Coraline: Book vs Movie

Books are better, right? That's what I always hear, but I've often thought it was a snobbery - ie, "I'm more intelligent, therefore I can enjoy the depth of a book... bla bla bla." But sometimes a movie comes along that expands and develops a story. With Coraline being quite a short book, I wondered if this would be the case.

I read the book earlier this week, when realised I'd never read Neil Gaiman (other than a Sandman comic in the 90s) and keep hearing good things. And then I watched the movie last night.

First of all, I love stop motion animation. The movie of Coraline looks fantastic. The models and animations are fantastic, with stunning sets and some brilliant visual jokes (esp Miss Spink and Miss Forcible's musical number). However, there are other differences which really nail the difference between the format of a novel versus a movie. In particular, Wybourne.

Wybourne Lovat is a character that doesn't appear in the novel. That's because he isn't needed. A lot of Coraline's questions and thoughts are internal, and without a voice over, it's difficult to get these out in a movie - so Wybourne comes in. He has some great moments, and the stitched-on smile is grotequesly wonderful. But with Wybourne included - especially the ending - it undermines the heart of the book. Coraline is a book about a girl facing her greatest fear. This comes out in the book in a brilliant vignette where her father saves her from a swarm of wasps by telling Coraline to run while he stands still to attract the wasps and take their stings. This, he explains was not bravery - it was a situation where he had no option. But later, when he had to return to the same spot to retrieve his glasses, when he knew the wasps were waiting and understood the danger he was walking into - that was bravery. This scene is important because Coraline realises the danger of going back into the other house in order to rescue her parents. So the stakes are so much higher in the book.

And then there's the ending. The book is about a brave little girl who saves her parents and uses wit and cunning to stop the baddy. She is the hero, it's her journey, so she solves the puzzles. But in the movie, when she doesn't know what to do next, Wybourne bursts onto the screen to take over. Coraline makes the final move (much like the book) but because the movie has chosen action over strategy, this move comes across as an impulsive reaction. So it's good for the audience, who want to see the hero make a last minute escape, but rubbish for the character who merely survived, while in the book, she outwitted, overcome and beat that baddie by her own volition.

And that's why the book is better. That's wot I reckon.

Finding a place to write

You know when they say music can take you places. This post is kind of like that.

I got this album when I was eleven years old. I liked horror stories, saw this on a friend's t-shirt and simply had to have it. I listened to it over and over, unable to get over this incredible mix of visual story telling and incredible rock music. As I got into my teens I moved onto other stuff and this old album slipped away.

And then a few years ago, something popped into my head, so I went out and bought it again (my old vinyl albums went in the skip years ago). I got a massive bolt of nostalgia and started listening to it more and more.

When I take my son diving, the Aquatic Centre can be really noisy. I started putting this album on to drown out the noise around me. At first, it did the same old thing that most music does - it takes you away to a place. In my case, that's usually being on stage with a guitar (because in day dreams I can actually play one) and seeing a sea of fans jump about. But after a while, the music did the job it was meant to do - it cut out everything else allowing me to slip into my own world and write.

So now, when I go off to write, I put the same album on. It's become a trance thing - as soon as I hear those first few chords, I can go straight into writing mode. And then, a half hour or so later, I realise I haven't heard a single note.

Good music is like that. It's such an intrinsic part of you that it allows your mind to wander, to dream and visit other places.

Having said that, at night before I go to sleep, I stick my iPod on and listen to the same album and I'm right back on stage.

Review: The Girl of Ink and Stars by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

Isabella knows that a world exists beyond the confines of her island, and she has maps to prove that. But since the new Governor arrived, no one is allowed to leave and half of the island is strictly out of bounds.

But when a girl is murdered, and then the Governor's daughter goes missing, Isabella adopts a disguise in order to join the search party. What she discovers makes her realise the mythical stories her father told her as a child have living roots that run deep into the heart of the island.

The Girl of Ink and Stars is an enchanting piece of storytelling with a magical mixture of visual wonder and spellbinding action. Wonderful.

Review: The Three by Sarah Lotz

Loved this book.

Generally speaking, it's not YA, but I've added the YA tag - more on that later.

For the most part, The Three is a book within a book, and then follows the story of the author to see the long term effects of having had that book published.

I'm going to keep this short to avoid spoilers, but the basic plot is that four planes crash on the same day. In three of the planes, there is a single survivor and each one is a child. Perfect ingredients for conspiracy theories.

What follows is a collection of interviews and transcribed chats, webchats and tweets. Sounds complicated, but the stories grab you tight and pull you in. Very, very readable. But what really takes it to the next level is that each voice is so individual - so take note if you're interested in writing, because this book is quite simply a master-class in controlling your writing style to fit different characters.

I particularly loved Chiyoko and Ryu's story. (This is the reason for the YA tag). Thanks to this, I have a new favourite emoticon: Orz - meant to look like a figure kneeling down and banging his head on the floor.

The book has had some negative reviews for the ending, but for me, it's the ending that made the book what it is. If you're a fan of the TV series LOST, you might remember how the ending caused a big stir, and a lot of people spitting their dummies out. Same thing here I suppose. Some people like their threads all nice and neat and tied up; others enjoy something a bit more unsettling, something that keeps your brain ticking after you close the book and creeps into your dreams. That's me. Right there.

Great book.

Free ebooks

In gearing up for the launch of The Mayfly, I'm giving away Clash and The Boy Who Buried Dead Things for free.

The first chance is this weekend. Starting on Friday, 20th May until Saturday 21st both books are FREE on Amazon. Share and enjoy.

Here are the links:

Clash

The Boy Who Buried Dead Things

Review: The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge

This book won the Costa award, which makes sense: I felt like I needed coffee to get me through it!

Having said that, there is a lot that I enjoyed about The Lie Tree. Without giving spoilers, the plot has a wonderful touch of misdirection. I love it when magician hides their secrets in plain sight. Some of the imagery is incredible with beautifully written figurative prose. So I enjoyed the writing too - just not the story. 

The plot drags itself into life as Faith, the daughter of a "natural scientist" does little more than observe the actions of adults - after all, she's just a girl in a world where only men have sufficient brain capacity to understand science so there's not a great deal for her to do other than sneak a look at this, listen and feel sorry for herself.

She takes a more active role in the second half and pulls off some really cool scenes. The boat, the cave... and I especially liked the bag of rats. But it just wasn’t enough. She had no presence, no voice, and I found myself constantly checking how much longer I had in each chapter. 

As for the ending... With such strong, gothic undertones I was hoping for something more, something dark and as haunting and original as the idea of the tree itself. I felt a bit let down. There's nothing bad here, just nothing that made me really love it.

The Boy - erm...

When I first saw the trailer for The Boy, I thought it was a joke. It looked like a sketch by Mitchell and Webb or Harry Hill. The doll looks far too over the top, like it's trying much too hard to be creepy.

The film kicks off with Greta (Lauren Cohan) taking a job as a nanny in a big, scary house with a couple that are clearly too old to need a nanny. And so we meet Brahms, the doll that has replaced their dead child. And right there, I got why so many critics hated it. The tentatively dark atmosphere, the overly frightened parents hiding a terrible secret and a scary oil painting stuck on a wall of endless wood panelling and a possessed toy - all the ingredients of a classic, old-school horror to such a silly degree that the movie is smothered in cliché. Hence the reason it comes across as a parody, a joke.

But those things are only clichés because we watched so many movies using the same tools - because we liked them. We might look back on them now with a shake of the head, roll of the eyes and a shared smile, but there's a certain amount of endearing, slightly embarrassed nostalgia - a bit like remembering hideous fashions, or music you took so seriously.

Getting past all of that, the movie drew me in. In fact, it got to a point where I thought it had a new take, that it was playing on the psychological aspect of Greta, like the old couple, having to deal with the loss a child, and the boy really was just a doll; the ghosts were in her own head and this was really going somewhere...

...and then it all went tits up and resorted to type. It went from seventies' creepy to eighties' Wes Craven land. And I still enjoyed it (a bit), because I loved those movies too, but for a while there, I honestly thought it was going to take the old school style and show us something new.

Shame really. Could have been brilliant.