'Don't Look Now and It Won't Hurt," by Richard Peck seems like a very different animal. Before anyone gets excited, I don't mean, "it's nothing like the book." I went to Amazon and read the first few pages of it and I wondered why Alison Anders even bothered to say it's based on that book? She may have wasted her money buying the rights, if she did. Seems strange.
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I just finished the book today amd yes, it's very similar. The story is told by Carole, the middle child. In the book there are three daughters, not two. Carole is the one always having to stay home and look after the youngest girl, Liz while Ellen, the oldest, goes out with friends. Ellen ends up getting pregnant after falling for who she thinks is "the man of her dreams". Ellen chooses to move to Chicago where she lives with a family that takes in pregnant women who don't have much hope or options. Just like in the movie, Carole and Ellen both long to get out of their boring hometown of Claypitts. The mother works at a greasy spoon diner just like in the movie. Ellen and the mom don't really get along. Carole forgot who or where her real father was located but ends up finding him and borrows money from him to buy a bus ticket to go see Ellen in Chicago. Carole meets a boy in Claypitts that works at a nearby gas station and develops a
quasi-romantic relationship with him.
There's many other similarities but I suggest anyone who liked the movie to read the book. It's only 150 pages or so.
btw: The title "Don't Look and It Won't Hurt" is explained at the end of the book. Ellen is uncertain if she wants to keep the baby or not. Carole tells her not to even so much as hold the baby after it's born or ask the gender, etc, because some mothers end up becoming attached, which might change her mind. "Just don't look and it won't hurt".
Someone bought the rights to the book and went looking for an affordable film maker to write the screenplay and direct the movie. They went to Alison Anders and made her an offer. She said "I write my own stuff, I'm not interested in adapting what someone else wrote." They asked her to just please read the book and think about it. Anders read the book and went back to them said, "OK, I loved the book. But if I write a screenplay and make a movie, it'll be different. I'd make it my own." The person who owned the rights said that was fine, and voila.
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