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A review by erboe501
The Beguiled by Thomas Cullinan
3.0
I read this book because I'm doing a presentation on Sofia Coppola's 2017 adaptation. I found her movie unsettling in some way; I just couldn't get it out of my head. So I listened to a podcast about how she erased the black female slave character from Cullinan's original novel. This turned into my presentation topic: how the erasure of the slave Mattie from the movie contributes to a racialized Southern identity, the product of years of ignoring black experiences when constructing Southern memory and history.
I came to the novel after watching both the 2017 and 1971 film versions. You get to know the characters better in the book, obviously, because the pov alternates among all the women, even Mattie. I think the narrative drags out too long. You think you've hit the climax but then the final climax is a good bit later. The Union soldier, Corporal McBurney, is much younger in the book (about 20 years old) than he's portrayed in the movies, which I think is important to his perceived innocence or mischievousness. The movies also conflate a few of the female characters, which helps keep everything straight.
An interesting read to give context to the films, but I can see why this fell out of print after its publication before the 2017 adaptation.
I came to the novel after watching both the 2017 and 1971 film versions. You get to know the characters better in the book, obviously, because the pov alternates among all the women, even Mattie. I think the narrative drags out too long. You think you've hit the climax but then the final climax is a good bit later. The Union soldier, Corporal McBurney, is much younger in the book (about 20 years old) than he's portrayed in the movies, which I think is important to his perceived innocence or mischievousness. The movies also conflate a few of the female characters, which helps keep everything straight.
An interesting read to give context to the films, but I can see why this fell out of print after its publication before the 2017 adaptation.