Everyone has a different idea of what makes a great book adaptation. Some want it to match the picture they have in their head of the characters and the scenery, while others may want it to broaden and expand the world where the book takes place. Most readers can agree, however, that being faithful to the source material is a top priority. With that in mind, and without any spoilers, below are some great book adaptations currently streaming on Netflix!
BRAIN ON FIRE
Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan
Maybe using a non-fiction book as the source material for a movie is “cheating” when it comes to remaining faithful. Susannah Cahalan’s 2012 autobiography was adapted into a Netflix original movie starring Chloe Grace Moretz, with Cahalan serving as an executive producer. The movie balances the depiction of what the main character experienced with what her friends and family were observing from the outside. Both the book and the movie successfully depict the frustration, confusion, and fear that Cahalan and her family were faced with.
HOLD THE DARK
Hold The Dark by William Giraldi
Alexander Skarsgard stars in this movie, and on frequent late night talk show appearances to promote the movie, he talked at length about the book instead. Having never heard a celebrity do this before, I knew it was a book I needed to read. This is a wilderness tale, a revenge story, and something a little supernatural all rolled into one. The film closely follows Giraldi’s description of one man’s dark-hearted search for revenge and another man’s journey to face his own inner demons. The film very closely follows the book, but helps to explain the somewhat-confusing ending.
MUDBOUND
Mudbound by Hillary Jordan
A combination of a family story, a love story, and a look at race relations in the southern United States post-World War II, Hillary Jordan’s debut novel has been translated into several languages and won multiple awards. The book is told through the alternating points of view of several of the main characters, with each chapter indicating whose version of events is being described. But this device doesn’t work as well on screen. It is jarring at first, and it takes the viewer a few moments to catch on and understand what’s happening. Apart from using the multiple point of view device, everything else about this movie works! The story is alternately touching, beautiful, and painful.
WINTER’S BONE
Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell
Both the book and the film version of Daniel Woodrell’s Ozark-set mystery/drama feature a young woman faced with almost unimaginable circumstances. The film gained widespread acclaim, but the backwoods, methamphetamine-driven setting of both the book and the film may be difficult for a casual viewer to understand. The book provides some much-needed backstory and explanation for those who think “restaurant chef” rather than “meth manufacturer” when referring to a “cooker.” Both the book and the film follow the same events and equally convey the painful and difficult situations the main character has to face.
THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PAJAMAS
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne
Fictionalising a well-known historical event is a difficult tight-rope to walk. Boyne maintains a respectful tone for the victims of the Holocaust, even though he is telling the story from “the other side”, through the eyes of a child. The book is told entirely from the child’s point of view, while the movie uses the child as a main character, but we don’t see the story through his eyes. Other than this storytelling shift, the film is an extremely faithful adaptation to this tear-jerker of a book.
COLD IN JULY
Cold in July by Joe R. Lansdale
Joe Lansdale is a prolific writer of off-beat, Western-style, East Texas characters, and Cold in July is certainly no exception. With Lansdale, you always walk out of a different story than you thought you were walking in to. This book and movie are about as different as they can be, while still considering this a “faithful” adaptation. In each, the story starts in the same place, and ends in roughly the same place, but along the way the reader and the viewer will hit different emotional beats. Granted, a lot of that comes from the fact that we can see an image and immediately know things that, in a book, would have taken half of a chapter to convey.
THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS
The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris
This movie came out while I was in high school, and I find it impossible to believe there are generations of people who are not frightened to the core at the thought of fava beans and chianti. (If you don’t understand that reference, ask your parents). In the grand lexicon of films, The Silence of the Lambs is near perfection. In fact, whenever discussions arise about whether a book or movie is better, and inevitably someone says that books are ALWAYS better, this can be your ace-in-the- hole. The exception that proves the rule, if you will. There is an entire subplot in the book that takes away from the action every time the author returns to it, and it gets frustrating. It was left out of the movie entirely, and Ted Tally won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay because of it. (OK, I’ll admit that was not the only reason why.)
Of course, not everybody likes to both read the book and watch the adaptation. A lot of people only want to do one or the other. It can, however, be a lot of fun to see how closely the images in your mind while you read match the images on screen. Conversely, if you choose to watch the movie first, reading the book afterwards will almost always give you more information, more in-depth characters, or a bigger, fuller view of the world the author built.
