Can someone who has read the book tell me how it is compared to the movie (usually the books are always better). I read a review on amazon.com that said the actual police story is not that prominent in the book.
There's nothing an agnostic can't do, if he's not sure whether he believes in anything or not.
The book could more aptly have been titled "A Few Crazy Days in the Life of an Insomniac." The movie is extremely different and, truthfully, more interesting. I didn't really feel like much happened in the book, and was disappointed when I finished it. But that's just my opinion.
Cheers!
That is a fairly apt title! The book and the movie are, quite frankly unrecognizable from one another. I first saw the film with the book's author Madison Smartt Bell in attendance, he gave an introduction to the film, which he had not fully seen at that point. After it was through he said that if you are going to read the book you would get an entirly different experience. Bell said he liked the movie for what it was, a spooky horror film and granted that any adaptation eventually becomes an autonomous creation. The movie really shouldn't be credited as 'Based on', it should be 'suggested by'.
The book is more metaphysical drama, you literally have to find meaning to it yourself. The police investigation/murder element doesn't really show up until about 2/3 through the book, and when it does it possibly takes up twenty five or thirty pages at most. The reson why the lead character has gone to England is also entirly different (he is trying to escape a heroin addiction). There are no blood transfusions, no soul transferences, or anything like that. The book does not have any overt horror/thriller elements. It's the type of book that you will either hate or will finish reading with a reflective 'that's interesting' and not totally form an opinion of. The book is well written and absorbing, but it's a character study and not a story of action. retrogrrl above is right, there is not much pyhsical action, it's mostly about one character's internal conflicts. Be prepared for that if you embark on the book.
The movie probably owes more to a book on occultism by Arthur Edward Waite that I think is titled simply 'Satanism in France' (or Paris, I can't remember). That book was mostly fiction posing as nonfiction, and it contains many of the elements in the film.
I'm a little late to this post, so I doubt that you'll ever read it, but for what its worth, there you go.
Thank you "cc" for explaining so well about the book. I was also wondering about it after watching the movie. I thought the movie had a great story but the plot was not clear enough and I had to read this board to figure a bunch of stuff out that I couldn't understand. I thought maybe the book would explain a bunch of those things more accurately, but from your post, this seems to not be so. Like when I watched the movie Dune. I thought it seemed like a trailer, the plot was very gapping. It instigated me to read the books and I loved them. The movie Dune was visually stimulating but far removed from the book/s and all it's great details. I thought maybe this was the same, but after reading your post, I see it's not. In the movie Interview with a Vampire, I had read it before seeing the movie. I thought the movie was a reader's digest version of the book, didn't really do it justice, but at least it kept to the details pretty well. The Shining is the only movie I have ever seen that is as good as the book, and the book was f--king great!
Thanks CC for being very informative... you're one in a million!
~Why be normal?~