I love to read the original source of something that I watched. But, sometimes it doesn’t live up to my expectations.
Maybe I put too much faith in what I was exposed to first that the other version is going to blow my mind. Then when it doesn’t I’m disappointed.
After seeing the film and enjoying it despite it being slow at times, I decided to read the book. I expected that it would go differently, but what I didn’t expect was a lot of extra things like chapters that felt like eighty pages long about the natives or a gazelle that came to visit the farm. The latter was touching but still a lot of it dragged and it was like I was reading it waiting to hear something about Denys.
Later on it got better when she wrote about many of the adventures she had with him where he took her flying and hunting but there was no mention of love anywhere. It’s like she is a very private person and prefers to keep those events out of her book. The disadvantage to this it didn’t feel as engaging to read if you know what I mean.
It was cute to read how all the native children loved her cuckoo clock though, that made it into the movie and when I watched it again after finishing this book was I able to identify them. Like Farah for instance.
Other than that maybe the book just didn’t do it for me. It wasn’t easy reading tons of pages about the culture which I seemed to have trouble understanding even though I wanted to learn some of it. It’s sad when a book isn’t always for me but at least I will always have the film.
👽Emily
Monsterlady's Diary 