Books and movies to look out for in 2015

There are numerous book and movie releases which I am looking forward to in 2015. Here are some of them, which you may like as well.

MOVIES

An adaptation of Suite Française, the novel by Irène Némirovsky. Némirovsky’s novel has an extraordinary story behind it: the author was killed in Auschwitz, but her two daughters survived the war and her elder daughter, Denise, kept the Suite Française manuscript for fifty years: it was too painful to read and they assumed it was their mother’s journal. Eventually, Denise examined the notebook and discovered the novel: in 2004, it was finally published. Although it is unfinished (Némirovsky had planned a series of five novels), it is a powerful and compelling read. I look forward to seeing the movie version.

Another 2015 movie is a new adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd, which will be released at the beginning of May. The last big-screen adaptation of Far From the Madding Crowd was in 1967, starring Julie Christie. I checked it out on Wikipedia and the 1967 film poster is cringe-worthy, from a feminist standpoint: “A willful passionate girl and…the three men who want her!” This outdated tagline reveals attitudes towards women at the time: the tagline and illustrations portray Bathsheba Everdene, the protagonist of Far From the Madding Crowd, as a nonsensical, wayward girl.

However, she is a wealthy, independent woman, prone to remarks such as “I shouldn’t mind being a bride at a wedding, if I could be one without having a husband. But since a woman can’t show off in that way by herself, I shan’t marry — at least yet” (ch. 4). While she does eventually marry, her life isn’t defined by men: she is unusual in a Victorian novel in that she runs her own farm and makes decisions about who she hires. This 2015 version stars Carey Mulligan as the heroine, which is a good casting choice in my opinion. The trailer shows striking cinematography, but Bathsheba surprisingly has no lines in it. It is difficult to judge from a short trailer, but I hope the movie does portray her independent spirit.

BOOKS

Sara Gruen, author of Water for Elephants, has written a new novel. Set in the 1940s, At the Water’s Edge is a love story with an unusual backdrop: Maddie and Ellis Hyde are high society siblings who are disowned by their father. They then travel from Philadelphia to Scotland, where Ellis decides to try to do what his father failed to do and find the Loch Ness Monster, and “Maddie, now alone in a foreign country, must begin to figure out who she is and what she wants” (quote from Goodreads). I read Water for Elephants and enjoyed it, so I look forward to reading more of Gruen’s writing.

At the Water’s Edge (image source

Almost Famous Women by Megan Mayhew Bergman: this collection of short stories gives fictional portrayals of the lives of “almost famous” historical women, from Lord Byron’s illegitimate daughter to Edna St. Vincent Millay’s sister. It sounds like an interesting read!

Almost Famous Women (image source

What new book and movie releases are you looking forward to this year?