A Book on Sunday

There was once a young man who wished to gain his Heart’s Desire.
And while that is, as beginnings go, not entirely novel (for every tale about every young man there ever was or will be could start in a similar manner) there was much about this young man and what happened to him that was unusual, although even he never knew the whole tale of it.

Tristran Thorn is a young man living in the village of Wall in Victorian England. As young boys in Victorian England do, he promises the love of his life to travel to the far reaches of he world to gather the finest treasures of the earth to present to her for a kiss of her lips. As a falling star falls from the sky, he gets the reply he seeks: Bring me back that fallen star and I will give you anything you desire. And so the fairy tale of Tristran Thorn and all the strange an wonderful things that occurred on his journey to find the fallen and bring it back to the love of his life begins.

But in no means does it end there. The journey takes Tristan over the wall that is the border between the English countryside and what can only be described as the realm of myth, legend and fairy tales; Faerie. Neil Gaiman depicts the many unique and wonderful creatures of fairy tales so vividly and with such imagination that they will stay with you for a long time.

This book is a short one, just under two hundred pages long. And that is part of what makes it such a strong book. It is a grand adventure where the story is in a way so understated that much of it is the one happening in the imagination of the reader. But that is the way a fairy tale should be, be it one for children, or as it is in this case one for the grown up audience.

So how does the movie hold up to the book? First off let me just say that the movie on it’s own is a pretty good movie. It has its good moments and its not so good moments, but over all the not so good moments in the movie are few and far between. That being said, I think the movie fails at one crucial point compared to the book. In an interview in the last part of the book, Neil Gaiman gives this answer to the killing of a character in the book: “[...]But on the other hand it seemed at the time a really interesting way to try and remind people that this wasn’t necessarily a fairy tale for children.[...]“. The movie adaptation seems to have lost this point entirely, as well as adding in more drama, more easy humor and a wizarding fight one on one (when will the movie studious learn that just because you can make a cool looking fight does not necessarily mean you should).

It is a nice movie, but seldom has the phrase “The book is better” been more fitting.