What's Eating Gilbert Grape

I am appalled. The Royal Mail - my occasional employer and lifelong friend, backbone of these British Isles and the hand that connects us to the lands across the sea - has failed me. My Stephenie Meyer books still haven't come. I feel like I'm a junkie and someone's promised me a nice bit of smack, but they've turned up at my house with some bills and a postcard for my brother instead and told me, "Oh, don't worry, it'll be here in 1 - 3 working days". Yes. That is exactly how I feel.



14. What's Eating Gilbert Grape - Peter Hedges
I'm not going to be able to write about this without comparing it to the film version, though to be honest the main I decided to read the original was so I could compare the two. I was actually quite surprised at how much was changed for the movie, especially as Peter Hedges, if Wikipedia is to be believed, wrote the screenplay - quite a few major characters are cut out, presumably to make room for Gilbert's romance with Becky, which isn't all that prominent in the book. The characters are different, too: Gilbert's anger and resentment is much stronger and far more apparent here (though that's largely because the story's written in first-person narrative) and I think he develops further than his film counterpart; Becky isn't quite as quirky as she is in the movie, more ethereal, and also much younger. I warmed to them both much more because of it. The tone is much dryer than that of the film, and the ending, though not altogether bleak, is a bit less Hollywood. On the whole I preferred the book because the story goes so much deeper and you get to know the characters better, but the film is still excellent - Leonardo DiCaprio is amazing in it.