For those who've seen the film and read the Novel can you please let me know which one is better? I myself have seen the film and liked it, but I want to know if the Novel is just as good, better or worse.
"Sing once again with me our strange duet. / My power over you grows stronger yet. / And though you turn from me to glance behind, / The Phantom of the Opera is there, inside your mind." - Phantom (The Phantom of the Opera)
The book is definitely worth reading.
shareIn my opinion, Beloved is one of the best books ever written. The way in which the story is revealed, the language used and the subject matter combine to make it worth the Pulitzer Prize it won. I recommend reading the book three times. The first time you will be so enthralled by the language you will need to read it again for the story. Then read it a third time to understand the nuances of the novel. Remember this is not a story to pass on.
shareRead the novel.
shareThe film is very much worth watching.
"When there is no more room in the oven,
the Bread will walk the earth."
I'm reading the book at the moment and seen the film once when it first came out, much of which has drifted from my memory. I'm only about fifty pages into the novel, but I can tell it's an extraordinary work.
shareThe novel won the Nobel Prize...
The film won squat.
Actually, I think reading the book helps with understanding the film. All these detractors on this board who complain about not understanding the film because it isn't told in a linear fashion or because it involves infanticide (a big complaint of those who don't understand the true story that this is based on- do your homework!), wouldn't understand the book either, let alone try to read it.
The film tries to follow the novel, probably more so than it should- hence a lot of complaints about the lack of continuity of the narrative. Oh well. Tough.
If you had to choose one or the other, go for the book. But if you can, read the book and watch the movie. Books are always better than the movie, but this film should be commended for trying to follow the novel as closely as it did.
The novel "per se" didn't win the Nobel Prize; Morrison won it for a few of her novels, including Jazz and Song of Solomon.
Beloved (1987)
Beloved is loosely based on the life and legal case of Margaret Garner, an escaped slave that killed her child to prevent the child from being taken back into slavery. The book's central figure is Sethe, an escaped slave that murdered her two-year-old daughter, Beloved, to save her from a life of slavery. The novel follows in the tradition of slave narratives but also confronts the more painful and taboo aspects of slavery, such as sexual abuse and violence. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. When the novel failed to win the National Book Award, a number of writers protested the omission. The novel was released in 1998 as the film Beloved starring Oprah Winfrey. Morrison later used Margaret Garner's life story again in the opera of the same name.
Read the book, the movie is good but it does not do the book justice.
shareFilm-Snob, the Nobel Prize for Literature is awarded to a writer for a body of work, NOT a single novel. Your source is wrong.
ANYWAY, back to the point, read the novel. It's one of my favourite books and Toni Morrison is my favourite living author at that. Oprah did an INCREDIBLE job with the film. It really is a nightmare of a book to translate to screen, and what they did with it is nothing short of phenomenal. Love them both equally.
I think that it is a little bit unfair comparing the book to the film. Each one of them is an idividual work of art since the film is usually an interpretation of the book. In this particular case, I like both of them.
[blue]]I live in a world of words that creates a world of things JM Coetzee[/blue