Don't judge a book...

I don't know who coined the phrase 'Don't judge a book by its movie', but I think it's brilliant. Like most literature lovers, I'm often disappointed by screen adaptations of good books. Sometimes I'm even outraged. But every once in a while I can be surprised.

It happened again last week with The Reader, the Oscar-winning film of Bernhard Schlink's epynomous novel about post-war Germany. I watched it on a BA flight between Cape Town and London, and although an aeroplane is never the perfect place to watch any kind of movie, I thought this one at least as good, if not actually better, than the book. I shouldn't have been so surprised. I realised afterwards that the director was Stephen Daldry, responsible for the wonderful screen adaptation of Michael Cunningham's The Hours, one of the rare literary movies of the last couple of years which managed to please the original fans of the book nearly as much as the new fans of the movie.

The Reader, like The Hours, is a book about reading and the power of literature to change lives. Few directors, in this age of action-packed thrillers, have the courage to tackle such a 'static' subject - or the talent to turn it into a commercially successful and critically acclaimed movie. What's more, Stephen Daldry seems to have a way with actresses, like the great George Cukor of The Women fame. He led Nicole Kidman to an Oscar-winning performance as Virginia Woolf in The Hours, and then he did it again with Kate Winslet as the former concentration camp guard Hanna in The Reader. Part of the achievement of The Reader (the film), is that the script stays so true to the book. This is not always possible or even advisable in screen adaptations - but here it works just fine. In fact, the only bit of the film that seems irritatingly sentimental is the ending - which was not in the book, as I verified as soon as my flight landed, in a bookshop at Heathrow Airport.

I really liked both films, but if I have to choose between the two books, I won't hesitate a moment. I adored The Hours - the style, the story, the language, everything - whereas I appreciated The Reader as a marvellous story with a strong moral message, but I wasn't knocked over by the literary style or the language. Perhaps this is because I read the English translation, not the original German text. After all, we never know how much gets lost in translation if we don't have access to the primary language, do we? The Reader, I thought, was a novel written by a clever jurist with a philosophical bent. Whereas The Hours was a novel written by a born and bred novelist for born and bred novel fanatics like myself.

If you don't agree with me, do let me know. I'd also love to hear what your own all-time favourite screen adaptation of a beloved book is. My shortlist includes two magnificent movies of the Italian director Visconti: Thomas Mann's Death in Venice and Giuseppe de Lampedusa's The Leopard. As well as two by Stanley Kubrick: Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita and Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange. Some directors are apparently born to turn great books into great films. Most, however, should rather leave well alone.

Words, words, words

A while ago I confessed in my blog that I prefer not to meet writers whose work I enjoy (Close encounters of the literary kind) - but today I have to add that it can be quite a pleasant experience when it happens the other way round. I recently met a charming American expatriate living in a neighbouring village - and then read her equally charming book, Words in a French Life (Lessons in Love and Language from the South of France).


Kristin Espinasse, who describes herself as 'a former desert rat from Phoenix', fell in love with the French language and with a Frenchman (in that order) and now has French children who correct her grammatical errors when she speaks 'their' language. (That's when they're not splitting their sides at the way she mispronounces some words.)


Of course I can identify with all of this - except for the desert rat bit - because my own children cannot, for the life of them, understand my daily struggle with the gender of French nouns. They know intuitively that 'question' is feminine (la question) and 'problem' masculine (le problème). So what is their mother's problem (masculine) with this gender business? That is the question (feminine).


But even readers without French partners, children or family-in-law would appreciate Espinasse's short and humorous 'lessons' in French living - each time built around a specific word. The book tackles these rather random but always useful words alphabetically. For instance, under d you would find words like déguster, dent and douche (savour, tooth and shower), clarified by three separate anecdotes about wine tasting, the tooth fairy and a catastrophic bathroom experience in a French hotel. Each chapter starts with a word (like goût), provides its English meaning and pronounciation (goo - noun, masculine - taste), tells a little story, and concludes with everyday or idiomatic expressions (such as prendre goût a quelque chose = to take a liking to something).

Great stuff, whether you want to polish your own French, learn a few basic words - or have no desire to speak French but simply enjoy reading about life in the slow lane of the French countryside. As many people apparently do, because this book is the result of an astonishingly successful blog, French-word-a-day.com, that Espinasse has been keeping for seven years. Consistently, at least three times a week, with the kind of enthusiam and self-discipline that more occasional bloggers like myself can only admire, never copy. She started it as a little newsletter about the trials and tribulations of settling in a foreign country and struggling with a foreign language - soon attracting thousands of dedicated followers - and eventually published some of these anecdotes in book form herself. Her popularity just kept growing, until finally she was approached by American publishers Simon & Schuster, which led to the publication of Words in a French Life, in 2007.

She must be an example to millions of bloggers. French-word-a-day.com has by now become much more than a hobby, rather an almost full-time occupation, a way of earning a living while working from home, and at the same time keeping in contact with Francophiles all over the world.

And, maybe most surprising of all, she's as entertaining and modest in real life as on the pages of her book, as I can testify after having enjoyed coffee with her twice. And that really impresses me.

One man's perversity...

Sometimes writing a blog feels a little like undressing in front of a one-way window. You don't know who's watching, so you have to pretend you're alone, otherwise you become all embarrassed.


That's why it's always great when readers react. Thanks to everyone who has been sending comments, suggesting must-read authors or books, or providing links to other sites. Sometimes friends or acquaintances prefer to send emails to my personal address, often in Afrikaans or French, rather than 'public statements' to this site. Fine with me, as long as we can keep talking, in whatever language, about books and bookish things.


Earlier this week, for instance, Karin from Stellenbosch sent a link to a New York Times piece about Jonathan Littell's novel, The Kindly Ones, finally on sale in English. Some of you might remember that in November last year I wrote about Littell and other authors who achieve literary glory in a second or even third language (Choosing the other tongue), and concluded that I'd rather wait for the English translation of Les Bienveillantes. Well, I still haven't read the translation (it has nearly a thousand pages, have mercy), but I did read what the New York Times had to say about the book:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/04/books/04litt.html?_r=1&8bu&emc=bub2

Since the link is available for only a few days, I'll sum it up for you. The narrator of this 'divisive French novel' (according to the caption) is 'a remorseless former Nazi SS officer, who in addition to taking part in the mass extermination of the Jews, commits incest with his sister, sodomizes himself with a sausage and most likely kills his mother and stepfather.' While some American and British critics are hailing the book as a masterpiece and its author as a genius, others are calling it perverse, pretensious, odious, disgusting and vile.


What fascinates me, is that I can't recall any French reviews - or any of my French friends who read the novel - going on about incest or sodomy-by-sausage or any other juicy bits of perversity. Surely there must have been differences of opinion over here too, but the mainstream reviews that I read were mostly ravingly positive. The book was also awarded France's most prestigious literary prize, the Goncourt, and as far as I know the jury of this prize is regarded as rather conservative.


Or is this just conservative by French standards?


I do remember my friend Pierre-Luc saying that it was hard to read the details of some of the atrocities commited by the SS, and that the narrator was not exactly a charming character, but I thought that was the whole point of the book. The former SS officer is, after all, unrepentant. Just a few nights ago I happened to watch a television documentary about the horrendous massacre of most of the inhabitants of an Italian village during the Second World War - and all the Nazi officers and soldiers involved, except one, refused to admit any guilt or remorse. They had simply been doing their duty, according to them. Just like Littell's fictional officer, I suppose.


Besides, many literary masterpieces have been called vile, disgusting, perverse and worse when they were first published. I don't yet know if I would find The Kindly Ones a masterpiece, but I do know that I am more curious than ever to read it. Meanwhile I'm wondering if French readers and reviewers are simply less easily shocked than those in England or the United States. Or perhaps one has become so used to 'perversity' in French literature that one doesn't notice it any more? Or perhaps the French concept of 'perversity' differs quite dramatically from the Anglo-Saxon one?


Or maybe this has nothing to do with nationalities. It might be just another example in a long list of books that have proven that one man's perversity is almost always another man's pleasure. So please let me know if you've read it - in whatever language - and whether you found it delightful, disturbing or disgusting.