Books to Movies - What's in store for 2010

In 2010, there are a few books you might want to read before you see the movie later in the year.

For the adults, the book which is on my "to read" pile and which I will have to move up closer to the top, is Elizabeth Gilbert's, Eat, Pray, Love.  The film version is due to be released in October 2010.



In my Summer 2009/2010 edition of the Bookseller and Publisher magazine, some other books that may be adapted for the screen in 2010 are mentioned.  The Book Thief by Markus Zusak gets a mention, as does We Need to Talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver (2005 Orange Prize winner).  The Book Thief is one of those books that you either loved or hated.  Personally I enjoyed it, but I'm not sure how well it will fit the big screen as much of my enjoyment was in the way it was written.  I found We Need to Talk about Kevin  very confronting when I read it a few years ago, as it challenges the premise that mothers are naturally maternal, and offers up the idea that violent children may just be born that way.  Online information implies that We Need to Talk about Kevin is more likely to be release early in 2011.  It will be interesting to see how they tackle some of the more confronting scenes from the book or whether they leave them out.

For the teenagers, the first of John Marsden's Tomorrow series,   Tomorrow, When the War Began,  has been adapted into a movie and is due out in September 2010.  My eldest son really enjoyed this series of books a couple of years ago, and so despite the books having been written in the early 1990's, they have stood the test of time.  Let's hope the movie lives up to it.  Something to recommend to your 12-14 year old to read.




For the kids:  The Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney is due to be released in time for the September school holidays and is based on a series of books aimed at upper primary/lower secondary level.  I read an interesting article on the Readings Books website regarding graphic books and children who have trouble reading, in this case a child with dyslexia.  The series was mentioned due to its use of underlining of some of the text as, apparently, this makes it easier for kids to read from left to right across the page.  I hadn't really thought deeply about how much the way the written word in a book is presented can affect the way our children engage with it.  It should be obvious I suppose, given how much my children like reading comic books such as Asterix and Garfield.

French Fiction - Consolation by Anna Gavalda

I finished Anna Gavalda’s new book (the author of Hunting and Gathering discussed in a previous post) while on holiday in Sydney. You might wonder why it has taken me until now to post my thoughts on it, but I have been in a quandary. Did I like it – to be honest, I’m not sure. Certainly I didn’t find it hooked me in as quickly as Hunting and Gathering did.

Firstly, an outline of the story. The main character is Charles, a successful architect who travels the world with his projects and is rarely home. Charles has a very modern relationship with his partner, Laurence. They are not married but have been together for many years and Laurence’s daughter Mathilde has a much closer relationship with Charles than her own mother. Mathilde now fourteen, is at that difficult teenage stage, but she is the one thing keeping Charles and Laurence together. Then one day, Charles gets a letter from his childhood friend, Alexis, a letter with just three words “Anouk is dead”.

Anouk, Alexis’s mother, was so very different from his own parents that she drew him in like a lure.  She was loud, funny and full of life and as a nurse, she cared about other people.  But, to Charles, she was also sexy and she was Charles's first love.  Everything changed when the two boys were in their late teens. Alexis, a talented musician, becomes addicted to drugs and treats his girlfriend, Charles' sister, badly.  Charles and Alexis lose touch as you often do in these circumstances, and thus Charles saw less and less of Anouk.

The letter turns out to be a catalyst for Charles to look at his life and his relationship with Laurence.  It brings back memories both good and bad, and motivates him to start a journey to find out how Anouk died and why she was buried in a suburban cemetery in an area that represents those things she always despised - cheap district housing and racism. While seeking out Alexis, he meets Kate, damaged by life and with a brood of adopted children, lives on a ramshackle farm in a small provincial town, and with whom he experiences an instant connection. Kate, is in some ways, Anouk reincarnated. Is this his second chance?

The first half of the novel was hard to get into, written in small snippets of events, from different points of view. In retrospect, I can see that the style of writing reflected the depression, uncertainty and churning that characterised Charles’ life at this point, but, for me, it made it difficult to keep up with the story and I often got a little lost. Maybe, the author was trying to make her novel fit the literary genre more closely to remove the label of women’s fiction from it, but I thought it made hard to get emotionally involved with the characters and the story in the way I had in Hunting and Gathering.

The second half of the novel flows more smoothly and the characters are easier to understand and empathise with. The novel takes the reader on a gentle journey as Charles discovers himself, and delves into the meaning of family, friendship, and love. I preferred this approach as it I got caught up in the feelings that it evoked, and I think I was disappointed that the first half of the novel wasn’t in this style. To me, the novel feels like it has been written by two different authors, with only Charles as the connection, and I found this a little confusing. I couldn’t decide whether the book was aimed at readers of literary fiction or for the reader of more popular fiction.

In retrospect, I’m not sure I would recommend this book if you were tossing up between a few, but may be a good one for the book club as there are a lot of issues to promote discussion.

"Hunting & Gathering" by Anna Gavalda

I was in a bookstore the other day and noticed Anna Gavalda’s new book “Consolation” on the table. I had to buy it to take away on holiday next week, as I loved Anna’s book, Hunting and Gathering which was released in Australia a few years ago. Some of you may be familiar with the movie of the same name which is based on the book (with English subtitles).

What made it such a memorable book for me that I have read it three times? I would have to say I was drawn to the wonderful characters in the novel - characters which had layers of complexity that had to be peeled away to reveal the true person underneath. While the plot of the novel is quite simple, Anna has created characters with which you live their story, characters that make you want to get to know them better, to be part of their world. Anna is a French writer, and I think that interesting characters are one of the strengths of European writers.

There is Camille, a young woman with a past she is trying to escape. By night, Camille works as a cleaner of corporate offices making friends with a diverse group of women, and by day lives in a tiny, freezing attic rarely venturing out into the world. What is her story, I kept asking myself as I read. She seemed so out of place in this setting. Her neighbour, Philibert, is a quirky French aristocrat, a man born into a family entrenched in the past. Philibert is a contradiction.  He has a academic's knowledge of French history but sells postcards outside a museum for a living. Philibert’s flatmate, Franck, is a moody, womanising, but talented chef, drowning in guilt after having to put his beloved grandmother, Paulette, into a nursing home. He resents the huge hours he works to pay for his fast motorbike and his grandmother’s nursing home fees. Philibert and Franck are an unlikely pair to share an apartment, as they seem to have little in common.

When Philibert rescues a very sick Camille from her garret and brings her to stay, things are not so peaceful in the apartment. As Franck says “the minute you let a girl in, all hell breaks loose. Everything gets complicated, everything becomes a pain in the ass and even the best buddies end up shouting at each other”. Sure enough things change as they all learn to trust each other, to become friends. While Camille and Franck give the story the drama and scenes with their hate/love relationship, Philibert and Pauline are responsible for bringing softness and emotion, and you just want to give them a hug. Each character has a past that unravels over the course of the book, generating our sympathy, understanding, and admiration.

Unlike other books I have read, Anna has managed to bring out the personality of each character without bogging the reader down and slowing down the overall story. I thought this book was a beautiful story of friendship and love, not to mention the food that binds them together and just the right thing to pick you up when things are not going to plan.  I can't wait to dig my teeth into her new book, Consolation.  You might like to learn more about the author in this interview and a review of Consolation here.

Stuck for something to read?

Stuck for something to read? Need some help working out which book on the bookstore shelves might be the one for you? Here are a few ideas that have caught my eye as I’ve trawled through cyberspace or have found in book reviews I have read recently.

Have you read Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert?
Then you might want to immerse yourself in her life again and read the continuation of her story in Committed: A Sceptic Makes Peace with Marriage. I have to confess that I have yet to read Eat, Pray, Love but it is on my to-read list after I found an interesting discussion of both books on the site of one of my favourite bloggers, Mia Freedman. You can read Mia’s post on Committed here, and one on Eat, Pray, Love here.

Where Have You Been? by Wendy James
I first read about this in the Bookseller + Publisher Magazine Summer 2009/10 edition and the synopsis dragged me in. Like all good thrillers, the novel revolves around unanswered questions. Karen waved goodbye to her sister one night and her sister never came back. Then after marriage and children, the long lost sister reappears.  Where has she been? What has she been doing? Is she really who she says she is? Hopefully the author will keep me guessing until the very end. For more story about this book you might want to read this review of the book on the Readings Bookstore website.

Day After Night by Anita Diamant
The new book from the author of The Red Tent, Day After Night follows the story of four Jewish women who have survived in Nazi Europe during World War II, only to be interned in a Palestinian transit camp for “illegal immigrants”. Based on a true story about an escape by 200 prisoners from a camp named Atlit, the book review I read enticed me to find out more and I discovered this video of Anita talking about her book on the website of the book’s publisher, Simon and Schuster.

Alex Miller's "Lovesong"

You're sure to have seen Alex Miller's latest book in the bookstores over the last few months, and it's been featured in the State Library of Victoria's The Summer Read programme for this year.  Maybe some of you have tried it, while others have been put off by Miller's "literary" label having won two Miles Franklin Awards - in 1993 for The Ancestor Game and in 2004 for Journey to the Stone Country.  I have to say that I have put off reading Lovesong to date because I found The Ancestor Game quite a hard read although I did ponder on the story for quite some time after I had finished.  I was expecting Lovesong to be in the same vein and was waiting until I felt up to reading it.  After finishing the book yesterday, I am both happy and sad.  Happy that Lovesong was a much easier read and thus will appeal to a broader audience and it is a "nice" read, the story flowing along effortlessly,  But I am sad in that I didn't have the same sense of dwelling on and interpreting the story as I had when I finished The Ancestor Game.

The novel starts in Melbourne where the narrator, Ken, strikes up a friendship with Australian born John, whose Tunisian wife, Sabiha, runs a local bakery selling the pastries of her homeland.  During their meetings for coffee, John tells Ken the story of how he and his wife ended up living in Melbourne, and Ken, a well known author, can see the outline of his last book in John's story.  John is backpacking through Europe, catches the wrong train in Paris, and ends up at the Tunisian cafe run by Sabiha's aunt.  John And Sabiha marry and establish their life together running the cafe after Sabiha's aunt dies.

Writers at the Convent - #3. Destinctive Debuts

My third session of the day was entitled "Destinctive Debuts" and the six authors who participated were a diverse mix.

"Do you want Sex with that?" by Claire Halliday

This book is part memoir, part investigation and considers the place of sex in Australian life.  What make's Claire's book different is that it considers the issues regarding sex in our society with reference to her own experiences.  The excerpt that she read from her book outlined, in uncomfortable detail, her own  negative experiences of sex as a young adult, and it made me shuffle in my seat not knowing where to look.  How sad her reading was.  Is this all our young girls have to look forward to?  I didn't really get a feel for her book from the reading, but have read reviews of it since. I am sure it would be very informative but I think that I want to keep my illusions about what happens out there a little bit longer.  "Too much information"  - as the saying goes.

"The Legacy" by Kirsten Tranter

Set in the world of art in New York, this mystery/thriller follows Julia's quest to find her friend, Ingrid, after she disappeared on September 11, 2001 - yes, 9/11.  As one review I have read said, 9/11 was a day when almost anything could happen.   Did Ingrid disappear or did something more sinister happen?  Although set in New York, the main characters are Australian, and the book is written by an Australian now living in New York.  To me this meant that the writing style had a bluntness to it, more in common with Australian fiction than that the American mystery/thriller writers that I am more accustomed to.  The book has had good reviews so I think I will put it on my "to-read" list for the future.

"Cooee" by Vivienne Kelly

Vivienne selected a scene from her book where the main character, Isobel, is having lunch with her reluctant son, Dominic, who resents that his mother left him when he was ten and just wants to get the lunch over with.  From the audience's response, I think a few could relate to the sense of defeat that Isobel felt as she tries to establish a relationship with her adult son.  I found the reading funny in a dark sort of way, but the book was not something that I will rush out and buy in the near future as I feel uncomfortable with this sort of humour and found the scene quite depressing.  If anyone has read this book, please let me know whether you liked it.

2009 Indie Book of the Year - Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey

You may remember from one of my January posts that I was going to read "Jasper Jones" by Craig Silvey after really enjoying his earlier book, "Rhubarb".  Well, I completed it this morning.  Firstly, a little synopsis of the story.  Set in the 1960's in a small town in Western Australia, the story is told by 13 year old Charlie whose father teaches at the local secondary college and his mother struggles to live in a community so different from the world of wealth in which she grew up.  One hot summer night, Charlie is awoken by a tap at his window.  It is Jasper Jones - the town outcast, the boy that all parents warn their children about hanging out with, and who is a year older than Charlie.  "I need your help" says Jasper and intrigued Charlie goes with Jasper to his secret place where Jasper has made a horrible discovery.   Jasper insists that it must be kept secret and enlists Charlie's support in order to solve the mystery before they tell anyone what he has found.  Through the hot summer, Charlie battles with himself about keeping the secret, the telling of which he knows will eleviate the fear that the town is living in at the expense of his new friend.  It is a summer where everything is changing and nothing will be the same again.

"Jasper Jones" has been described as a coming of age book, and to be honest, initially, I wasn't sure whether the intended audience was adults or teenagers.  I had trouble with the ages of Charlie and Jasper - 13 and 14 is still young for a lot of the things that happened in the story but maybe that's a product of my sheltered life.  I did like parts of the story very much - the relationship between Charlie and his best friend Jeffrey Lu, the sensitive telling of the discrimination that Jeffrey's Vietnamese family were subject to, the budding romance with Eliza Wishart, the description of an epic cricket match with Jeffrey as the hero of the day, proving to the town that just because he's Vietnamese doesn't mean he can't play cricket.

I found the plot a little predictable, and I enjoyed the second half of the book more than the first.  If you are a reader that really likes character development, and gutsy descriptions of events, then this book is worth trying. I have read many reviews in online blogs where the reader loved this book, and this is born out by it's 2009 Indie Book of the Year award. For me, I think that I preferred "Rhubarb", Craig Silvey's earlier novel.

If you would like more about the plot, go to http://www.allenandunwin.com/default.aspx?page=94&book=9781741757743

Favourite Summer Read

Over the school holidays, I had the luxury of taking a cup of tea back to bed in the morning or sitting out on the sunlounger watching the kids in the pool and indulging in my favourite pastime - reading. I read many books but the one that kept me thinking about it well after I had finished was "Let the Great World Spin" by Irish American author, Colum McCann.

This is a very different style of book to the novels I usually read as it was more a collection of interconnecting short stories.

From the Allen & Unwin website:
"New York, August 1974. A man is walking in the sky and the city stands still, captivated by this sight, awe and disbelief filling the streets. Philipe Petit is making his famous tightrope walk across the World Trade Centre and the lives of seven people will change forever.

Set against a time of sweeping political and social change, from the imminent resignation of Nixon to the beginnings of the Internet, the burgeoning minimalist art movement to the lingering sceptre of the oil crisis, a single audacious event will intricately bind these apparent strangers, transforming their lives forever."

I really liked the use of the real event of the man tightrope walking between the Twin Towers to connect the stories, but also that a supporting character in one story becomes the main character in another story, and that parts of the story were told from different points of view.

Give Australain authors a chance

I am embarrassed to admit that until recently I tended to avoid books written by Australian authors, especially those in the "literary" category. Yes, I've read Colleen McCulloch, Bryce Courtney, and others of that type in the past but they tended to write books based in other countries, England, American or South Africa - not the places on my doorstep. Over the last six months I found it hard to find books that caught my interest in the local library so I started browsing the web,and reading the "Good Reading" magazine available in my local library, looking for new authors and books. Part of this has led me to read books such as "the Slap" by Chris Tsoilkas, and more recently Rhubarb by Craig Silvey. I'm sure many reading this blog have heard of "The Slap" but I think that Craig Silvey is an author that is probably not on your "to-read" list.

Craig's second book "Jasper Jones" won the 2009 Indie Book of the Year for 2009, an award where Australian independant bookshops vote to choose their favourite books from a short list of Australian books published last year. I have yet to read this as it has not been available at my local library until this week so I read "Rhubarb" his first novel published in 2004 instead. It was a surprise delight and an eye opener.

In short, the book is about two lonely people, Eleanor Rigby, a young blind girl (yes, just like the famous Beatles' song) and Ewan, the agoraphobic celloist, who identify things in each other which they are missing in themselves - Eleanor is drawn by the wonderful music that Ewan creates, and Ewan, to Eleanor's positive view on life and handling of her blindness. Their pasts are complicated and unravel as the book progresses, giving the reader insight into the characters and how they came to be the way they are.

The writing style is both challenging but engaging, sometimes funny, sometimes sad. There are four supporting characters - the unlikeable Bruno and his long suffering wife, Althea, Eleanor's friend Frank, who pretends his wife is still alive, and Eleanor's mother Estelle, who sits watching TV all day.

Occasionally, the descriptions bogged the story down, but overall, I loved this book, and can't wait to get down to my local library to get "Jasper Jones".