Latest news with #novella
The Guardian
a day ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
From ‘unpublishable' to acclaim and starry adaptations: Max Porter's Grief is the Thing With Feathers at 10
The final words of Max Porter's Grief is the Thing With Feathers are 'Unfinished. Beautiful. Everything'. So it has been for the slender novella, about a father and his sons grieving the loss of their wife and mother. Somewhat improbably for an experimental hybrid of poem and prose featuring a giant talking crow, Porter's debut has not only been a massive success, but has continued to evolve. Since it was published a decade ago, it's been translated into 36 languages and adapted for stage and screen, including a theatre show starring Oscar winner Cillian Murphy and a film starring Benedict Cumberbatch, due for release later this year. The book's latest evolution is an Australian stage adaptation, premiering at Sydney's Belvoir St Theatre this month. There have already been five stage productions, and a dance adaptation and Slovenian puppet version are on the way; an opera is in development. All this seems remarkable to Porter. 'You know, Grief was not even a publishable proposition to most people that looked at it first,' he says. Porter was more aware than most debut writers of the odds stacked against his novel: he was working in publishing when he wrote it, and keenly aware how his book's fragmentary narrative and experimental prose – which the Guardian described at the time as 'a freewheeling hybrid of novella, poem, essay and play-for-voices' – was risky. Then there's its dense threading of literary references and allusions – and the anthropomorphic crow, inspired by Ted Hughes' 1970 poem cycle Crow. Porter wrote Grief in the gaps of a busy life working in publishing and fathering two young boys, inspired by his experience of losing his father as a child and by his relationship with his brother. In the story, a writer and his two young sons grappling with fresh grief are visited by a human-sized talking crow, who takes up residence in their flat and assumes the role of therapist and babysitter – or as Porter has described him, 'Lady in Black and Mary Poppins, analyst and vandal'. The story chimed with readers, finding an audience as much through personal recommendations as through rave reviews and awards (including the £30,000 International Dylan Thomas prize). Dua Lipa, introducing the novel to her book club audience in April, described it as a 'lyrical, surreal meditation on loss' that simultaneously broke her heart and made her laugh. Reflecting on the enduring appeal and many adaptations, Porter says: 'I guess the imaginary crow and, you know, the everlasting conundrum of human grief, is enough for people to want to play around with still.' Most authors are happy to leave adaptations to others, approving the parameters of the project and then stepping away. Not Porter: he likes to muck in. 'I'm 98% collaboration,' he says – perhaps surprisingly, given he's published four books in the last decade, and just finished his fifth. 'Like, occasionally I will find myself on my own, needing to get some work done, but generally I want to be working with others.' Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning He sat in on early workshops of the Irish stage version with Cillian Murphy and director Enda Walsh, attended a work-in-progress showing of the dance version premiering in Birmingham next year, and has had several chats with the Belvoir team over the show's long gestation. That's not to say he's proscriptive about adaptations: 'I always say this: the book is yours. It's supposed to be fluid and pull-apart-able,' he says. 'It's a book with lots of white space so that the reader can do that work, anyway. You know, it's your flat, it's your sibling relationship. It's your crow.' Sign up to Saved for Later Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia's culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips after newsletter promotion But for Porter – a 43-year-old who converses with the enthusiasm of a preteen boy – discussing his work with other artists and storytellers is energising. 'I had a Zoom chat with [Australian director Simon Phillips] the other day, and it was like, right into the belly of the thing – right into the syntax of it, and the meaning behind some of Crow's language and some of the dad's material. And I was like, this is right back to being interesting again for me,' he says. The Belvoir production, co-adapted by Phillips with lighting and set designer Nick Schlieper and actor Toby Schmitz, will feature video, illustrations and a live cellist on stage. Schmitz, playing both Dad and Crow, says the production is infused with the make-believe spirit of theatre and child's play. 'Sleight of hand, misdirection, all the old theatre magic tricks come into play. Can a blanket be not just a blanket? What can a feather be? … There's something incredible about the suspension of disbelief in theatre.' Schmitz, who also works part-time in his family's bookstore in Newtown, heard about Porter's novel from customers long before he read it: 'People are always asking for it,' he says. 'The book is so magnificent, the text is so unique and delicious … I think it lends itself wonderfully – quite effortlessly – to performance.' He relates to the character of Dad, a 'literary boffin type figure', as both an author (his novel The Empress Murders was published in May) and a father – at time of speaking, juggling rehearsals with the whirlwind of school holidays. Crow is something more mysterious, however – 'full of infinite possibility,' he says. 'I've been swinging from Mary Poppins to Tom Hardy thuggery.' Porter, who will visit Sydney for the play's opening, says he's excited to see what the Australian team have made of his novel. 'I think I find something different every time,' he says of the story's various iterations. 'It's still interesting – it's not like a piece of dead, old, early work. For me, it feels like a living, breathing proposition still, that keeps moving.' Grief is the Thing with Feathers is on at Belvoir St Theatre, Sydney, 26 July to 24 August
New York Times
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
A New ‘Billy Budd' Is a Pressure Cooker of Gay Desire
Billy Budd is a beautiful mystery. He is young, with a smooth and feminine face, but he doesn't know his background; all he can say is that, as a baby, he was found in a silk-lined basket, hanging from the knocker of a door. One thing is certain in Herman Melville's novella 'Billy Budd': This handsome sailor is good, gentle by nature and loyal to his shipmates, who call him Baby and find peace just by being in his presence. To Billy's 'good' Melville adds allegorically pure evil in the ship's master-at-arms, John Claggart, and unbending virtue in Captain Vere. Like the legs of a stool, those characteristics hold up the drama of 'Billy Budd,' which was left unfinished at Melville's death in 1891 and wasn't published until the 1920s. The story of Billy Budd, stammering and precious, then sacrificed to a strict idea of justice after he accidentally but fatally strikes Claggart, has intrigued readers ever since with its opacity and open-endedness. E.M. Forster called the novella 'an easy book, as long as we read it as a yarn.' But tug at the thread, and it unravels into a pile of unanswerable questions: about desire, about morality, about the microcosmic world of a ship at sea. Perhaps that is why adaptations of 'Billy Budd,' onstage and onscreen, have been so different. Each is as much an act of interpretation as translation, adopting a specific perspective, examining Billy's tragedy through a particular character or idea. The latest version, a sexy and ingenious one-act called 'The Story of Billy Budd, Sailor,' ran at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in France earlier this month. It's an adaptation of an adaptation: a chamber treatment, by the director Ted Huffman and the composer Oliver Leith, of Benjamin Britten's 1951 opera 'Billy Budd.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Washington Post
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
From the author of ‘Call Me by Your Name,' three dreamlike romances
What is this thing called love? André Aciman's signature preoccupation permeates the salt-scented languor of 'Room on the Sea,' his new collection of three novellas. Each story contemplates the often tenuous link between love and time, how out of step the two can feel. Aciman explores this electric tension by interrupting his protagonists' daily routines with, variously, a holiday, jury duty and an academic fellowship. Italy, with its shimmering coasts, coffee and simple cuisine, serves as a point of contact with 'shadow-lives waiting in the wings' throughout the book.
Irish Times
20-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Sakina's Kiss by Vivek Shanbhag: Another compact masterpiece
Sakina's Kiss Author : Vivek Shanbhag, translated from the Kannada by Srinath Perur ISBN-13 : 978-0-571-39083-0 Publisher : Faber & Faber Guideline Price : £12.99 Vivek Shanbhag's magnificent novella, Ghachar Ghochar, translated from the south Indian language of Kannada by Srinath Perur, and published in English in 2019, drew rapturous acclaim from far and wide. In these very pages, the critic Eileen Battersby wrote that it was 'possibly one of the finest literary works you will ever encounter'. Now Shanbhag and Perur are back with Sakina's Kiss, another compact masterpiece, about the uniquely human delusion of being in charge of our own lives. Our narrator is a middle-aged IT worker, a husband and father, living in a big city in India, possibly Bengaluru. He's a genial fellow who wishes trouble upon no one, secretly relies on guidance from self-help books and is ever willing to compromise for an easy life. Rather than insist that people call him Venkataramana, the name given to him by his parents in honour of the family deity, he's allowed his name to shrink in length over the years, and now goes by Venkat. 'After all,' he reasons to himself, 'when you want to win a swimming race, you don't dive in carrying weights.' READ MORE [ Saraswati by Gurnaik Johal: A novel of immense range that deserves a very wide readership Opens in new window ] He and his wife, Viji, think of themselves as modern people: although their marriage was arranged by their families, they like to say that, actually, only the meeting was arranged, and the rest they did for themselves. After all, they liked each other right from the beginning, and they do seem to be a good match: on the first night of their honeymoon, the newly-weds open their suitcases to discover they have each secretly brought a copy of the exact same self-help book entitled – what else? – Living in Harmony. If it seems like a meet-cute Disney moment, that's because it is, and the author is way ahead of you. A knock on the door sets the novel in motion: two young men, university students, want to speak to the couple's daughter, Rekha. But she is out of town, uncontactable by mobile, and the men – thugs, as we soon see – aren't too happy about it. Ominous shadows from a dark underworld soon threaten to disrupt Venkat's peaceful life, and it remains to be seen whether his mantras will be of any help. By turns comic and unsettling, this is another triumph from Shanbhag.
Geek Tyrant
06-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Tyrant
Review: THE LIFE OF CHUCK is a Soulful Ode to Existence, Memory, and the Quiet Magic of Living — GeekTyrant
Mike Flanagan has made a career out of wrestling with grief, mortality, and the unknown. But with The Life of Chuck , he shifts the tone from fear, dread, and horror to warmth and wonder, offering what might be his most emotionally generous film yet. Adapted from Stephen King's novella, this isn't a horror film, at least, not in the way we've come to expect from Flanagan. This is a story about death, yes, but also about life, and how those two are inseparably bound together. For me, it hit like a quiet thunderstor, soft and heavy, with a beauty I was hoping for. The film is structured in reverse, unfolding in three acts that take us on a journey from Chuck's death back to his childhood. It's a gutsy narrative choice, but it works. You don't walk out of this film trying to piece together plot threads or decipher twists, you walk out reflecting on the moments in your own life that suddenly feel more meaningful. That's the effect this movie had on me. It got under my skin and I found myself welling up multiple times, not because of grand, dramatic turns, but because of small, delicate truths that rang so painfully and beautifully real. This story's power is rooted in how universal it feels. Chuck Krantz isn't a world-famous figure or a mythical savior. He's a person who is quietly significant in ways that ripple through others, whether he realizes it or not. The movie opens with a surreal sense of finality, the world is unraveling, time is collapsing, and strange phenomena begin to mark the end of things. But instead of spiraling into apocalyptic chaos, the film focuses on memory, meaning, and human connection. It reminded me, strongly, of how I've felt coming out of films like Stand By Me , with a deep emotional ache wrapped in joy and happiness. It's not easy to describe that feeling, but The Life of Chuck captured it perfectly. The performances across the board of this ensemble cast are excellent, even though many of the roles are relatively small. Tom Hiddleston may be the headliner, but he really only has one big sequence. It's Mark Hamill who delivers one of the most powerful performances in the film. His character might have the most screen time, and there's a emotional weight to his performance. Every cast member, from Karen Gillan to Chiwetel Ejiofor to young Jacob Tremblay, contributes something meaningful. No one feels wasted. Each person brings a note to the symphony of Chuck's life, and they all play it with heart. Flanagan's direction is gentle and confident. He's not interested in hitting us over the head with the film's themes. Instead, he invites us to sit with them, to feel them. There's a vulnerability in the filmmaking that feels new for him. While many of his past works leaned into fear, this one leans into acceptance. It doesn't rage against the dying of the light, it looks at it and says, 'Thank you', which I thought was powerful. I'm not sure this movie will land for everyone, and that's okay. Some may find its structure jarring or its tone overly sentimental. But for those willing to meet it where it is, to embrace its introspection and let their guard down, it's one of the most rewarding cinematic experiences of the year. For me, it was personal. It touched on things I've gone through in my own life, and somehow, instead of leaving me heavy, it lifted me. I walked out of the theater feeling like I'd just been hugged by the universe itself. There's a line running through The Life of Chuck that essentially says: 'Everything matters.' That idea pulses through the film like a heartbeat. It's a movie about moments, quiet ones, strange ones, painful ones, and how they echo. It doesn't answer life's big questions, but it respects them enough to ask. It gave me a chance to stop, reflect, and just be grateful for the ride. I honestly think this is one of Mike Flanagan's finest works. It's daring, heartfelt, and completely unafraid to wear its soul on its sleeve. For me, The Life of Chuck isn't just one of the best Stephen King adaptations, it's one of the best films of the year. It's a quiet masterpiece that reminds us that even as everything ends, what we had still matters.
