4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Compelling read, December 5, 2005
This review is from: Billie Morgan (Paperback)
These are my notes for whether or not this would make a decent film adaptation:
When a newspaper story on local missing persons dredges up the name of the horrible Terry Skinner, BILLIE MORGAN has to deal with the burden of knowledge of her part in his murder, while continuing to be the concerned family friend to his widow, JASMINE, and son NATHAN. While Billie fears that her crime will be found out, the consequences of her actions haunt her in an entirely different way, playing out in the wrecked lives of Jasmine and Nathan who she has come to love dearly.
Boiled down to it's bare essentials, "Billie Morgan" is a story about consequences - not the accepted consequences that society tries to impose, like Jail, but the true, human fall-out of our actions. There is never more than a suggestion that Billie might end up in jail for her crime, and while Billie has a certain amount of fear at the chance she will, we see her keep her secret for the welfare of those around her, even those who have rejected her, more than for herself. The real issue is actually hit upon by the scandal seeking newspaper the Clarion, when they write about the `Disappeared' - those who Society, and therefore the authorities, don't care about because they don't fit a certain type - middle class, blonde, white... "Billie Morgan" is about the underclass who operate outside the System, and for whom the justice imposed by the System isn't justice at all.
Billie herself is a great female protagonist - perhaps not the greatest in a long while, as the Kirkus review said, but definitely a compelling and complex heroine. Perhaps her greatest asset is her honesty with herself, thus becoming more human, more relatable, and allowing the reader to admit their own dark secrets to themselves - that maybe, just maybe, they would have done the same thing in Billie's situation and unwittingly murdered a man.
As much as Billie is a character who jumps off the page and brings the story alive, the dialogue is so specific and well written; it does a lot to give flavor and character to the story in its own right. Joolz Denby writes the dialect of the lower-class North-Eastern Brit with ease - and while such efforts - for example the Scottish brogue of Irvine Welsh - can often be confusing to the reader, there didn't seem to be any such complications here. For a movie adaptation, maintaining the dialect would be as essential to the characters and place as a Southern U.S. accent would be to a film set in rural Mississippi.
The film version would probably have to start somewhere about the middle of the book, and work the two time periods together, using the frame of the newspaper's research to bring out the back story.
The film version of this book would have a lot of the important ingredients necessary for a successful film - murder intrigue (although we know who did it, the why and the how of it is withheld until the end), sex, drugs, danger, family skeletons - and social commentary. There will be difficulties in translating much of the novel's internal world in to a cinematic medium, but not so much as to be insurmountable. The real downside may be that a film set among the urban poor in the U.K. may be a world that does not have a large appeal to American audiences without glamorizing certain aspects of that world, and thus compromising some of the thematic elements of the book.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Kept me glued to the page..., January 18, 2012
This review is from: Billie Morgan (Paperback)
I LOVED this fascinating book . It kept me glued to the page and every twist and turn pulled me further into the story.
It features a wonderful cast of solid characters, all real as flesh and blood. I was moved by their stories and circumstances and the impact fate has on each of them. A wonderful, enjoyable, dark, emotional and moving book which made me both laugh and cry. One of THE best books I have read.
Joolz Denby is in my opinion an very underrated writer and I would highly recommend this book as an introduction to her work.
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