Burgers & Fries & Shakes Oh My!
Don't Eat This Book by Morgan Spurlock Paul McKenna's Change your Life in Seven Days Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller. Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk About Kevin. Faulkner's three-book compendium The Sound & the Fury, Light in August and As I Lay Dying
Supersize Me gained Morgan Spurlock both 35lbs and an Oscar nomination – the hugely popular documentary showed in expanding detail what happens when you eat only McDonalds' products for a month. With headlines fixated on our over-growing children and links being made between fast food and obesity, it was a movie crying out for an accompanying book. Except of course, that book had already been written and widely read in Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation. Not to be dissuaded, Spurlock seems to have waited 18 months and then decided to cash in after all. He has moved from attacking not only McDonalds but all junk food (including the current bete noire of all politicians, the school dinner) and turned out a fresh serving. Don't Eat This Book contains the facts and stats of the film and at least has had the good grace to widen its scope. We're no apologists for the golden arches but it seems unfair that McDonalds should shoulder more blame than their market share deserves. At the least we can thank Spurlock for the nugget that french fries, sealed in a jam jar, would not rot no matter how long he waited.
Interestingly, a plethora of depressing facts on junk food and saturated fat doesn't seem enough to turn most people off. The biggest selling non fiction book of the year in the UK is Paul McKenna's Change your Life in Seven Days which has sold over a quarter of a million copies and is now joined on the shelves by I Can Make You Thin. No one wants to do it the hard way anymore. People seem determined to embrace the easy fix and McKenna's books are the dieting equivalent of fast food.
Adapting a Scandal
The man who adapted Iris Murdoch and John Bailey's lives in the film Iris has released details of his next film project. Richard Eyre is preparing to adapt Zoe Heller's cautionary tale of forbidden attachments, loneliness and compulsion; the Man Booker Prize-nominated Notes on a Scandal. Heller, columnist with the Sunday Times, took the modern parents' nightmare, that of liaison between teacher and pupil, telling it from the unreliable and sympathetic point of view of another staff member. By making the adult in the relationship a female, the new-age art teacher Sheba, Heller avoided the abuse issues which would have surfaced had the genders been reversed. This allowed her to concentrate on Barbara, the deluded and far more interesting older teacher who narrates the story.
Sheba, Heller's least successful character, will hopefully be given some depth by chameleon-like Cate Blanchett, best known here for her portrayal of the eponymous journalist in Veronica Guerin. The caustic, crusty and slightly mad Barbara will be an easy assignment for Dame Judi Dench. Fans of the book may have missed the ending to the real-life tale that inspired Notes on a Scandal. The marriage took place last month in Seattle of Mary Letourneau and Vili Fualaau, attended by their two daughters. The 22 year age gap between the happy couple would have been more noticeable in 1995 when she was 34 and he was her 12-year-old pupil…
That Boy Kevin Again
As predicted here months ago, (no false modesty for Village) the Orange Prize for Fiction was given to New Yorker Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk About Kevin. Last week. Shriver, who was christened Margaret Ann, changed her name as she felt she had better hope of gaining attention with a man's name. The £30,000 prize, awarded to the best book written by a woman last year, may have slightly torpedoed that plan. The book is the story of Kevin, a psychopathic teenager who murdered seven of his classmates. His parents deal with every parents' dread – what if you can't love or forgive your own child? Shriver admitted that she was considering starting a family with her husband prior to writing the book but that this plan has now been put on hold. Another contender for the prize, Marina Lewycka's A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian, belied its uninspiring title to win the Bollinger Wodehouse Prize for comic fiction writing at the Hay Festival the day before the Orange Prize announcement.
Old Books Home
Old books don't die, they just wait for the chance of resurrection. For some books, this can mean the odd loan from the school library while for others it can mean a glittering second life on the bestseller list. In non fiction, the outing of FBI Deputy Director Mark Felt as the shady Deep Throat has propelled Woodward & Bernstein's All The President's Men to the top of the book charts. In fiction there is a similar story where William Faulkner's three-book compendium (The Sound & the Fury, Light in August and As I Lay Dying) is glued to the number 2 slot in the US after its selection by the Oprah Winfrey Book Club. Oprah, who reawakened American thirst for East of Eden and Anna Karenina last year can do everything in books except keep Harry Potter from the top spot.