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The Prestige - book review
Jan. 9th, 2007 01:44 pmJust read the book version of The Prestige in two days, which is a fair suggestion that it was pretty good - and it was. It took me a while to get into it, since I had no interest in the modern day characters and their presence served to make the period characters that much more remote and difficult to relate to.
Overall, it was well written, quite intriguing, and the ending scared the crap out of me, though I didn't find it very satisfying. My main source of interest was in how the book differed from the film, and that was a very great deal. The basics of the background to the plot were the same, but all the details and the conclusion were completely different. Everything that had been changed was to make the film more dramatic and exciting - for the most part, I thought it all fitted together better in the film and was more clever in some ways, though it did serve to make the film characters much more unpleasant and extreme than those in the book.
I'd recommend the book to anyone who enjoyed the film, though, because it's a good story, which is well presented, and serves to highlight a lot about the intentions of the film-makers, plus knowing the secrets of the film doesn't ruin the mystery of the book, because the focue lies entirely elsewhere!
Overall, it was well written, quite intriguing, and the ending scared the crap out of me, though I didn't find it very satisfying. My main source of interest was in how the book differed from the film, and that was a very great deal. The basics of the background to the plot were the same, but all the details and the conclusion were completely different. Everything that had been changed was to make the film more dramatic and exciting - for the most part, I thought it all fitted together better in the film and was more clever in some ways, though it did serve to make the film characters much more unpleasant and extreme than those in the book.
I'd recommend the book to anyone who enjoyed the film, though, because it's a good story, which is well presented, and serves to highlight a lot about the intentions of the film-makers, plus knowing the secrets of the film doesn't ruin the mystery of the book, because the focue lies entirely elsewhere!
