Fiction
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Saturday, October 13th, 2007
Ever since I read A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby, I’ve been a big fan. I had only previously read High Fidelity (which I must admit I only read after having seen the movie) but have since read all of his novels. After catching up and reading all his novels, I was then in need of new material. Hornby’s soon-to-be-released new novel, Slam, did not come soon enough.
Some months ago, I received an advanced copy of Slam. With its U.S. release only days away now, I want to offer my thoughts on the book for Hornby fans who have anxiously been waiting for his latest novel, and for readers everywhere (and of all ages) who have yet to experience Nick Hornby’s fiction.
Slam is intended for young adults, but adult Hornby fans can rest assured that Slam will still be as enjoyable to them as Hornby’s prior novels.
The novel is about Sam, a teenage skater (as in skateboarding) who seeks advice on life from Tony Hawk’s autobiography and talks to a poster of Hawk on his wall. Early in the story Sam meets Alicia, the two begin dating and shortly thereafter have sex and conceive a child. The story, written from Sam’s point of view, is about Sam’s dealing with the fact he is soon to become a teenage father.
I wasn’t sure at first what I thought about Hornby writing for young adults from the perspective of a teenager. His initial success came from books with male protoganists, but also has written a novel with a female narrator in How To Be Good, as well as book with four different narrators, two male and two female, in A Long Way Down, quite successfully. As a fan of Nick Hornby, I believe it will be easy for other Hornby fans to welcome his first attempt at the teenage fiction genre. His fans will appreciate his unique style and dialogue, which compensates for the clearly teenaged target audience the novel was written for.
Hornby fans know very well of the depth of his characters’ introspections in novels. Whether the subject is music, divorce, suicide, etc., Hornby gives an extraordinary and authentic voice for his characters. But, how does Hornby handle writing the voice of a 15-year-old kid struggle to come to terms with the fact he is going to be a father?
Hornby’s unique style works quite well with the narration of his main character, Sam. As How To Be Good proved his style was not gender specific, Slam proves that his style is also not age specific.
One of my favorite moments of Sam’s introspections comes when he contemplates running away from the problem of his now ex-girlfriend Alicia, by leaving for Hastings:
I knew I was being a coward, but sometimes you have to be a coward, don’t you? There’s no point in being brave if you’re just going to be destroyed. Say you walked round the corner and there are fifty al-Qaida there. Not even fifty. Five. Not even five. One, with like a machine gun, would be enough. You might not feel good about running for your life, but what are your choices? Well, I had walked around the corner, and there was an al-Qaida with machine gun, except he was just a baby, and he didn’t have a machine gun. But in my world a baby, even without a machine gun, is like a terrorist with a machine gun, if you think about it… (p. 109)
Hornby convincingly writes from the perspective of a teenager overwhelmed with the burden of consequences of his actions and tackles the issue of teenage pregnancy with bluntness and honesty.
Revolutionary Road
Sunday, September 23rd, 2007Back in June, I set upon starting Revolutionary Road, by Richard Yates. It actually took me a while to get started, and it eventually became my morning reading on the train during my commute to work. I finished it this weekend while flying to Santa Barbara, California.
The novel tells the story of Frank and April Wheeler, Connecticut suburbanites in the 1950s who both want more out of life than what they got. Frank has a mundane, pointless job and feels like a failure. April wants to restart their life and move them and their two young kids to Paris, France, where she would support the family so he can focus his time and energy trying to fulfill his life’s dreams. Things don’t work out as either of them hoped.
I really enjoyed the novel — perhaps not as much as a the character J.J. in Nick Hornby’s novel A Long Way Down did, but enjoyed it all the same. He certainly was right in saying the ending “is a real downer.”
Kurt Vonnegut is quoted on the back, saying calling the novel. “The Great Gatsby of [his] time,” and I can see the connection.
Filming for the movie Revolutionary Road finished last month, and the movie is set for a 2008 release. I look forward to seeing that and comparing it with the novel.
On my return flight(s) from Santa Barbara, California, I started Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen. I’m already about half-way through it, and will post a short review when I finish.
Big Fish: The Novel vs. The Film
Tuesday, September 18th, 2007I have always believed that when novels are adapted for film, the film version would always be the inferior version. I have recently finished Big Fish by Daniel Wallace and found myself not liking it nearly as much as I like the movie.
Some things do carry over from the novel to the book, but they are largely different. In the novel, Edward Bloom, the main character who’s life is retold in his wild tales and stories, has a good relationship with his son William, who narrates the book. In the movie, the Ed and William were estranged as a result of William being fed up with his father’s constant storytelling. William comes home after three years of not speaking to his father when his father’s death is imminent, and hopes to learn “the truth” about his father before he dies, and the movie goes through the romanticized life of Edward Bloom, regularly returning to the present as William struggles to get anything resembling the truth from his dying father.
The movie has a good rhythm to it. The stories of Edward’s life flow together in the movie, but feel a bit disjointed in the book. And, while in the novel, William does have similar frustrations with his father’s tale-telling, the decision of the screenwriter to change the nature of the father-son relationship strengthened the purpose of the overall story as William’s attempt to learn the truth about his father ultimately leads him to appreciate stories that have become who his father is.
Since the movie ranks as one of my favorites, I was hoping/expecting the novel would be counted as one of my favorite novels. While I still enjoyed the book, it didn’t quite achieve what I had hoped.
Hornby’s Update On Film Adaptation of ‘A Long Way Down’
Tuesday, September 11th, 2007A Long Way Down is easily my favorite Nick Hornby novel, and perhaps my all time favorite. Because of this, I am equally excited and worried about the upcoming film adaptation of the book, currently in development. It is encouraging that D.V. Devincentis (who adapted High Fidelity) is writing the script for the movie version of A Long Way Down.
Nick Hornby has given us an update on the movie project on his blog, and explains some of the issue with adapting the novel to a movie script — issues that were actually the same that made me worried about the film version.
I have been told several times that ‘A Long Way Down’ would make a good film. It’s true that in the opening chapters there are four people standing on a roof, and that could be made to look pretty cool on screen. But after that, there are plenty of problems for DV to solve. There are four points of view in the novel, four different voices; you can’t film that. About big chunk of the book is back-story, the characters explaining how they arrived at their current predicament; you can’t film that, either, not without resorting to an excessive, clunky use of flashback. Most of the action takes place in rooms – one climactic scene takes place in a Starbucks basement. (Note to budding novelists: if you really want to make some money out of Hollywood, set all climactic scenes up a mountain, or at the bottom of the sea, or even on the ground floor of Starbucks, somewhere with windows.)
You can read the whole thing here.
“Shawshank” and “The Body”
Tuesday, August 7th, 2007I’ve finished the two novellas from Stephen King’s Different Seasons I set out to finish: “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption” and “The Body.” Both were entertaining and hold their own next to their movie adaptations. The interesting thing about reading these two stories is that I pretty know the story and ultimately how it ends and key things that happen along the way.
Reading the original novel (or novella) after seeing the movie is different than vice versa. When you read the book first, you accept that the movie version will be watered down, and you know ahead of time that the depth of the characters won’t fully be realized in the movie version, even if they use narration from the point of view of the main character. Which in fact, both these stories/movies do. In “Shawshank” the novella, you are told the story from the point of view of ‘Red’ Redding. The movie incorporates this with off-screen narration from the character as well, but obviously the novella connects you more with Red, while the movie connects you more with Andy Dufresne, who is, in both the novella and the movie, the subject of Red’s story.
“The Body” is written as a memoir of the Gordon LaChance, who is penning the story of an adventure from his childhood with three of his friend who are all trying to find the body of a local kid who was missing. The movie version, Stand By Me, tells the story the same way, with the occasional off-screen narration of The Writer. The story is largely the same, only in the novella The Writer will occasionally take us closer to his present time, putting the events of his past into perspective.
Anyway… Both were good. If you’re a fan of the movies, you should read the novellas they came from.
Nick Hornby Blogs
Friday, July 27th, 2007I have just learned that my favorite author, Nick Hornby, has joined the blogosphere.
Four Novellas
Wednesday, July 18th, 2007I recently bought a copy of Different Seasons, a collection of four novellas by Stephen King. I got it primarily to read two of the novellas, “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption” and “The Body.” Both of these, as you may already know, were adapted into films, The Shawshank Redemption and Stand By Me. Once I finish these two novellas I’ll probably skip the remaining two for the time being and focus on other reading I’ve already started, particularly, Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates.
Next In Line
Friday, June 29th, 2007I have no more science fiction stories lined up after finishing Planet of the Apes, so, my next book to start will be Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates.
I learned about the book, interestingly enough, from Nick Hornby. In his novel A Long Way Down, one of the characters, J.J., had planned to jump off a building with a copy of the book:
Earlier that week—Christmas Day, to be precise—I’d finished Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates, which is a totally awesome novel. I was actually going to jump with a copy, not only because it would have been cool, and would’ve added a little mystique to my death, but becuase it might have been a good way of getting more people to read it.
Well, that short reference to the book got me interested in reading it myself. I bought it a month ago, but haven’t started it yet. I’ve also learned that the novel has been adapted for film and will be released next year. So, I definitely want to read it sooner than later and have now decided not to let myself put it off any further.
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