to see the afterlife imagined in such mundane terms.
Lydia offers three movies she prefers over the books they were based on and two books she believes were done disservice by the movies made about them:
The English Patient - It is not
Michael Ondaatje's fault that
Ralph Fiennes and
Kristin Scott Thomas are basically the dreamiest couple possible. Maybe it's because I saw
the movie first, but I wasn't as thrilled about
the book. I know a number of people who completely freak out over Michael Ondaatje, but I completely freak out over tans and taciturnity.
I have read that people take issue with the
movie version of
Schindler's List because it, in its
Spielberg way, glamorizes The Holocaust. I get this, because I think he made, in a weird way, such an intensely watchable film; it does follow a traditional Hollywood arc, and sometimes I find myself thinking, "Oh hey, I'd like to watch
Schindler's List," just as I might think, "It's been a while since I watched
High Fidelity." That's kind of weird. But it is an incredible story, and I think that the performances of
Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, and
Ben Kingsley (if you want to see range, by the way, watch this, then
Gandhi, then
Sexy Beast), are absolutely magnificent. The book is not particularly well-written, but it got the job done.Speaking of
poorly written books that make
great films, did you read
The Godfather? Remember the tasteful subplot wherein the lady is always on the hunt for well-endowed gentleman because of a rather startling aspect of her physiology? How surprising that
Francis Ford Coppola chose not to include that pivotal plot point. Jesus.
Possession -
This movie is a joke, which was disappointing because
the novel is so wonderful. Whatever it is that is between
Gwyneth Paltrow and
Aaron Eckhart is the opposite of chemistry. It's like giblets removed from a chicken, sitting coldly in their bag.
Brideshead Revisited - Why someone would think it necessary to improve upon
Waugh, and then
Jeremy Irons, is beyond me. Everyone is very pretty in this movie. That is all that can be said on the matter.And
Edan rounds things out with a pair of picks:
Jesus' Son by
Denis Johnson - I love
this collection of loosely-linked short stories because it manages to be simultaneously masterful and raw, and because the drug use in the book doesn't feel cliched, but instead weird and terrible and sometimes wonderful. The narrator of these stories is known as Fuckhead (played in the film by
Billy Crudup), and all of these stories pay witness to moments of lucidity and beauty in a world that is otherwise incoherent and uncaring.
The movie, I think, does the same. It also highlights the humor of the book: for instance,
Jack Black takes Georgie, the pill-popping hospital orderly from "Emergency," to a whole other level. Other cast members include
Samantha Morton, Helen Hunt, Dennis Hopper, and even a cameo by
Miranda July! It would be fun to discuss how the film takes on the adaptation of an entire collection, rather than a single story, which is a more common practice.
Notes on a Scandal by
Zoe Heller - This novel is darkly funny and disturbing, and the story is told in a series of diary entries by dowdy high school teacher Barbara Covett (played in the film by
Dame Judi Dench), who befriends colleague Sheba Hart (played by
Cate Blanchett), and becomes privy to Sheba's extramarital affair with one of her students. I absolutely loved
this novel, but felt ambivalent about
the movie, which has a much more serious tone - probably because it loses Barbara's wicked commentary on the world around her. It also focuses heavily on Barbara's lesbian obsession with Sheba - in a way that screams obvious, even campy. Still, the film has been lauded by many, and the upsetting aspects of the book are even more so when watched on screen rather than imagined. (And, plus, Cate Blanchett's cheekbones alone are worth watching for 2 hours.)If you have any suggestions, let us know in the comments. Thanks for the question Kathy!
According to Wikipedia, not the definitive source in this realm but a decent enough place to start, a work of historical fiction can be defined as one in which “the story is set among historical events, or more generally, in which the time of the action predates the lifetime of the author.” This is a bit broad for my taste, but I think it’s a good place to start. Going by this definition, a lot of books that we think of first as fiction could also qualify as historical fiction. Some of my favorite books by contemporary authors fall into this category. T.C. Boyle’s Water Music is about a Scottish explorer in Africa in the late 18th century, and Edward P. Jones’ book The Known World is about black slave owners in Virginia in the 1840s. Another example of a book like these is Charles Frazier’s Civil War novel, Cold Mountain.
But these books aren’t really historical fiction in the same way that I, Claudius is historical fiction. Traditionally, in historical fiction, the history is like another character in the novel, and the action is more likely to be ripped from the history books, as it were, placing the reader in a novelized version of true historical events. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell about Atlanta during the Civil War is a famous example. Another is James Clavell’s Shogun about the 16th century exploration of Asia. Of the few historical novels I’ve read, my favorite would have to be Leon Uris’ Trinity, a powerful epic about the Irish struggle for independence at the turn of the 20th century.
Well, the sequel Claudius the God is also a must-read. I have a sort of obsession with Graves, I have read "I, Claudius" countless times. There is really nothing else quite like it. Graves wrote a lot of other historical fiction, but a lot of it is quite peculiar, like "Wife to Mr. Milton" or "They Hanged My Sainted Billy." I like them, but they are a bit of an acquired taste.
Gore Vidal's "Julian" is in my opinion his best, though the nineteenth-century American ones are also appealing (esp. Lincoln and Burr); Rosemary Sutcliffe's young-adult Roman-and-British history novels are also very good (and actually, I think young-adult historical fiction is often more appealing than the adult stuff; I recommend E. L. Konigsberg's "A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver," about Eleanor of Aquitaine). Margaret Yourcenar's Hadrian is a classic but I don't know if it stands up as well as Graves from the standpoint of pure enjoyment. Mary Renault is really wonderful if you haven't read her, must check it out if not: "The Last of the Wine" is perhaps my favorite, but there's a really good one about Alexander the Great ("Fire From Heaven"), an excellent one based on the (mythic) Theseus ("The Bull From the Sea"), and "The Praise Singer" is another favorite of mine (it's years since I read them, I may have got some of the titles wrong).
Hilary Mantel's "A Place of Greater Safety" is an interesting (though to me ultimately not so satisfying) novel about the French Revolution, if you like novels that treat public political events. My best other recommendation is Sebastian Faulks; I think "Birdsong" and "Charlotte Grey" are both extremely satisfying novels, about WWI and WWII respectively. If WWII counts as historical, of course, there start to be lots of good books to read….
All right, that's enough! But there's a lot of great other stuff out there too, of course. War and Peace is in some sense the great historical novel, put that one on the list too if you haven't read it…
Stephen Harrigan's Gates of the Alamo is a moving piece of historical fiction, told by both the Texian and Mexican sides.
I would like to add a few suggestions to the list.
Madison Smartt Bell's Haitian trilogy, starting with All Soul's Rising and ending with The Stone That the Builder Refused, is historical fiction on an epic scale. It tells the story of the Haitian slave revolution. This is a great example, in my opinion, of what historical fiction does best.
Tom Franklin's Hell at the Breech recreates an unusual private war between wealthy landowners and poor sharecroppers that raged in the backwoods of Alabama in the 1890s. A well-done recreation of a sad and mostly forgotten incident in American history.
Elizabeth Gaffney's Metropolis recreated New York's Five Corners area – think Dickens redoing Gangs of New York. A good story, well told, with excellent period details.
mario varga llosa. Feast of the Goat. the most harrowing account of a country under the rule of a murderous despot ever written. a masterpiece. a must read. seriously.
This was my original question and thanks for the great responses! If anyone is still inspired, any ideas for historical fiction surrounding the French Revolution?
I have to add Aztec. I love that book so much. It follows the sunset of the Aztec empire. Really fantastic.
-Erik.
French Revolution: Well, Tale of Two Cities is the obvious, and it is really pretty great if you haven't read it (though it's so far inferior to Dickens' best that I can't say it's one of my favorites). Victor Hugo has a really wonderful novel called Quatre-Vingt-Treize (1793), which I think should be more or less available in paperback–it was certainly in print in the mid-90s. I'm ignorant about other French-language stuff, though Michelet's French Revolution history is fantastic (history, not fiction) and there's also a film called Danton starring Gerard Depardieu that I liked when I saw it.
The Hilary Mantel novel I mentioned above is about the French Revolution; another thing well worth reading tho more on the truth than fiction thing is Richard Holmes's essay about Mary Wollstonecraft in Paris during the revolutionary years, it's in his collection Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer.
For Ancient Rome, try the "Masters of Rome" series by Colleen McCullough. For Africa, I've always like Wilbur Smith's sagas of the Courtneys and the Ballantynes.
RE: French Revolution
Anatole France's "The Gods Will Have Blood" is an excellent historical novel set during the Revolution.
Victor Hugo's hard to find "Ninety-Three" centers around a counter-revolutionary invasion during the Revolution.