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And I always end my letters, Love to the camomile lawn
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grimmwire and desperance, nineweaving and I have started watching The Camomile Lawn (1992). Three episodes in, I think my only real complaint is the casting of Sophy.
It's never a direct plot point, but in the novel she's multiracial—she resembles her unknown, possibly-Chinese father to the degree that she can be successfully met at the station by strangers who have been instructed to "Look for a thin chinky child with black hair and slant eyes who looks like a Siamese cat. She stands out among the goosey English." It makes her even more of an outlier at her boarding school, and although her aunt Helena would be outraged at the suggestion, Sophy's heritage is one of the contributing factors toward her dislike of this embarrassing, illegitimate half-niece (effectively stepdaughter) her marriage to Richard landed her with. Our very first external view of Sophy is through her disapproval: "Sophy was small, ten, and her appearance had a touch of the Orient . . . Her cheekbones could be called Slav but not her eyes." I have no problems with Rebecca Hall's acting, but she looks like a dark-haired, dark-eyed English child, and I don't see how difficult it could have been in 1992 to find a ten-year-old actress in London who was actually, you know, mixed-race East Asian. As it is, I think that entire thread may have been deleted from the story. Seriously, Peter Hall.
Otherwise the series so far is one of the best adaptations I've seen, the rest of the casting included. I knew I liked Tara Fitzgerald from I Capture the Castle (2003), but I am really enjoying her as quietly convention-breaking, self-possessed Polly; Paul Eddington is a pitch-perfect Richard, plaintively Blimpish ("I ask you!") and unpredictably true, and Felicity Kendal no more likeable to me than Helena as written, which means she's equally complex. Jennifer Ehle convinces me as Calypso despite not looking like my idea of a heartstopping beauty and I like that Toby Stephens, like the voice of the book, is aware that sensitive, war-scarred, Calypso-stricken Oliver is kind of a prat. The twins are perfectly cast, right down to their eerily parallel acne scars. It's not Ben Walden's fault he keeps reminding me of Denholm Elliott circa The Cruel Sea (1953). And I'm sure there are inventions, but mostly what I notice in the dialogue is compression: whole conversations straight from the book, only reordered slightly or edited for time. The credits music is very catchy. Unless they kill someone off inappropriately or otherwise alter the characters' various ends, I think this will be a very faithful—and impressive—piece of television.
Alison gave me a lovely trade paperback of The Name of the Rose for my birthday. I have the terrible feeling I read it for the first time because someone I had a crush on liked Umberto Eco. Fortunately, I turned out to, too.
grimmwire and desperance, nineweaving and I have started watching The Camomile Lawn (1992). Three episodes in, I think my only real complaint is the casting of Sophy.It's never a direct plot point, but in the novel she's multiracial—she resembles her unknown, possibly-Chinese father to the degree that she can be successfully met at the station by strangers who have been instructed to "Look for a thin chinky child with black hair and slant eyes who looks like a Siamese cat. She stands out among the goosey English." It makes her even more of an outlier at her boarding school, and although her aunt Helena would be outraged at the suggestion, Sophy's heritage is one of the contributing factors toward her dislike of this embarrassing, illegitimate half-niece (effectively stepdaughter) her marriage to Richard landed her with. Our very first external view of Sophy is through her disapproval: "Sophy was small, ten, and her appearance had a touch of the Orient . . . Her cheekbones could be called Slav but not her eyes." I have no problems with Rebecca Hall's acting, but she looks like a dark-haired, dark-eyed English child, and I don't see how difficult it could have been in 1992 to find a ten-year-old actress in London who was actually, you know, mixed-race East Asian. As it is, I think that entire thread may have been deleted from the story. Seriously, Peter Hall.
Otherwise the series so far is one of the best adaptations I've seen, the rest of the casting included. I knew I liked Tara Fitzgerald from I Capture the Castle (2003), but I am really enjoying her as quietly convention-breaking, self-possessed Polly; Paul Eddington is a pitch-perfect Richard, plaintively Blimpish ("I ask you!") and unpredictably true, and Felicity Kendal no more likeable to me than Helena as written, which means she's equally complex. Jennifer Ehle convinces me as Calypso despite not looking like my idea of a heartstopping beauty and I like that Toby Stephens, like the voice of the book, is aware that sensitive, war-scarred, Calypso-stricken Oliver is kind of a prat. The twins are perfectly cast, right down to their eerily parallel acne scars. It's not Ben Walden's fault he keeps reminding me of Denholm Elliott circa The Cruel Sea (1953). And I'm sure there are inventions, but mostly what I notice in the dialogue is compression: whole conversations straight from the book, only reordered slightly or edited for time. The credits music is very catchy. Unless they kill someone off inappropriately or otherwise alter the characters' various ends, I think this will be a very faithful—and impressive—piece of television.
Alison gave me a lovely trade paperback of The Name of the Rose for my birthday. I have the terrible feeling I read it for the first time because someone I had a crush on liked Umberto Eco. Fortunately, I turned out to, too.
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Many people find Jennifer Ehle gorgeous. I don't get it.
Nine
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Good!
(Aha! She's the director's daughter. That explains it.)
In which case she is multiracial (and her mother is an opera singer I've heard of). She's just still not Asian. That makes even less sense.
Many people find Jennifer Ehle gorgeous. I don't get it.
I find her very striking; I don't look at her and wonder what all the fuss is about. She has an interesting face. It's just that my idea of a heartstopping beauty is Ingrid Bergman or Tilda Swinton.
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Dutch, Scottish, African American, and Sioux. Pretty impressive. But no, not Asian. And her ancestry is important in the book.
It's just that my idea of a heartstopping beauty is Ingrid Bergman or Tilda Swinton.
Truly. Not that Ehle isn't quite handsome.
Nine
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I'll see if that runs here. Cool!
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Your last paragraph: I used to think of people I'd been out with in terms of the books they recommended to me. This isn't always fair to them, though...
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I have been fortunate in my overlap of people I like and the books they read, but it may be a self-selecting process.
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I have the terrible feeling I read it for the first time because someone I had a crush on liked Umberto Eco. Fortunately, I turned out to, too.
No harm in that. We've all read something for such a reason. I'm glad you liked it, any road, and glad you've a lovely new copy.
I've read Foucault's Pendulum, mostly because there was a second hand copy in the two quid bin at a bookshop in Cork City and I was for whatever reason feeling desperate for something new to read and had two quid in my pocket, but I've not read The Name of the Rose. I should remedy that, someday--I think I remember my mother reading it, and there might well still be a copy in the house.
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It's not series-destroying, but I'm finding it more and more confusing the longer I think about it. It wouldn't register at all with a viewer who hadn't read the book, but it's important to the characterization of Sophy; and she's the rare case of a protagonist I really like, so I care about her being done right.
I should remedy that, someday--I think I remember my mother reading it, and there might well still be a copy in the house.
It contains a lot of other languages.