This is the novel that inspired the movie Straw Dogs, which I recently saw and enjoyed because True Blood's sex-on-a-stick vampire, Eric Northman, is in it. I hadn't realized at the time that the movie was an adaptation of the book, nor did I know that it was also a remake of a 1971 film starring Dustin Hoffman. The things you learn by watching the credits, I tell ya! Anyway, the book is quite good but I could never get a handle on the accent. The movie remake is set in the deep south and pits the stereotypical backwards conservative Southerner with a pacifist liberal Dem from the West Coast. The book is set in some corner of England "where lived men and women who had never travelled more than fifteen miles from their own homes" and where "the two hundred mile journey to London was an almost legendary experience, something that might happen once in a lifetime, if at all." Here's a sampling: "You prefer him to the likes of we, don't you? Us be just yokels to you like, that's it, innit?" It's not that I can't understand what he's saying but typically with accents, I can hear in my head where the emphasis would fall and with this, I can't hear anything. So, assessing whether the accent is true to the land is impossible for me. I have no clue if they would substitute "us" for "we" or vice versa.
Basically, the story is about the outsider (the pacifist liberal) who is pushed too far and becomes something unrecognizable and primal in an effort to survive. A pretty common theme, really. But since I enjoyed both the movie remake and the book, I'm giving this one two thumbs up. The original movie is currently in the Netflix queue.
29 down plus 23 to go.
No comments:
Post a Comment