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March 24, 2008

COMING SOON: FUGITIVE PIECES

Somehow we managed to miss the news that Anne Michaels's glorious novel Fugitive Pieces has been made into a movie which will open on May 2.  The cast is superb - Stephen Dillane, Rade Serbedzija - and the trailer is very, very promising.  This one leaps to the top of our To See list.

If you don't know this luminous novel, get it yesterday.

Posted by TEV at 01:36 PM in Worthy Titles |

Comments

Wow. Really? I remember thinking this novel was really really awful when I read it. . .lots of figurative language that made me wince like: "I felt maggoty with insecurity." Will still be interested to see how it translates to the big screen. . .I bet it will make a great movie!

Posted by: Mark | March 24, 2008 at 01:49 PM

Obviously, there's no right and wrong in questions of taste but I thought the book magnificent, worthy of the many Ondaatje comparisons it garnered. Did you like The English Patient?

Posted by: TEV | March 24, 2008 at 01:53 PM

I did. . .but you're right to compare the two. I can easily see someone not liking the English Patient for the same reasons I didn't care for Fugitive Pieces.

Posted by: Mark | March 24, 2008 at 01:57 PM

I just finished (sort of) Fugitive Pieces after finding a reference to it in another book. The book ended for me when Jakob dies. I appreciate an author who wants to paint pictures with her words, as well as tell me a story.

Posted by: Evalee | March 24, 2008 at 03:51 PM

I just finished (sort of) Fugitive Pieces after finding a reference to it in another book. The book ended for me when Jakob dies. I appreciate an author who wants to paint pictures with her words, as well as tell me a story.

Posted by: Evalee | March 24, 2008 at 03:51 PM

I missed this when it played at the Toronto Film Festival (at any rate, I haven't read the book yet so that's probably a good thing). But the reviews were generally favourable.

Posted by: Nav | March 25, 2008 at 11:10 AM

Thanks for the heads-up on this. I loved the novel, and unabashedly call it my favorite contemporary fiction read of the last couple years. A big piece of what I loved, though, was the language: it's evident that Michaels' native language is poetry. Lifted from those magnificent words and images and adapted as film, I wonder how much I'll like it.

Still, you can bet I'll be there opening day.

Posted by: Anna Clark | March 25, 2008 at 12:36 PM

I would have said there was no way they could capture the sublime poetry of the novel, and its slightly unexpected tripartite structure. But seeing Atonement has restored my faith in cinema's ability to do justice to complex novels. I'm very excited to see this!

Posted by: Lee Ward | March 25, 2008 at 03:41 PM

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