Movie Recommendations

I am recommending two movie adaptations of novels that are currently streaming. The first is The Bookshop, adapted from Penelope Fitzgerald’s Booker Prize shortlisted novel written in 1978. It is a wonderful story, set in a small coastal East Anglian town in the late 1950’s, of a World War Two widow’s struggle against adversity to keep her bookshop going. The second movie is The White Tiger, a novel by the Indian author Aravind Adiga, which did win the Booker Prize in 2008. It is an enthralling tale, set in the India of the first decade of the 21^st century. It depicts the adventures of a low-caste young man who rises from abject poverty to become a successful entrepreneur. While there is much humor in the film, there is also a disturbing dark side to it. The Bookshop can be found on Amazon Prime Video. The White Tiger is on Netflix.               

Mrs Eckdorf In O’Neill’s Hotel

It was such a pleasure reading once again William Trevor’s 1969 novel, Mrs Eckdorf in O’Neill’s Hotel. Set in Dublin, it chronicles the misadventures of Ivy Eckdorf, a London-born photographer who has traveled the world, who takes on the task of photographing the comings and goings at O’Neill’s, a place that had essentially become a house of ill repute. This book was the first of five novels by Trevor to be nominated for a Booker Prize. Four reached the shortlist. But alas,Trevor never won the Prize.

What I especially love of Trevor, in both his novels and short stories, is his descriptions of people and places. He writes of Mrs Eckdorf: “She had eyes of so pale a shade of brown that they were almost yellow, and two reddened lips that were generously full and now were parted in a smile. There was a gap between her teeth, precisely in the centre of this mouth, a slight gap that an ice-cream wafer might just have passed through.”

And he writes of O’Neill’s Hotel: “In the pillared hall of the hotel, with its balding maroon carpet that extended up the stairs, eight chairs echoed a grandeur that once had been. They were tall, like thrones, their gilt so faded and worn that it looked in places like old yellow paint, their once-elegant velvet stained with droppings from glasses of alcohol.”           

The Elected Member

Unfortunately, the British novelist Bernice Rubens has fallen into literary obscurity of late.  She is now best known for being the first woman to win the Booker Prize in 1970 for her novel, The Elected Member. Ms. Rubens also wrote twenty other novels, two of which, I Sent a Letter to My Love and Madame Sousatzka were fairly successful, starring Simone Signoret in the former and Shirley MacLaine in the latter. Ms. Rubens was a screenwriter for both adaptations.

I just finishing rereading The Elected Member, which despite its title has nothing to do with British politics. Its epigraph, a quote from R. D. Laing reads: “If patients are disturbed, their families are very disturbing. The novel then tells the sad tale of the Zwecks, an Orthodox Jewish family in London, whose son Norman is a psychotic and who is eventually institutionalized.

Norman’s mother Sarah, an overbearing woman, decides that he is to be “the elected member” of the family. The father, Rabbi Zweck accedes to his wife’s wishes. Sarah pushes him to unheard of intellectual achievements in his childhood. By age nine, Norman speaks nine languages. He is expected to become a barrister, which he does. But of course the expectation of his parents is that he becomes the best of all barristers.

Norman though is more the victimizer than the victim. He ruins the lives of his sisters Bella and Esther with acts of extreme cruelty. Norman’s prolonged mental illness ultimately is a significant factor in Rabbi Zweck’s deteriorating health and subsequent death.

Although the book is extremely sad, I highly recommend it. It will be difficult to find in libraries and bookstores. Ms. Rubens writing is elegant and graceful. She creates so many poignant moments in the novel. It will be hard for you to hold back your tears.