{"id":75,"date":"2013-01-14T01:00:43","date_gmt":"2013-01-14T01:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/?p=75"},"modified":"2018-04-06T13:41:26","modified_gmt":"2018-04-06T17:41:26","slug":"the-novel-vanishes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/the-novel-vanishes\/","title":{"rendered":"The Novel Vanishes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Years ago my dark family novel The German Money<\/em><\/a> was optioned for film.\u00a0 After my initial excitement, I read successive drafts of the screenplay with a sense of loss.\u00a0 My novel was disappearing page by page.<\/p>\n

In the end, the production deal fell apart and I was relieved: If the screenplay had been made, it would not have been my book that I was watching.<\/p>\n

I thought of that reading the reviews of the new PBS film The Lady Vanishes<\/em>.\u00a0 Many compared it invidiously to the 1938 movie of the same name by Alfred Hitchcock based on The Wheel Spins<\/em> by Ethel Lina White.<\/p>\n

Though widely admired, his film completely subverted the book’s tone and undercut its raw emotional power.\u00a0 I find it painful to watch, almost amateurishly silly, one of Hitchcock’s weakest films.<\/p>\n

However, the novel haunts me.\u00a0 Iris Carr is a spoiled socialite, alone in the world though she’s surrounded by so-called friends and suitors.\u00a0 She seems shallow, but she’s aware that the life she’s living is empty and that she’s been far too lucky in life.\u00a0 All that changes when she gets terribly lost on her Balkan vacation and realizes how isolated she is, and how vulnerable.<\/p>\n

Those feelings intensify on her train ride across the Balkans to Trieste when her English seat mate disappears, Iris claims a conspiracy, and passengers call her everything from a mere nuisance to hysterical.<\/p>\n

The new movie is splendid and frightening, and very true to the novel. But I doubt the critics who disliked it bothered to read the novel or they wouldn’t be calling this new version a “remake” of Hitchcock’s film when it’s not.\u00a0 Watching The Lady Vanishes<\/em>, I wished the writer adapting The German Money<\/em> book had been even half as interested in capturing the essence of my book.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Years ago my dark family novel The German Money was optioned for film.\u00a0 After my initial excitement, I read successive drafts of the screenplay with a sense of loss.\u00a0 My novel was disappearing page by page. In the end, the production deal fell apart and I was relieved: If the screenplay had been made, it … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,23,22,3,20,2],"tags":[502],"class_list":["post-75","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-to-film","category-crime-novels","category-forgotten-classic-novels","category-publishing","category-tv-movies","category-writing","tag-books-to-film"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3277,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions\/3277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}