review

The Promise of Happiness – Justin Cartwright

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I had high hopes for this book and was slightly disappointed. Although it is well written, I found the style at times irritating. The storyline is interesting enough and the characters are realistic, but I simply was not hanging on every word or desperately reading late into the night.

The book revolves around the Judds, a seemingly ordinary family of five. Charles and Daphne have retired to an idyllic Cornish town to live out the rest of their lives walking along the beach, playing golf, arranging flowers and experimenting with fish recipes. However, life for this particular family has been uncertain and on edge since the prodigal daughter, Juilet, or Ju-Ju, was arrested two years earlier. She was then sentenced to prison for art theft which turned their lives upside down. Now, on the day of her release, Ju-Ju’s family are preparing and desperately hoping that the world will now right itself and life will gradually go back to normal. Continue reading →

Top 5 Book to Film Adaptations

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There has been a big media frenzy this last couple of weeks with the last Harry Potter film being released, which I for one am excited about. I’m looking forward to the film, even though I can’t help but complain about all of them. The films can’t begin to live up to the book and they have turned Harry Potter into something else, a franchise, rather than books to spark the imagination of children all of the world. Children no longer have to conjure up their own personal ideas of the characters, they simply have to picture Daniel Radcliffe.

There have been some terrible film to book adaptations. And I don’t actually think Harry Potter is that bad compared to some of them. It must be extremely difficult to take a good book and turn it into a decent film. Even if you manage to cast the film with brilliant actors and have budget high enough to fill the sets with the perfect props and clothes, there is still so much to think about. So much of the dialogue must be cut down and many scenes scrapped. In fact I think it must be such a daunting task, I’m not sure why anyone would even attempt it!

Here are a few examples of films that I think have been adapted excellently.

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Brick Lane – Monica Ali

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At first glance, you may think that Brick Lane is full of unsatisfied and unhappy characters. Luckily, the book itself was a far from an unsatisfactory read. In fact, by the end, I was very satisfied indeed. The characters may be frustrated with certain aspects of their lives, but this book shows how people can rise above their disappointments and live their lives to the full.

Our heroine is Nazneen, who grew up in a small village in Bangladesh. After her sister runs away in a ‘love marriage’ and her mother passes away, she is sent to London to marry an older man. She is only eighteen when this life changing decision is made by her father, and nothing will ever be the same again. Continue reading →

Before the Earthquake – Maria Allen

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After reading an interview with the author, I simply had to buy this book. The plot seemed too good to miss out on, and being set in a small village in the the south of Italy, at the turn of the last century, it sounded like my sort of thing. The story is about Concetta, a fifteen year old peasant girl who wakes from a coma after an earthquake, finding herself pregnant and with no memory of how she became that way.

Worried about the scandal it would cause, not to mention ruining the chance of marriage for her two sisters, Concetta is quickly married to a family friend to settle an age old debt. Through the rest of the book, we follow Concetta through her new routines as she tries to get to grips with her new life. Continue reading →

The End of the Affair – Graham Greene

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This is a beautifully written account of the bitter aftermath of a broken love affair. The book is written from the point of view of Maurice Bendrix, an author and rejected lover of Sarah, a married woman living across the common.

He starts his tale with the chance meeting of Sarah’s husband, Henry, walking through the common on a miserable, rainy evening. It is eighteen months since he last saw the married couple and seeing them again reawakens his feelings of hate, which threaten to overflow. He hates Henry, for coming between him and his lover. He hates Sarah for leaving him. But most of all he hates himself for pushing Sarah away with his jealousy and anger. Continue reading →

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson

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Fear and Loathing is everything you would expect from a drug fuelled trip to Las Vegas – and more. Filled with bizarre situations, hilarious dialogue and a unique writing style, this book was enjoyable to read from beginning to end.

Hunter S. Thompson is a brilliant writer who manages to describe his days spent in Las Vegas with a surprising amount of clarity and lots of humour. Set in the post hippie era, this cult hit is loosely based on some of his own actions, mixed in with some imaginative, fabricated events.

The book opens with him and his attorney thundering through the desert on the way to Las Vegas in ‘The Red Shark’. Being a sports journalist, Thompson has been given an assignment to cover a desert motor race in Las Vegas. Instead, he takes the spending money and stocks  a rented red chevy convertible up with every type of drug imaginable, and along with his Samoan friend, goes in search of the American Dream.  Continue reading →

Our Betty – Liz Smith

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The first time I saw Liz Smith, she was dressed as a swashbuckling grandma in the CBBC series, Pirates, about a family of pirates who decide to settle on dry land in a normal family house. The series was fun and the characters were always getting into trouble. The second time I saw her, was when she walked past me at her local shops near Hampstead Heath. As a child I was so excited that I had just seen Grandma Pirate in the flesh, but was much too nervous to speak to her.

Since then, she has been hard to miss. She pops up everywhere with either quite small parts or much larger roles, such as Nana in The Royale Family, who managed to capture the heart of a nation. Continue reading →

The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde

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Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be eternally young? But if you keep your youth and beauty, if time and life does not leave its tell-tale traces upon your face with creases and stains, would you live your life differently? We would all like to believe that our personalities wouldn’t change but I don’t think that is very realistic.

Dorian Gray is rich and beautiful. At only only eighteen he is fresh faced, innocent and charming. One day he sees his portrait and realises that he will not always look so beautiful. The idea of his portrait staying young while age slowly creeps up on him is so unbearable to him that he rashly wishes away his soul in exchange for eternal youth. Continue reading →