I love Carrie Fisher’s performance in the original Star Wars films, and in The Force Awakens; her eyes in particular slew me. It was her appearance on 30 Rock, however, and her sharp, wild and funny chat show appearances on Conan and The Graham Norton Show, as well as her comments on Hollywood, that made me want to read her books. I began with Postcards from the Edge (1987). It’s very good. It’s a fragmented sort of narrative that reflects its title; it begins with […]
they discern/what equilibrium they can recover
Well, it’s not like Cate Blanchett would choose to star in the adaptation of a bad Patricia Highsmith novel. I haven’t actually seen the film, but the trailers and still photographs project a certain sort of aesthetic that I found intriguing–rich colours, gleaming cocktails, and soft lights; crisp coral lipstick on a smile that says come hither and f**k off. This is the first novel of Highsmith’s that I’ve read; as Val McDermid points out on the cover of my edition, it has “the drive […]
Blasphemy alert: watch the movie(s) instead
I’ve seen the Swedish version (Let The Right One In) and the American version (Let Me In), so when I saw the book for sale for 75 cents at a used bookstore, I figured I’d give it a shot. The movies are both pretty slow and quiet (for a vampire movie), and the book is even slower. Lots more subplots, lots more characters, lots more badness. And not the vampire kind of badness – just the daily grind of life kind of badness. Oskar is […]