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Vikas Swarup: Q & A
- Thread starter jaybe
- Start date
There are a lot of differences. It's like they have taken the skeleton of the book and constructed a whole new story out of it. the soul is there, but the body is different.
a friend raved about the book, so i'm thinking of reading it, but i would be glad for more reviews.
beer good
Well-Known Member
Having read Q&A after seeing Slumdog Millionaire, I'm convinced that one could cobble together one great story out of the two of them.
I liked the movie a lot when I saw it, but it's one of those where, the more I think about it, the more I'm unsure why exactly I liked it. Yes, Danny Boyle is a great director, the movie looks amazing and it's almost impossible to not be swept up in it, but I can definitely see why people are accusing him of "slum tourism"; the way he romanticizes the story, making everything fit nicely into a timeline of impossible coincidences and ending on that ridiculously sentimental ending where
almost makes me wonder if he's being serious or if the point is to overdo it completely to point out just how impossible it really is for a poor Indian orphan to become a success in New India.
Q&A, on the other hand, gets a lot of things right. I had heard that the plot was different, but I was surprised at how different. The entire backstory is changed, the individual episodes that lead up to him knowing the answers are often very different, changing the tone of the story quite a lot - not to mention that the protagonist is completely different. Not only his name, but the way he acts, the way he actually does things rather than sit back and wait for things to happen to him. I like that. And while Swarup isn't as great a writer as Boyle is a director, he gets the job done for the most part, even though the movie ends up a lot more coherent - yes, the book has a more believable story, but the movie's story is has a better narrative. Not unlike Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist I never quite buy the illusion that the book is mostly one long monologue - especially since he makes a point of his narrator being so very uneducated - and it's mostly fairly superficial stuff, but hey, it zips nicely along and it goes into places the movie didn't.
But then Swarup blows it all on the ending. I'm going to avoid spoilers, but it's definitely the biggest difference between the two versions; while both endings seem like almost impossible coincidences, at least Boyle's ending is the sort of ending you want to believe in even if you know it's probably impossible. Swarup's is just... poor. A couple of huge clichés on top of what was looking like a solid, if not great, novel that drags it down and makes me wish I'd skipped the last 15 pages. The first 290 were still enjoyable, but... barely
.
I liked the movie a lot when I saw it, but it's one of those where, the more I think about it, the more I'm unsure why exactly I liked it. Yes, Danny Boyle is a great director, the movie looks amazing and it's almost impossible to not be swept up in it, but I can definitely see why people are accusing him of "slum tourism"; the way he romanticizes the story, making everything fit nicely into a timeline of impossible coincidences and ending on that ridiculously sentimental ending where
the poor boy wins it all and all the bad guys get what they deserve
Q&A, on the other hand, gets a lot of things right. I had heard that the plot was different, but I was surprised at how different. The entire backstory is changed, the individual episodes that lead up to him knowing the answers are often very different, changing the tone of the story quite a lot - not to mention that the protagonist is completely different. Not only his name, but the way he acts, the way he actually does things rather than sit back and wait for things to happen to him. I like that. And while Swarup isn't as great a writer as Boyle is a director, he gets the job done for the most part, even though the movie ends up a lot more coherent - yes, the book has a more believable story, but the movie's story is has a better narrative. Not unlike Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist I never quite buy the illusion that the book is mostly one long monologue - especially since he makes a point of his narrator being so very uneducated - and it's mostly fairly superficial stuff, but hey, it zips nicely along and it goes into places the movie didn't.
But then Swarup blows it all on the ending. I'm going to avoid spoilers, but it's definitely the biggest difference between the two versions; while both endings seem like almost impossible coincidences, at least Boyle's ending is the sort of ending you want to believe in even if you know it's probably impossible. Swarup's is just... poor. A couple of huge clichés on top of what was looking like a solid, if not great, novel that drags it down and makes me wish I'd skipped the last 15 pages. The first 290 were still enjoyable, but... barely
.
MonkeyCatcher
New Member
I've just finished reading this, and am not suprised to read that the plotline of the movie is very different to that of the book - I was wondering throughout my reading how they would manage to deal with the constant non-linear time shifts and how exactly that female actress became a star of the movie when there are really no major female characters (well, until the last 1/4 of the book).
I thought that the story was fantastic, but like BG, I found Swarup lacking as an author at times. Some parts just felt a bit clumsy and immature. I wouldn't say that the situations or settings are very different from the multitude of novels around set in the slums of India, narrated by a poor, uneducated adolescent, but it still manages to stand out in my mind as one of the more unique of the bunch (which I see as a good thing).
The only major problem I had was with the ending. I had to make a conscious effort not to throw up at the last line of dialouge, and the ending was just sheese-tastic all around. A little disappointing after being used to a unique spin on a typical Indian novel, but the rest of the novel still makes it worth a read.
I'm really interested in seeing the movie, now. I might leave it a bit if it's really different from the novel, though... I'll be less disappointed if I'm not able to pinpoint the exact differences as easily.
I thought that the story was fantastic, but like BG, I found Swarup lacking as an author at times. Some parts just felt a bit clumsy and immature. I wouldn't say that the situations or settings are very different from the multitude of novels around set in the slums of India, narrated by a poor, uneducated adolescent, but it still manages to stand out in my mind as one of the more unique of the bunch (which I see as a good thing).
The only major problem I had was with the ending. I had to make a conscious effort not to throw up at the last line of dialouge, and the ending was just sheese-tastic all around. A little disappointing after being used to a unique spin on a typical Indian novel, but the rest of the novel still makes it worth a read.
I'm really interested in seeing the movie, now. I might leave it a bit if it's really different from the novel, though... I'll be less disappointed if I'm not able to pinpoint the exact differences as easily.