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March 06, 2007

First, the novel

"The End of the Affair" is this month's Book Club selection, and I hate to admit it, but I stumbled on the novel by first seeing the movie with Julianne Moore and Ralph Fiennes. I loved the film - until I read the book and saw how much the screenwriters had changed the story, played down the religious themes, and overplayed the sex. (No surprise there.)

Now, though, I see that as a victory for good literature. The novel is just shy of 200 pages but every single page is packed with raw emotion and beautiful writing. Universal themes - love, hate, romance, forgiveness - are everywhere.

  The 1999 film, while a heartwrenching love story, is trite in comparison to the novel. The film characters are one-dimensional, but in the print version they are flesh-and-blood people.

My advice: Read it as soon as you can. It will warm your soul during this surprisingly bitter March.

Posted at 12:08 PM in Literature |

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Reader comments are posted immediately and are not edited. Please use good taste, be respectful of other writers, keep comments relevant to the post and do not impersonate someone else. We are not responsible for the comments on this blog, but we reserve the right to remove any that are libelous, obscene, threatening, abusive, or otherwise offensive, and to block any user who does not follow these guidelines. Comments containing objectionable words are automatically blocked. Some comments may be re-published in The Buffalo News print edition.