Last month I was lucky enough to be given free tickets to see An Education, a lovely little film about a bright but disaffected 16-year-old girl who is seduced by a much older man in London in the early 1960s. When I fronted up for the screening I hadn't heard anything much about the movie except that the screenplay had been written by Nick Hornby (whose Polysyllabic Spree is a must-read for anyone interested in the process of reading) but I was utterly delighted by ever moment of it. Carey Mulligan as Jenny, the heroine, was a revelation; Peter Saarsgard was slimily attractive as her con-man boyfriend; the script was amusingly wry and finely crafted, and the clothing and set direction were superbly evocative of the years immediately before the '60s really started to swing.
Several weeks after seeing the movie I won a copy of the book of An Education (fate obviously really, really wanted me to be aware of this story) in a competition run by Penguin books. As I'd recently seen the film (and also it came with one of those "Now a major film" covers which I feel cheapen a book) I popped it on my things to read pile and forgot about it until this week when I was looking for something to read on the bus (key requirement: must be skinny enough to fit in my handbag).
I'm not sure now if I was consciously aware that the movie was based on a true story - I don't think so - but it turns out to be thinly fictionalised account of British journalist Lynne Barber's personal "coming of age". As such I expected the book to be a detailed account of the affair she found herself caught up in as a impressionable 16-year-old. In fact, the affair is dealt with briefly in chapter two and the bulk of the book is concerned with how that incident coloured the rest of her life, especially her relationships with men and her instinctive distrust of other people. I found it fascinating, not least because Lynne got her break in journalism at Penthouse magazine and briefly had a career as a "sexpert", writing instructional books on how to "improve your man in bed" and enjoy sex as a "single girl" in the '70s. The book is so much more than the movie and I am so pleased to have read it, when the temptation was to think "I already know that story. Why bother?"
In the past there have been occasions when I've seen a movie and been so thrilled by it that I've immediately rushed out and bought the book; others where I've seen the movie adaptation of a favourite novel and loved it just as much as the book. Most often though if you particularly love a book or movie, revisting the story in it's alternate format is disappointing - simple love stories become convulted, confusing and overly wordy in text; exquisitely written tales of yearning and loss become two-dimensional and farcical on screen. If you loved reading AS Byatt's Possession or Isabelle Allende's House of Spirits for example, don't bother seeing the movie versions...
In the case of An Education however, it's one of those rare cases where seeing the movie and reading the book is the ideal, as they both have so much to offer, on so many levels. If you're at a loose end this weekend, I would heartily recommend either or both.
Posts
3 comments: