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The Silver Linings Playbook: A Novel Paperback – October 16, 2012
| Matthew Quick (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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A New York Times bestseller, The Silver Linings Playbook was adapted into the Oscar-winning movie starring Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence. It tells the riotous and poignant story of how one man regains his memory and comes to terms with the magnitude of his wife's betrayal.
During the years he spends in a neural health facility, Pat Peoples formulates a theory about silver linings: he believes his life is a movie produced by God, his mission is to become physically fit and emotionally supportive, and his happy ending will be the return of his estranged wife, Nikki. When Pat goes to live with his parents, everything seems changed: no one will talk to him about Nikki; his old friends are saddled with families; the Philadelphia Eagles keep losing, making his father moody; and his new therapist seems to be recommending adultery as a form of therapy.
When Pat meets the tragically widowed and clinically depressed Tiffany, she offers to act as a liaison between him and his wife, if only he will give up watching football, agree to perform in this year's Dance Away Depression competition, and promise not to tell anyone about their "contract." All the while, Pat keeps searching for his silver lining.
In this brilliantly written debut novel, Matthew Quick takes us inside Pat's mind, deftly showing us the world from his distorted yet endearing perspective. The result is a touching and funny story that helps us look at both depression and love in a wonderfully refreshing way.
- Print length304 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherSarah Crichton Books
- Publication dateOctober 16, 2012
- Dimensions5.45 x 1 x 8.2 inches
- ISBN-100374533571
- ISBN-13978-0374533571
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"Quick fills the pages with so much absurd wit and true feeling that it's impossible not to cheer for his unlikely hero." Allison Lynn, People Magazine
"...compelling and fascinating ... a tour de force. ... From the beer-soaked Bacchanalian tailgating to the black holes of despair into which Iggles fans plunge themselves after a defeat, Quick is dead-on." Bill Lyon, The Philadelphia Inquirer
"...charming debut novel...it is hard not to be moved by the fate of a man who, despite many ordeals, tries to believe in hope and fidelity, not to mention getting through another day with his sanity intact." Stephen Barbara, The Wall Street Journal
"...endearing...touching and funny debut...Pat [Peoples] is as sweet as a puppy, and his offbeat story has all the markings of a crowd-pleaser." Publishers Weekly
“Matthew Quick has created quite the heartbreaker of a novel in The Silver Linings Playbook.” Kirkus First Fiction Issue
“heart-warming, humorous, and soul-satisfying … thought of starting off the review with a photo of me hugging the book and grinning like an idiot–I liked it that much.” Nancy Pearl, Pearl’s Picks + NPR’s ‘Summer’s Best Books’ (2009)
“You don’t have to be a Philadelphia Eagles’ fan (or even from Philadelphia) to appreciate talented newcomer Matthew Quick’s page-turning paean to the power of hope over experience—the belief that this will all work out somehow, despite the long odds that life deals us. ” Justin Cronin, PEN/Hemingway Award-winning author of The Passage
“More than a promising debut or an inspiring love story, this novel offers us the gift of healing.” Roland Merullo, author of Breakfast With Buddha
“This is a funny, touching performance on the part of Mr. Quick—and the beginning, I hope, of a big career.” Dave King, author of The Ha-Ha
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The Silver Linings Playbook [movie tie-in edition]
A NovelBy Matthew QuickSarah Crichton Books
Copyright © 2012 Matthew QuickAll right reserved.
ISBN: 9780374533571
Chapter One
An Infinite Amount of Days Until My Inevitable Reunion with Nikki
I don’t have to look up to know Mom is making another surprise visit. Her toenails are always pink during the summer months, and I recognize the flower design imprinted on her leather sandals; it’s what Mom purchased the last time she signed me out of the bad place and took me to the mall. Once again, Mother has found me in my bathrobe, exercising unattended in the courtyard, and I smile because I know she will yell at Dr. Timbers, asking him why I need to be locked up if I’m only going to be left alone all day. “Just how many push-ups are you going to do, Pat?” Mom says when I start a second set of one hundred without speaking to her. “Nikki—likes—a—man—with—a—developed—upper—body,” I say, spitting out one word per push-up, tasting the salty sweat lines that are running into my mouth. The August haze is thick, perfect for burning fat. Mom just watches for a minute or so, and then she shocks me. Her voice sort of quivers as she says, “Do you want to come home with me today?” I stop doing push-ups, turn my face up toward Mother’s, squint through the white noontime sun—and I can immediately tell she is serious, because she looks worried, as if she is making a mistake, and that’s how Mom looks when she means something she has said and isn’t just talking like she always does for hours on end whenever she’s not upset or afraid. “As long as you promise not to go looking for Nikki again,” she adds, “you can finally come home and live with me and your father until we find you a job and get you set up in an apartment.” I resume my push-up routine, keeping my eyes riveted to the shiny black ant scaling a blade of grass directly below my nose, but my peripheral vision catches the sweat beads leaping from my face to the ground below. “Pat, just say you’ll come home with me, and I’ll cook for you and you can visit with your old friends and start to get on with your life finally. Please. I need you to want this. If only for me, Pat. Please.” Double-time push-ups, my pecs ripping, growing—pain, heat, sweat, change. I don’t want to stay in the bad place, where no one believes in silver linings or love or happy endings, and where everyone tells me Nikki will not like my new body, nor will she even want to see me when apart time is over. But I am also afraid the people from my old life will not be as enthusiastic as I am now trying to be. Even still, I need to get away from the depressing doctors and the ugly nurses—with their endless pills in paper cups—if I am ever going to get my thoughts straight, and since Mom will be much easier to trick than medical professionals, I jump up, find my feet, and say, “I’ll come live with you just until apart time is over.” While Mom is signing legal papers, I take one last shower in my room and then fill my duffel bag with clothes and my framed picture of Nikki. I say goodbye to my roommate, Jackie, who just stares at me from his bed like he always does, drool running down off his chin like clear honey. Poor Jackie, with his random tufts of hair, oddly shaped head, and flabby body. What woman would ever love him? He blinks at me. I take this for goodbye and good luck, so I blink back with both eyes—meaning double good luck to you, Jackie, which I figure he understands, since he grunts and bangs his shoulder against his ear like he does whenever he gets what you are trying to tell him. My other friends are in music relaxation class, which I do not attend, because smooth jazz makes me angry sometimes. Thinking maybe I should say goodbye to the men who had my back while I was locked up, I look into the music-room window and see my boys sitting Indian style on purple yoga mats, their elbows resting on their knees, their palms pressed together in front of their faces, and their eyes closed. Luckily, the glass of the window blocks the smooth jazz from entering my ears. My friends look really relaxed—at peace—so I decide not to interrupt their session. I hate goodbyes. In his white coat, Dr. Timbers is waiting for me when I meet my mother in the lobby, where three palm trees lurk among the couches and lounge chairs, as if the bad place were in Orlando and not Baltimore. “Enjoy your life,” he says to me—wearing that sober look of his—and shakes my hand. “Just as soon as apart time ends,” I say, and his face falls as if I said I was going to kill his wife, Natalie, and their three blondhaired daughters—Kristen, Jenny, and Becky—because that’s just how much he does not believe in silver linings, making it his business to preach apathy and negativity and pessimism unceasingly. But I make sure he understands that he has failed to infect me with his depressing life philosophies—and that I will be looking forward to the end of apart time. I say, “Picture me rollin’” to Dr. Timbers, which is exactly what Danny—my only black friend in the bad place—told me he was going to say to Dr. Timbers when Danny got out. I sort of feel bad about stealing Danny’s exit line, but it works; I know because Dr. Timbers squints as if I had punched him in the gut. As my mother drives me out of Maryland and through Delaware, past all those fast-food places and strip malls, she explains that Dr. Timbers did not want to let me out of the bad place, but with the help of a few lawyers and her girlfriend’s therapist—the man who will be my new therapist—she waged a legal battle and managed to convince some judge that she could care for me at home, so I thank her. On the Delaware Memorial Bridge, she looks over at me and asks if I want to get better, saying, “You do want to get better, Pat. Right?” I nod. I say, “I do.” And then we are back in New Jersey, flying up 295. As we drive down Haddon Avenue into the heart of Collingswood—my hometown—I see that the main drag looks different. So many new boutique stores, new expensive-looking restaurants, and well-dressed strangers walking the sidewalks that I wonder if this is really my hometown at all. I start to feel anxious, breathing heavily like I sometimes do. Mom asks me what’s wrong, and when I tell her, she again promises that my new therapist, Dr. Patel, will have me feeling normal in no time. When we arrive home, I immediately go down into the basement, and it’s like Christmas. I find the weight bench my mother had promised me so many times, along with the rack of weights, the stationary bike, dumbbells, and the Stomach Master 6000, which I had seen on late-night television and coveted for however long I was in the bad place. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” I tell Mom, and give her a huge hug, picking her up off the ground and spinning her around once. When I put her down, she smiles and says, “Welcome home, Pat.” Eagerly I go to work, alternating between sets of bench presses, curls, machine sit-ups on the Stomach Master 6000, leg lifts, squats, hours on the bike, hydration sessions (I try to drink four gallons of water every day, doing endless shots of H2O from a shot glass for intensive hydration), and then there is my writing, which is mostly daily memoirs like this one, so that Nikki will be able to read about my life and know exactly what I’ve been up to since apart time began. (My memory started to slip in the bad place because of the drugs, so I began writing down everything that happens to me, keeping track of what I will need to tell Nikki when apart time concludes, to catch her up on my life. But the doctors in the bad place confiscated everything I wrote before I came home, so I had to start over.) When I finally come out of the basement, I notice that all the pictures of Nikki and me have been removed from the walls and the mantel over the fireplace. I ask my mother where these pictures went. She tells me our house was burglarized a few weeks before I came home and the pictures were stolen. I ask why a burglar would want pictures of Nikki and me, and my mother says she puts all of her pictures in very expensive frames. “Why didn’t the burglar steal the rest of the family pictures?” I ask. Mom says the burglar stole all the expensive frames, but she had the negatives for the family portraits and had them replaced. “Why didn’t you replace the pictures of Nikki and me?” I ask. Mom says she did not have the negatives for the pictures of Nikki and me, especially because Nikki’s parents had paid for the wedding pictures and had only given my mother copies of the photos she liked. Nikki had given Mom the other non-wedding pictures of us, and well, we aren’t in touch with Nikki or her family right now because it’s apart time. I tell my mother that if that burglar comes back, I’ll break his kneecaps and beat him within an inch of his life, and she says, “I believe you would.” My father and I do not talk even once during the first week I am home, which is not all that surprising, as he is always working—he’s the district manager for all the Big Foods in South Jersey. When Dad’s not at work, he’s in his study, reading historical fiction with the door shut, mostly novels about the Civil War. Mom says he needs time to get used to my living at home again, which I am happy to give him, especially since I am sort of afraid to talk with Dad anyway. I remember him yelling at me the only time he ever visited me in the bad place, and he said some pretty awful things about Nikki and silver linings in general. I see Dad in the hallways of our house, of course, but he doesn’t look at me when we pass. Nikki likes to read, and since she always wanted me to read literary books, I start, mainly so I will be able to participate in the dinner conversations I had remained silent through in the past—those conversations with Nikki’s literary friends, all English teachers who think I’m an illiterate buffoon, which is actually a name Nikki’s friend calls me whenever I tease him about being such a tiny man. “At least I’m not an illiterate buffoon,” Phillip says to me, and Nikki laughs so hard. My mom has a library card, and she checks out books for me now that I am home and allowed to read whatever I want without clearing the material with Dr. Timbers, who, incidentally, is a fascist when it comes to book banning. I start with The Great Gatsby, which I finish in just three nights. The best part is the introductory essay, which states that the novel is mostly about time and how you can never buy it back, which is exactly how I feel regarding my body and exercise—but then again, I also feel as if I have an infinite amount of days until my inevitable reunion with Nikki. When I read the actual story—how Gatsby loves Daisy so much but can’t ever be with her no matter how hard he tries—I feel like ripping the book in half and calling up Fitzgerald and telling him his book is all wrong, even though I know Fitzgerald is probably deceased. Especially when Gatsby is shot dead in his swimming pool the first time he goes for a swim all summer, Daisy doesn’t even go to his funeral, Nick and Jordan part ways, and Daisy ends up sticking with racist Tom, whose need for sex basically murders an innocent woman, you can tell Fitzgerald never took the time to look up at clouds during sunset, because there’s no silver lining at the end of that book, let me tell you. I do see why Nikki likes the novel, as it’s written so well. But her liking it makes me worry now that Nikki doesn’t really believe in silver linings, because she says The Great Gatsby is the greatest novel ever written by an American, and yet it ends so sadly. One thing’s for sure, Nikki is going to be very proud of me when I tell her I finally read her favorite book. Here’s another surprise: I’m going to read all the novels on her American literature class syllabus, just to make her proud, to let her know that I am really interested in what she loves and I am making a real effort to salvage our marriage, especially since I will now be able to converse with her swanky literary friends, saying things like, “I’m thirty. I’m five years too old to lie to myself and call it honor,” which Nick says toward the end of Fitzgerald’s famous novel, but the line works for me too, because I am also thirty, so when I say it, I will sound really smart. We will probably be chatting over dinner, and the reference will make Nikki smile and laugh because she will be so surprised that I have actually read The Great Gatsby. That’s part of my plan, anyway, to deliver that line real suave, when she least expects me to “drop knowledge”—to use another one of my black friend Danny’s lines. God, I can’t wait. Excerpted from The SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK by Matthew QuickCopyright © 2008 by Matthew Quick Published in 2008 by Farrar, Straus and GirouxAll rights reserved. This work is protected under copyright laws and reproduction is strictly prohibited. Permission to reproduce the material in any manner or medium must be secured from the Publisher.
Continues...
Excerpted from The Silver Linings Playbook [movie tie-in edition] by Matthew Quick Copyright © 2012 by Matthew Quick. Excerpted by permission.
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Product details
- Publisher : Sarah Crichton Books; Media tie-in edition (October 16, 2012)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 304 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0374533571
- ISBN-13 : 978-0374533571
- Item Weight : 9.6 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.45 x 1 x 8.2 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #56,047 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #209 in Medical Fiction (Books)
- #742 in TV, Movie & Game Tie-In Fiction
- #1,644 in Psychological Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Matthew Quick is the New York Times bestselling author of THE SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK—which was made into an Oscar-winning film—and eight other novels. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages, received a PEN/Hemingway Award Honorable Mention, was an LA Times Book Prize finalist, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, a #1 bestseller in Brazil, a Deutscher Jugendliteratur Preis 2016 (German Youth Literature Prize) nominee, and selected by Nancy Pearl as one of Summer’s Best Books for NPR. The Hollywood Reporter has named him one of Hollywood’s 25 Most Powerful Authors. Matthew lives with his wife, the novelist Alicia Bessette, on North Carolina's Outer Banks.
www.matthewquickwriter.com
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More importantly, the movie motivated me to read the book.
Written in first person, author Matthew Quick draws you right in with the main character, Pat Peoples, and describes effectively the illness he faces. Peoples is diagnosed as bi-polar and the author stays true to the character in how he presents the story in every aspect.
What struck me as I read along were the vast differences in the way some of the characters were shown on the big screen compared to the book. Pat Peoples is trying to make his way back into the world after spending time in a mental facility. He is embraced by his mother but shunned by his father in the book. The movie presents Pat’s dad as caring, dedicated and loving.
There are other examples of extremes between the two that will eventually make you appreciate how the author presents his story. I won’t delve into this for fear of killing the wonderful surprises that arise in the movie and the book.
There are some similarities though with the two in the plot. But there weren’t enough of them to convince me that the movie stayed true to Quick’s novel.
The bottom line is this — you would be cheating yourself if you only saw it on the big screen. And you need to be patient with the book version. At first, I had the notion that the movie had done a better job in telling the story.
It took a while for Quick to reach deeper into the depth of the characters. This is the selling point of the book. Quick does a terrific job in letting the characters play off of each other in some funny and dire circumstances. This is present in the movie, too, but not on the scale of the book.
I will not spoil this for you by showing any more examples. You’ll notice how the story Quick wrote is done with strength and courage and truth to what he disease is and how it can manhandle even the strongest person.
What about the ending? The movie version ignores the ending of the book. It’s more Hollywood. Well, it is Hollywood.
The ending in the book version is better.
In fact, it’s perfect.
Quick’s story will inspire you. It will help educate you on what bi-polar is and can do to the individual person, their families, and their lovers. He takes you deep into that dark world and somehow manages to shine a bit of light and hope.
It will help you understand that everyone deserves to be loved, no matter what the struggle one faces.
It will motivate you to read more.
There’s something so magical about a book. It’s a grand feeling sweeping over your soul when you are falling in love with a story and the characters under a lamp at 2 a.m. in the morning.
Happy reading.
I found it to be very funny. I didn't laugh out loud a lot, although I did a few times, but I definitely smiled to myself a lot. I'm a sports fan (not a football fan) but I found the Eagles obsession to be very funny. Probably because I believe it to be true. The scenes with his father made me sad, but I also found them to be very typical family moments, and that was comforting.
I found Pat very sympathetic as a character. Life doesn't turn out exactly the way we all want it to. Sometimes we don't get everything when we want it, sometimes we don't get it at all, and wind up with something different. That's true of us all. And important for us all to remember.
I think it was a fascinating journey that Pat took and I was more than happy to take it with him. I'll hold some of his observations as I go forward, and I do think it'll make me think about certain things differently. No one is perfect, you do not always know what goes on in someone's mind or behind closed doors. So never pretend you know the whole story. It was a simple lesson, but a really great story.
As a fan of Pat Peoples, I'd thoroughly recommend. And with 10 pages to go, I already stopped to rent the DVD so I'm looking forward to watching that tonight to finally see how they compare.
The narrator and protagonist is Pat. He's a former high school history teacher and coach (as well as undiagnosed bipolar disorder sufferer) who went a bit crazy after "something" went wrong with his marriage. That something landed him in a mental hospital for four years as part of a plea bargain. We meet him the day his doting and loving mother gets him discharged from the facility. Pat is touchingly and sometimes even maddeningly naive about the chances of renewing his marriage with his wife Nikki. Like many people (including me), he's been conditioned by Hollywood and popular culture to expect a happy ending to the "movie" his life seems to be to him.
But Pat should have remembered that sometimes the happy ending that you think you want is not the ending you are going to get and the one you get is much better than the one you want. The "twist" in his life-movie plot comes in the form of a young widow named Tiffany who is struggling to overcome her own serious problems. Somehow, unwillingly, Pat becomes friends with her and then something more along the way...I won't say more than that, except to say the story has an immensely uplifting ending that put a smile on my face.
This odd love story unfolds in Philadelphia and against the backdrop of the 2006-2007 NFL season. Pat, like his brother and father, is a rabid Eagles fan and a great deal of the novel delves in what that means to love a team so much. Suffice to say that even though I'm from Washington DC (go Redskins!) it made me want to go see the Eagles play and root for them to be part of the Eagles fan-dom brotherhood for just a moment (so long as it wasn't a game with the Redskins).
There are four things about this novel that stand out to me as being particularly praise-worthy.
1. Dr. "Cliff" Patel (Pat's therapist) is a great supporting character in this novel...especially when he reveals that he too is an ardent Eagles fan.
2. The depiction of serious mental illness like that Pat suffers (and to a lesser extent Tiffany) is not candy-coated but not portrayed in an ugly way that might repel the reader.
3. The section of the book that deals with Pat training with Tiffany for the dance competition is cleverly depicted as the literary equivalent of a movie montage.
4. Finally, the ending when Pat has a crucial insight into who he loves and why is deeply moving and --I say this as a dude who does not read a lot of romance stories-- beautiful.
***
Note on the movie version of "The Silver Lining Playbook": I just saw the movie the day after I read the book. Bottom line: the book is somewhat better simply because 300 pages can convey more than a film, but it's well worth seeing and captures the essence of the story, and I know when it comes out on DVD, I will buy it.
Silver Linings Playbook
Finally, those who like this book/movie probably will like "Ordinary People," another story that also deals with family tragedy and mental illness but is similarly uplifting with some romantic elements.
Ordinary People
Ordinary People
Top reviews from other countries
This is a touching story of a man suffering from mental illness following the breakdown of his marriage. He has just been released from hospital and is living back at home, working on self-improvement and getting back on track, with a somewhat unrealistic view to getting his wife back. He is a sweet character, whose innocence at first comes across as false or annoying, but quickly grows on you.
We meet a range of amazing characters in Pat's life, including his absent wife Nikki, his therapist Cliff, his brothers who are all mad about football, the all-Indian football club and their bus, his mother and his would-be girlfriend Tiffany. I found it to be a gritty, realistic yet warm view on a man's struggle with mental illness. On a wider level, it explores the concepts of self-improvement, self-awareness, the notion of 'normality' in people and how you can sometimes find support in the unlikeliest places.
The flaw with this for me would be the amount of football content. As someone completely uninterested in sports, even unable to follow the rules of American football, I felt there was just too much of if in there. I'm sure it was great for all of you who like football and follow it, and it was justified as the character and his brothers all love it and he bonds with his therapist and meets some friends and enemies through it.
I think the book leaves you with a feeling of hope and optimism.
Pat is a man in his mid thirties, though he believes he is some years younger, having spent more time than he realises in a `neural health facility' in Baltimore (a psychiatric hospital) Pat committed some sort of violent act, and has an obsession with his ex-wife. He is an incurable optimist, dedicated to happy endings in films and determined that the silver linings on clouds, and the happily ever after, must happen. Following his release from the hospital, engineered by his loving mother, he must agree to regular therapy, and a regimen of psychiatric drugs. He has returned to living in the parental home. He has agreed to all of this, and is working hard on shedding the weight he put on in hospital, his goal being to become again the sports and history teacher with a great body which he had when he met and married his ex-wife. He is convinced they can get together again.
In his life he has : a loving mother, a great and supportive and successful brother, a best friend, whose wife has a sister with mental health issues of her own, the kindest and in some ways most unprofessional of therapists, another great friendship with a fellow inmate in that `neural health facility'. He also probably has Asperger's - at least, this is what accounts for his voice, which sounds not cold, but without emotional nuance and subtlety. Pat, despite being prone to a violence he barely understands when he hears smooth jazz music, particularly a specific piece of music played by Kenny G, is a `good person' with a warm and open heart. He is actively working on `being kind'. He also has an extremely dysfunctional father, who is deeply depressed and emotionally cold.
Part of Pat's journey to try and get re-united with his ex-wife, an artistic, intellectual literature major and teacher, is to begin to read through some of her favourite books, particularly those she taught to her students. So he reads, and responds to such books as The Great Gatsby, A Farewell to Arms, Catcher In The Rye, The Bell Jar, responding to them with approval or dismay according to his `Silver Lining' philosophy, and need for the happy wrap. There is a lot of warm humour in the author's use of this.
I held back from the final star because the overall tone of this warm, charming and sweet book, despite the bleakness which appears along the way at times, is perhaps a little too anodyne and Hollywood. This did not quite equal my first acquaintance with Matthew Quick: Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock , which I preferred. Nonetheless, recommended
This was made into a film, which I haven't seen, and didn't know about, so my review is from someone coming new to the book, purely from my appreciation of Quick's writing in Leonard Peacock'
Typically, I liked the book better. Perhaps.
I saw the film first, and whilst it's very watchable and the main characters well cast to the page, it did feel like serious compromises/additions were made in transition to the silver (linings) screen... <-- see what I did there? Eh? Robert De Niro is a totally new character (playing himself, shockingly) from the silent mess of Pat's dad - and the second half/ending is unrecognizable from the book, in order, style, the whole playbill in fact.
I see two sides to this - one, the author himself in the back of the book states he couldn't care less what they did to make it more watchable (I'm paraphrasing, but he was clearly stoked to get it made, of course so), and he accepts the need for dramatic tension, stakes raising etc to make it more 'watchable' - not sure if this means a failing of the book to start with? Secondly, there were a few whopping cliche clangers towards the end of the book to draw some loose ends together that to be frank, never needed tying in the first place (when you get there, you'll know). But then, when it gets to the dance-off, in two very different places in the story's arc with two very different lead ups, the two handlings of the same event lead me totally undecided as to how the adaptation team planned the playoffs. Again, I think the book wins - But then, watching/reading one without the other kinda feels like part is missing either way.
It's a shame I saw the movie first perhaps, because I saw this play for play with the star actors as I read, which perhaps clouded my immersion in the story. I also am not a fan of American football - whilst not essential, it certainly would help in large passages.
I sound like I didn't like this book. I really did. And a whole lot more than the protag likes Kenny G. Poor Kenny...







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