N S Ford

Tag: S J Watson

  • Film of the book: ‘Before I Go To Sleep’ (2014)

    Based on S J Watson’s very popular thriller, this film has the same concept but many changes were made. Sadly this does highlight some plot holes or lack of details in the story that the film just doesn’t have time to explain. I can’t discuss most of the differences without spoiling it, however.

    The story is about Christine Lucas, 40 years old (slightly younger than her book counterpart) who suffers from amnesia after a traumatic event. Every day she wakes up with no memory of who anyone is or what happened to her. A doctor phones her every day and has asked her to keep a journal so that she can explain things to herself – in the book she writes the journal, while in the film she records videos on a camera. As she pieces more of her life together, she suspects that something sinister is going on.

    I think this is an adequate adaptation. It’s quite short, which keeps the momentum going, but it did seem rushed, while the book certainly wasn’t. None of the characters or settings resembled what was in my head, although I did think Nicole Kidman was excellent at portraying Christine’s struggles with amnesia. The book is distinctly British, but the film is generic-looking, lacking a sense of place and where everyone happens to have southern British accents. Maybe it helps sell the film to the US market. The ending was not as dramatic as that of the book and so I felt it was an anti-climax.

    I recommend that you read the book first. If you like it, check out the film, but prepare for possible disappointment. The actors are very good but the rest of it is rather a let-down. This confirms my theory that decent psychological thriller books don’t tend to translate into equally good films.

    Low-resolution film poster sourced from Wikipedia.

  • Review of ‘Before I Go To Sleep’ by S J Watson

    I read this book 10 years ago. I believe that it was among the first of our current trend for domestic psychological thrillers and that it has been influential. I wanted to watch the film adaptation, so I decided to re-read the book. I’d remembered the concept and the massive twist – also, oddly, that coffee was mentioned a lot – but not the finer points of the story.

    Narrated by Christine Lucas, the novel has a focus on memories and their role in shaping our lives. Christine wakes up every day having lost her memory of the past twenty years. She relies on her husband to reassure and explain to her what’s going on. Then she gets a phone call from a doctor she’s apparently been seeing about her amnesia and starts to question what really happened to her. Moreover, she can’t trust anyone, least of all herself. How can she solve her mysteries when she’s going to forget everything by the next day?

    It’s a very clever, suspenseful novel where you only know as much as Christine. It really highlights how challenging amnesia is for sufferers and their families. While some details of the plot are not very believable, the author does a great job of keeping you reading, with simple evocative prose and slowly revealed information. The only elements which I wasn’t so keen on were the occasional repetitions in the writing style (someone ‘looked disappointed’ every chapter, it seemed) and the lack of an extra twist in the ending, as I just felt a bit dissatisfied with how nicely things were tied up.

    First published in 2011.

    I’ve since enjoyed the author’s second novel Second Life and abandoned their third one, Final Cut.

  • Books I’ve abandoned this year

    I’ve DNFed a record number of books this year, giving up on them after a few chapters. Mostly they were e-books borrowed from the library. I’ve become more ruthless at abandoning books that I’m not enjoying, because why spend precious reading time on them? There are so many books and not enough time to read even a tiny fraction of those I’m interested in. Here are some recent DNFs:

    The Love Square by Laura Jane Williams. I liked Our Stop but unfortunately her next book didn’t draw me in. Maybe I wasn’t in the mood for a comedy romance.

    Who Killed John Lennon? by Lesley-Ann Jones. I was very disappointed in this one, as her biography of Freddie Mercury was so good, but the writing style was so wordy and unreadable.

    The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix. I thought this started off well but it got a little too gross for me and I wasn’t keen on the characters.

    Final Cut by S J Watson. The latest novel from the author of Before I Go To Sleep and Second Life was an advance copy from NetGalley. I found the writing disappointing and not gripping at all.

    The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern. I liked The Night Circus (although I found it too long). Sadly I couldn’t get into her next book, which I found hard going.

    Here is the Beehive by Sarah Crossan. I so wanted to like this book but I found the strong language uncomfortable and couldn’t get into the verse format.

    Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. The only Murakami novels I’ve really liked so far are Norwegian Wood and Killing Commendatore. His style can be frustratingly dull sometimes.

    The Guest List by Lucy Foley. The concept for this one sounded like such a page-turner but I found that it didn’t interest me, once I was reading. I suppose the wedding theme put me off.

    The Babysitter by Phoebe Morgan. Having been impressed by The Girl Next Door, I mistakenly thought this one would be as gripping. I think I’m going off domestic thrillers too.

    If you’ve read any of these, I hope you liked them more than I did. Particularly in these troubled times, when reading is an important escape, I want to be gripped and engaged by what I read.