Not All Books Should Be Adapted

…In fact, I'd probably argue that most of them shouldn't

There are some books which, while reading, make me start to think about their potential as movies, TV shows or, since 2022 I guess, “limited series” (when and why did we start calling TV shows “limited series” and how different would our lives have been, had My So-Called Life been marketed as such?).

When I read JM Coetzee’s Disgrace, for example, which was assigned reading in one of my college English tutorials¹, I remember seeing, so clearly, Kevin Spacey (then not known to be quite so problematic) in the role of David Lurie, whose “disgrace” forms the central theme of the book. The casting of John Malkovich in his stead (full disclosure: I have no idea whether or not Spacey was even considered for this role) ruined the entire thing for me.

I watched the film, once it was available on streaming, but spent its duration (120 minutes, almost the perfect film length, which is between 90 and 105 minutes, in case you wondered) seething at this frankly terrible casting. Malkovich was altogether too menacing, I thought; Spacey would (at the time) have been a far less obvious, and therefore more darkly sinister, anti-hero.

I started to think about this – casting and miscasting and, honestly, the fallacy that not all writing can and should be re-interpreted for the small screen – when I saw that Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women, one of the most arresting books I’ve ever read, has been made into an original series on Starz (which I have previously subscribed to so that I could watch Power, and Outlander, the juxtaposition of which with Three Women feels, frankly, insulting to Taddeo).

(I’d be lying if I said I definitely won’t watch it, although it’s not at the top of my list. Right now, I’m trying to catch up on The Golden Bachelorette in time for this week’s Men Tell All episode while keeping up to date with Real Housewives of Salt Lake City and, having promised my sister I’d watch Unreal and Nobody Wants This, and promised myself that I’d watch Rivals*, I don’t have much room on the schedule for anything else. Plus, my son has chosen this moment of intense television scheduling to come down with something, which is really getting in the way of my binge-watching.)

I’ve just finished reading Audrey Shulman’s Theory of Bastards (an aside: whoever chose the cover of this book should never work in books again, or any visual medium, honestly), finally acceding to my sister’s demands (I’m sure she’d prefer that I call them suggestions), and it’s another of those books I adored (five stars!), but hope Hollywood (and whoever else) know well enough to leave it alone.

There are, of course, other books I’ve loved whose adaptations, whether on the small or big screen, have always seemed like obvious mistakes. Life of Pi, for example: a stunning book, but in what way was this ever going to be as moving and as beautiful as the book, with as shocking a denouement?

Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy was, perhaps, always going to be too much – too expansive, too imaginative, too complex and, of course, too expensive – to adapt faithfully, and well, for the screen, but that didn’t stop them releasing the first in the trilogy in 2007. (The following two films were scrapped due to a poor box-office performance by the first.)

It was adapted, once again, for television, in 2019, to a better reception, and, crucially, the series was completed in 2022, so you can watch all three of those, starring Dafne Keen, right now should you wish. (I enjoyed the first, but forgot about seasons two and three, so that’s probably not a totally ringing endorsement. If you haven’t, I would just read the books, instead.)

When it comes to adaptations I’ve loved, or even approved of (Hollywood is quaking in its boots, I’m sure), the list is shorter. Game of Thrones was done well, at least visually, and the cast was superb, although the books were decidedly less rapey than the show, and left more room for nuance in the relationships, particularly that between Daenerys Targaryen and Khal Drogo.

Ian McEwan’s Atonement made a beautiful film, as did Kashuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (I’m unlikely ever to hate a work of dystopian science fiction, in whatever medium), and The Lord of the Rings was a triumph, even if true Tolkien fans bemoan the loss of the longer, entirely-surplus-to-the-plot scenes, featuring hobbits trekking across endless fields. It’s best if nobody mentions The Hobbit.

The Devil Wears Prada is infinitely more watchable than the book is readable; Little Women (the 1994 adaptation starring Winona Ryder and our own Gabriel Byrne; I haven’t watched the Greta Gerwig film, although I know I should) is a beautiful movie; it’s hard to say I enjoy watching The Handmaid’s Tale, but the showrunners’ ability to move the plot beyond what Atwood put on the page continues to impress me (and has not gone down unknown and deranged paths, a la David Benioff and D.B. Weiss’ work on Game of Thrones).

There are also those books I’m shocked no one has tried to adapt: Louise Bagshawe’s Venus Envy, a 1990s classic that would definitely be too fatphobic and bitchy for 2024 but would’ve sat nicely next to Bridget Jones’ Diary on the shelves in Chartbusters; Louise Lawrence’s Children of the Dust, a post-apocalyptic YA novel released in 1985 that is, quite honestly, rather terrifying and possibly not suitable for many young audiences, but would surely have made an excellent nuclear panic movie; The Gathering by CJ Tudor (which was just released this year so may yet get its 15 minutes of TV or cinema fame), a kind of Fargo meets Mare of Easttown hybrid WITH VAMPIRES and I’ll grant you that vampires aren’t for everyone but has there been any semi-decent vampire content since True Blood ended in 2014?! I would argue that there has not (although full-frontal Alexander Skarsgard was a decent consolation prize).

I think there’s a misconception in Hollywood that all “good” books – that is, all books that are bought in their hundreds of thousands and get a relatively good critical reception – deserve to be interpreted for film or for television, when this simply… makes no sense.

The joy of reading is in being able to envision things for yourself, in being able to combine the imagination of the author with your own, using the world and the characters they’ve built and building upon them in your reading. It’s an escape that allows you to come up with infinite numbers of possible visuals, to imagine colours and shapes and smells and feels and even facial expressions that are not always put on the page – and once you sit down to watch someone else’s interpretation of that work, you’re immediately hemmed in by that vision, whether you like it or not.

Books open up the world, and I would argue that TV and film, to a certain extent, boxes it in – sometimes with excellent results, but other times kind of souring the book itself, no matter how much you loved it before you were told exactly what it was supposed to look like.

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In the process of writing this, I’ve learned that Naomi Alderman’s The Power was, in fact, adapted for the small screen in 2022. How did I miss this?! Did any of you watch it? Should I???

Similarly, if you’ve watched Rivals and have a review you’d like to share, please do! But no spoilers. I need to be surprised at my smut.

1. I suddenly find myself wondering whether English professors, in 2024, take a more careful approach to assigning reading that could be incredibly triggering to their students. [Spoiler alert ahead…] Disgrace contains not only rape by a man in a position of power, but also a violent gang rape done at a moment of great trauma and distress, both for the characters and for the reader. Is this the kind of literature that is still prescribed, willy-nilly, in degree programs? I’d love to know.