It may have taken me a long time to write this, but I have managed to complete my goal of reading twelve books in one year. The last four books were really great, falling between the genres of mystery and self discovery that I would recommend them to anyone. By coincidence, three of the four books actually have film adaptations with one currently in production. These last four books that completed my challenge for the year were The Diary of a Teenage Girl by Phoebe Gloeckner, Missing Reels by Farran Smith Nehme, Brooklyn by Colm Toibin, and The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. *Spoilers ahead*
The Diary of a Teenage Girl by Phoebe Gloeckner
The first line in Phoebe Gloeckner's book, that goes between words and images that could be categorized as a graphic novel, begins with a dedication to her daughters and "For all the girls when they have grown." It may sound like a sweet nod to the reader, but this story really is for all girls.
I first heard about The Diary of a Teenage Girl when I read about its film adaptation premiering at the Sundance Film Festival and at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and MoMA's New Directors/ New Films series. I was interested too when I saw that it starred Alexander Skarsgaard from True Blood and Kristen Wiig from Saturday Night Live and Bridesmaids. The plot also reminded me of An Education, but was very different in its own way.
The story is about fifteen year old Minnie Goetz, who begins an illustrated and honestly written diary after she loses her virginity to her mother's boyfriend, Monroe. Her diary tracks not only her relationship with Monroe, but also her sexual awakening while living in 1970's San Francisco.
What makes Phoebe Gloeckner's protagonist much different than any other young female character discovering her sexuality is that Minnie admits her emotions and the enjoyment she gets from having sex and further exploring it. Whereas some books feature a character reflecting on the idea and the physical aspect of sex and how it affects them emotionally, Phoebe Gloeckner does something new by having Minnie be honest admitting how much she enjoys it alongside with how it makes it her feel. However, this book is not only about a girl's sexual awakening. It is also about a girl discovering herself and what it means to be loved.
I liked Minnie Goetz and after reading the whole book I felt I had a better understanding of her that I and any other girl could relate to. Initially, her relationship with Monroe and other people were overwhelming to read. It made me question why she was doing it apart from it being enjoyable. It was about midway through that I realized she was also trying to find a way to feel something; she was trying to find love. Not so much the romantic kind, but something genuine and real. Someone who genuinely and unconditionally cared about her.
In Minnie's home life, she has a younger sister named Gretel and a single mother named Charlotte, who finds escape through alcohol, occasional drugs, and parties with friends rather than being a parent. From my opinion of Charlotte, she was trying to relive the glory days of her youth as she once told Minnie that she was once a "quite a piece" when she was Minnie's age. As a result of her neglect, she is not giving enough love or attention towards her daughters, especially towards Minnie. Along with this, Minnie does not exactly have a real parent in her life. Her biological father is out of the picture and her stepfather, Pascal, had just broken up with Charlotte. Pascal may have served as a surrogate father figure to Minnie and Gretel, but he is more patronizing than nurturing. He could be described as pedantic and his concern for Minnie and Gretel's education was because it was a reflection on him and his intellectual abilities. At first despite this, I thought he could be the only serious adult Minnie could trust and who could take care of her, especially when she considers moving to New York and living with Pascal to start over. However, Pascal turns out to be no better than Charlotte or Monroe. When Minnie finds out that Pascal slept with one of her friends while she was visiting New York, she is shocked and even more so later when Charlotte tells her that Pascal used to sleep with his students when they were living in Philadelphia. It further shows the lack of not only someone who could care about her, but someone she could also trust.
The beginning of the book starts with Minnie embarking on her sexual relationship with Monroe. She initiates the relationship after admitting that she wanted him to sleep with her. It may have began as something of a curiosity or requited attraction, but as it progresses she does begin to have feelings for him. I would not say she begins falling in love with him, although it had crossed her mind. He is unreliable and there are times when she hates him or is annoyed by him and his relationship with her mother. Instead, she wants him to love her. There is a moment in the book when they take acid together and during a bad trip Monroe tells Minnie that he loves her, but instead of feeling any sense of joy or reciprocation, she feels nothing. I think it is at that point she realizes that she does not actually love Monroe or that his proclamation is empty because he is under the influence. Either way, what she was hoping to find was not going to come from Monroe.
When Charlotte finds out about the relationship, she urges Monroe to marry Minnie which causes her to run away from home in disgust. She begins spending time with a wild promiscuous girl named Tabatha, whom she meets early on and is enchanted by despite her friends' warning about her. For Minnie, Tabatha exudes this kind of thrill and excitement that could be compared to how she feels when she has sex and is attracted to it. She begins to explore a relationship with her, but it ultimately proves to be terrifying and dangerous. Tabatha takes advantage of Minnie, hurting her both physically and emotionally much worse than Monroe, Pascal, or Charlotte. Distraught, she secludes herself in a phone booth calling a hotline and telling the operator that she wants to die because nobody loves her. The operator on the other end berates her and expresses no sympathy, which got me agitated. After everything, Minnie finds herself completely alone with no one to trust and no one who cares about her.
When the epilogue picks up a month later, Minnie is now sober and ready to start anew. She realizes that even though there may not be someone who loves her, what is important is that she loves herself and is proud of how far she has gotten after recovering. While selling some of her drawings at the beach she runs into Monroe, whom her mother still sees occasionally. She gives him one of her drawings for free and when they shake hands like old friends she thinks of what Pascal taught her to think whenever she gives a strong handshake: "I'm better than you."
When I finally saw the film adaptation directed by Marielle Heller, I thought it was great. It stayed true to the novel and its characters, bringing to life Minnie's diary entries and her thoughts and experiences. I liked how Heller changed Minnie's diary from a binder to a recorder. Hearing Minnie talk into a recorder about her experiences made them sound real and you get to know how Minnie felt rather than what you can interpret from reading a diary. Bel Powley was perfect as Minnie and was the breakout star of the film. She embodied the character and brought her to life.
What I liked about The Diary of a Teenage Girl was how honest and raw it was. Along with Minnie exploring her sexuality, she is still just a teenage girl trying to understand who she is, what she wants, and the world she lives in just like any other teenage girl.
Missing Reels by Farran Smith Nehme
When I first came across this book I had read a review of it in Entertainment Weekly. The plot immediately drew me in as it combined two things I like - movies and mystery.
Set in 1980's New York, silent movie fan and Jean Harlow-obsessed Ceinwen Reilly goes on a search to find the remaining missing reels of a film adaptation of The Mysteries of Udolpho that was never shown and that may have starred her elderly neighbor, Miriam. Along with her search, she meets a handsome British math professor named Matthew, whose fellow colleagues are just as invested in films as Ceinwen is and who help her track down the lost film.
To be honest, when I finished reading Missing Reels I had mixed feelings about it and some of it had to do with how I initially thought the novel would be. There was also something dark about how I imagined 1987 New York. Then as a few days passed and the story began to sink in, I found myself reevaluating my review and generally liking the novel. The story is good and despite some of its flaws, there is also something fun about it.
At first I thought Ceinwen was this tough spunky girl who loved classic movies and silent films. Later on I realized that her personality and style was a reflection of the film noir stars she loved watching. From her vintage clothes and platinum blonde hair to her smoking and hard-hitting personality, she was trying to emulate those film sirens she looked up to. Instead of it coming off as someone trying too hard to be this ideal character, she actually was the person she aspired to be. Come to think of it, Ceinwen reminds me now of Rosalind Russell's character from His Girl Friday. I know it's not a film noir, but the attitude of how both the actress and the character carry themselves reflect Ceinwen.
Matthew Hill, Ceinwen's love interest, was someone I had mixed feelings about. I think he was meant to be a Cary Grant-esque type of character that would coincide with Ceinwen's Rosalind Russell personality, but at times I found myself disliking him rather than loving him. He would come off as a snob sometimes and patronizing just because he was older than Ceinwen. I guess that is why when they argued she would put up a front. He also has a girlfriend who he becomes engaged with while still seeing Ceinwen. Yet, I can understand that there is something attractive about him and his chemistry with Ceinwen that made me want to like him despite my criticisms and the obvious red flags. He is a complicated character to say the least.
Miriam was a character I would have loved to have gotten to know more just as much as we got to know Ceinwen. She is a private elderly woman who does not want people prying into her business, but she also seems fascinating based on what she shares about her former life. She had a short-lived career as an actress and had an affair with an emotionally complicated director. So, it is understandable why Ceinwen would be fascinated with her and want to find her lost film. The other minor characters, such as Matthew's film enthusiast colleagues and Ceinwen's two roommates, were great and seeing them interact with Ceinwen was fun to read. Most of the fictional elements, such as The Brody Institute and Civitas film studio sounded so real that I forgot that they never existed.
After thinking it through, I liked Missing Reels for the most part primarily for its idea and the journey it takes us on examining film history. It is great debut novel from Farran Smith Nehme. Cinephiles will appreciate this book and those who are not too knowledgeable with film and its history will still enjoy reading it.
Brooklyn by Colm Toibin
Out of the all moves I was looking forward to seeing this year, I was very interested in the film adaptation of Colm Toibin's novel, Brooklyn. Before it had been released however, I thought nothing of it whenever I came across the book a few times in passing at bookstores. It was upon seeing the trailer that I became intrigued, especially after learning that the screenplay was written by Nick Hornby. Nick Hornby is the acclaimed author of About a Boy, High Fidelity, Fever Pitch, and most recently Funny Girl, which I really loved. He is also an Academy Award Nominee for Best Adapted Screenplay for An Education, which is another great movie. So, I was very eager to see Brooklyn now.
Set in 1980's New York, silent movie fan and Jean Harlow-obsessed Ceinwen Reilly goes on a search to find the remaining missing reels of a film adaptation of The Mysteries of Udolpho that was never shown and that may have starred her elderly neighbor, Miriam. Along with her search, she meets a handsome British math professor named Matthew, whose fellow colleagues are just as invested in films as Ceinwen is and who help her track down the lost film.
To be honest, when I finished reading Missing Reels I had mixed feelings about it and some of it had to do with how I initially thought the novel would be. There was also something dark about how I imagined 1987 New York. Then as a few days passed and the story began to sink in, I found myself reevaluating my review and generally liking the novel. The story is good and despite some of its flaws, there is also something fun about it.
At first I thought Ceinwen was this tough spunky girl who loved classic movies and silent films. Later on I realized that her personality and style was a reflection of the film noir stars she loved watching. From her vintage clothes and platinum blonde hair to her smoking and hard-hitting personality, she was trying to emulate those film sirens she looked up to. Instead of it coming off as someone trying too hard to be this ideal character, she actually was the person she aspired to be. Come to think of it, Ceinwen reminds me now of Rosalind Russell's character from His Girl Friday. I know it's not a film noir, but the attitude of how both the actress and the character carry themselves reflect Ceinwen.
Matthew Hill, Ceinwen's love interest, was someone I had mixed feelings about. I think he was meant to be a Cary Grant-esque type of character that would coincide with Ceinwen's Rosalind Russell personality, but at times I found myself disliking him rather than loving him. He would come off as a snob sometimes and patronizing just because he was older than Ceinwen. I guess that is why when they argued she would put up a front. He also has a girlfriend who he becomes engaged with while still seeing Ceinwen. Yet, I can understand that there is something attractive about him and his chemistry with Ceinwen that made me want to like him despite my criticisms and the obvious red flags. He is a complicated character to say the least.
Miriam was a character I would have loved to have gotten to know more just as much as we got to know Ceinwen. She is a private elderly woman who does not want people prying into her business, but she also seems fascinating based on what she shares about her former life. She had a short-lived career as an actress and had an affair with an emotionally complicated director. So, it is understandable why Ceinwen would be fascinated with her and want to find her lost film. The other minor characters, such as Matthew's film enthusiast colleagues and Ceinwen's two roommates, were great and seeing them interact with Ceinwen was fun to read. Most of the fictional elements, such as The Brody Institute and Civitas film studio sounded so real that I forgot that they never existed.
After thinking it through, I liked Missing Reels for the most part primarily for its idea and the journey it takes us on examining film history. It is great debut novel from Farran Smith Nehme. Cinephiles will appreciate this book and those who are not too knowledgeable with film and its history will still enjoy reading it.
Brooklyn by Colm Toibin
Out of the all moves I was looking forward to seeing this year, I was very interested in the film adaptation of Colm Toibin's novel, Brooklyn. Before it had been released however, I thought nothing of it whenever I came across the book a few times in passing at bookstores. It was upon seeing the trailer that I became intrigued, especially after learning that the screenplay was written by Nick Hornby. Nick Hornby is the acclaimed author of About a Boy, High Fidelity, Fever Pitch, and most recently Funny Girl, which I really loved. He is also an Academy Award Nominee for Best Adapted Screenplay for An Education, which is another great movie. So, I was very eager to see Brooklyn now.
Brooklyn is about a young woman named Eilis Lacey, who lives a quiet and simple life in her small town in Ireland in the 1950's with her widowed mother and her older sister Rose. After Rose arranges for Eilis to live in America with the help of a priest from Brooklyn named Father Flood, Eilis leaves Ireland for the first time to begin a new life. She initially struggles with homesickness as she tries to adjust to her new setting. With Father Flood's help, she is able to get a job at a department store and study accounting at Brooklyn College. Along the way she also falls in love with a young Italian man named Tony. Just as she begins to settle into her new home, she is called back to Ireland after a tragic event. When she returns she finds new opportunities that were not available to her before and possibly a new love with a respectable young Irish man named Jim Farrell. Ellis must then decide between staying in the home she has always known in Ireland or returning to her new life that she has created in Brooklyn.
I usually tend to separate a book from its film adaptation. After I read Gone Girl, I liked both the novel and the movie, as each were great for their own qualities. With Brooklyn, I ended up liking the movie more than the novel and a large part of that was because of Nick Hornby's screenplay.
I feel bad for admitting this but I did not like the book as much as I thought I would. It was boring. The writing was too straight forward for me and it lacked the emotional depth and beauty that the film had. You can say my opinion was due to the fact that I had seen the movie before I read the book, but I had done this once before when I watched One Day first before reading the novel.
The first part of the book introduces us to Eilis Lacey, matching what is depicted in the film but more thoroughly explained in the novel. We learn more about her struggles with finding a job and her life in Ireland, which is mundane compared to Rose who is beautiful and has a stable career as an accountant. Ellis already meets Jim Farrell, but their first interaction is awkward and goes nowhere. She is nervous if not anxious about leaving her home despite its lack of opportunities. When she arrives in Brooklyn, her homesickness and loneliness is apparent and I found myself rooting for her hoping that something will help her ease the transition. That was when I began to anticipate Tony's arrival into the story.
What was great about Tony in the film version was that he was charmingly portrayed by Emory Cohen. Cohen gave Tony this sweet innocence of a boy who has a crush on a girl, while also still being this young Brooklyn native. Ellis is quite reserved but when she is with Tony her personality lights up and she slowly begins to fall in love with him. I did not find this in the novel, which was disappointing. When Eilis meets Tony she's curious but hesitant to let him in. I felt that Tony was too pushy and was more in love with Eilis than she was with him. Although in the film Tony admits his love to Eilis before she does, you do get a sense that she grows to love him back. In the book however, I felt that Eilis was begrudgingly with Tony because she was too timid or nice to turn him down. When she returns to Ireland and starts a budding new friendship with Jim, I was actually hoping that she would choose him over Tony despite already having married him before she left. Jim courts Eilis delicately because she is so reserved, as he gets to know her and lets her open up to him before he admits how he feels about her. Although Eilis is already married to Tony and the novel teases her conflict choosing between the two men, I thought that she clearly liked Jim more and regretted marrying Tony. Even later when her former employer Miss Kelly confronts her about secret elopement, she does not stand up for herself or her decision like she does in the movie. Instead she leaves, sending a letter to Jim about her returning to Brooklyn. I did not get the sense that she realizes that she has begun her own life in Brooklyn compared to what was depicted elegantly in the film. Instead, I thought she was just running away from Ireland because Miss Kelly knew about her secret.
I liked how in the film you see Eilis grow and develop, as she falls in love with Tony, creates her new life in Brooklyn, and realizes how much bigger her world is now than the small town she left behind. When she returns to Ireland, she is merely under her sister's shadow as she takes over her accounting job and takes care of their mother. All together it justifies why she chooses to return to America. In the novel, I did not get that same idea. I felt that she was just going through the motions of her new experiences and questioning herself about everything. In the end when she decides to go back to Brooklyn, it felt like she was only going back because she was married to a man she was not completely in love with; she has to go back rather than choosing to. I also thought the novel ended in an incomplete cliffhanger, where you do not really know how she feels about her meeting with Miss Kelly, her admission to her mother about Tony, or how she and Tony will be when she returns.
The movie heightened the story, the characters, and the charm that the book had the potential to be but lacked. Nick Hornby's screenplay was able to beautifully depict the novel's setting and its characters while also adding depth to the story. It is also interesting to note that Nick Hornby's credit is shown in the trailer, emphasizing to the audience his credibility. Between the novel and the film, I have to choose the film.
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
This was the book everyone dubbed as "the new Gone Girl," but in my opinion I thought it holds up on its own as a suspenseful new thriller mystery. Almost every article I read talked about this book to the point where I saw people carrying it and reading it on the subway. I finally decided to read it when I managed to borrow a copy from the library after a long wait. It was probably one of the first few books I read in one day.
Rachel Watson is an alcoholic trying to cope with her divorce from her husband Tom, who left her to marry his mistress Anna, whom he now has a child with. Although Rachel has already lost her job due to her drinking, she still commutes on the same train she takes to work. During these rides, the train would stop where Rachel could see her former home with Tom that is now occupied by a new couple. She begins to obsessively imagine who this couple is and their perfect life. One day, she is shocked when sees that the woman is having an affair. Meanwhile, Rachel still remains in contact with Tom, who despite his pleas for her to stay away still teases her with the hope that they could still get back together. After a heavy night of drinking, Rachel wakes up to find herself bloody and bruised without a memory of what happened. She later soon learns that the woman she had been spying on from the train is also now missing, prompting her to question if she was involved.
I absolutely loved reading The Girl on the Train. It kept me on edge and had me analyzing everything before I reached the end. When critics called this "the new Gone Girl," I assumed that it was because it would have a similar twist. The novel does have a twist but nothing as psychotic as Gone Girl's Amy Dunne - but then again... What was great about the story was that you were trying to solve the mystery along with Rachel, who is unreliable as a narrator because for all you know she may have been involved and she does not even know it. However, she is also the only character you can trust as everyone else begins to become a potential suspect. You can compare Rachel to Gone Girl's Nick Dunne, but compared to Nick you actually feel sorry for Rachel and what she has been through, which is why you are hoping she did not do it. For a debut novel, I thought it was very well-written and a greedy read from start to finish. It was the best book to end my Twelve Books in One Year challenge.
A film adaptation is currently in production starring Emily Blunt as Rachel Watson (although I imagined Hayley Atwell as Rachel, Emily Blunt is not a bad choice). Although the film version takes place in New York as opposed to the novel's setting in London, I am still curious to see how it will turn out. When I saw the trailer I thought it amped up the suspense of the novel, which is definitely a good sign.
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