The book's the thing...

And sometimes it’s even better when it is adapted for TV or a movie

If you are a fan of Elena Ferrante, and (like me) are suffering withdrawal pangs after having devoured every word she has ever written, then I have some good news for you. The Italian film and television production company, Wildside, has announced that it is working on adapting Ferrante’s Neopolitan quartert into a TV series, along with producer Fandango. The series will be shot in Italy, and in Italian.

The four novels, which trace the friendship of Lenu and Lina over half a century, will be adapted into a four-season TV series, which each novel taking in eight episodes, making it a 32-episode blockbuster. Ferrante is believed to be involved in the production, though nobody quite knows in what capacity or how closely. But then, given that nobody even knows who Ferrante is – she is still jealously clinging tight to her anonymity – that can’t be very surprising.

No release date has been announced but I am already salivating with anticipation. The story of Lenu and Lina consumed me entirely as I raced to the final book in the quartet, The Story of the Lost Child, and I can’t wait to see this tale of female friendship retold in a visual medium.

Of course, this anticipation is tinged with a dash of fear. It is the same fear that every book-lover experiences when a well-loved book is turned into a movie or a TV series. I felt that fear when the first series of Game of Thrones was released, not sure how that tale of kings and knights, love and lust, pride and passion, would work on the TV screen.

Would it all look a bit ridiculous, like some costume dramas tend to do? Would the story have the same power on TV as it did in the book? Would the characters be reduced to caricatures because of the demands of the visual medium? Would it just become yet another bodice-ripper of the kind that litter the television universe?

You can imagine my relief when the TV series proved to be as much of a triumph as the books. Of course, I felt a little miffed that I already knew what was going to happen, thus losing out on the thrill of anticipation that other viewers, who hadn’t read the book, were feeling. But then, George R.R. Martin, rather obligingly, went off script in the later seasons, and I could watch with the same edge-of-the-seat excitement that non-readers were privileged to experience.

So, yes, I am a tad nervous about how the Ferrante will survive the transition to our TV screens. Just as I am both nervous and excited about the movie adapation of Longbourn that is in the works. Random House Studios and Focus Features have acquired the film rights to Jo Baker’s novel about life below stairs in the Bennet household made famous by Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice), and the release date is tentatively set for 2017. I just hope and pray that this adaptation remains true to the original and doesn’t go down the Downton Abbey route.

But the one author whose works I long to see on television is Georgette Heyer (just one of her books, The Reluctant Widow, has been made into a film – and a pretty bad one at that!). The prolific author of Regency Romances has given us such amazing characters as The Grand Sophy, Arabella, Frederica, Venetia, and it would be an absolute treat to see them come alive on the TV screen. But for some reason, British TV companies are too busy filming Pride and Prejudice again and again and again to pay any attention to the possibilities inherent in these Heyer heroines.

And that is an absolute pity, if you ask me. Heyer tells absolutely cracking stories, intricately-plotted and leavened with wit and humour. And her heroines are the absolute best; plucky little creatures who do their best in a society that hems them around with strict rules of etiquette.

Who else but Heyer could come up with a heroine like Sophia Stanton-Lacy who comes visiting her aunt with a little monkey to gift her young cousins, and thinks nothing of confronting an evil moneylender with an elegant but effective pistol? Or the impish Leonie de Saint-Vire, who masquerades as a young page in Parisian society, before being unveiled as an aristocratic beauty? Or even the stunningly beautiful Deborah Grantham, relegated to the fringes of polite society as Faro’s Daughter, who makes the greatest conquest of them all?

I could go on listing the marvelous, resourceful, witty, intelligent, beautiful women who people Heyer’s stories (the headstrong Lady Serena Carlow, Judith Taverner, Mary Challoner are just some names that come to mind) but then we’d be here forever. Instead you could go over to petitionbuzz.com and sign a petition asking that Heyer’s novels be made into a movie.

Though, if you ask me, television is better suited to telling Heyer’s stories (in my view, movies are like short stories, only TV series can do justice to the sweep of a novel). Surely the BBC or ITV, which spends millions on period dramas of dubious quality, could pick up one Heyer Regency Romance – my personal favourite would be The Grand Sophy – and adapt it into a six-part series. I would bet my entire collection of tattered copies of Heyer’s novels that it would do so well that production companies would be scrambling for the rights to the books yet to be filmed.

So, come on guys, look sharp. This is a world of fiction beyond Jane Austen and Julian Fellowes that beckons.

Stronger than fiction

There’s something to celebrate in each fully-formed, three-dimensional female character in our favourite books

As season five of Game of Thrones debuted on television, I decided to go on a refresher course of sorts. That is, I began to read the Game of Thrones books (yes, all five of them!) in order. The first time around, I had virtually galloped through them, racing to the end, so that I could find out what happened next, and next, and next. This time around, because I already know what lies ahead, I am lingering on every page, giving myself a chance to savour the incredible skill of George R.R. Martin as a storyteller.

And what a storyteller he is! The plot twists and turns in ways you could scarce imagine, aided by the fact that Martin is not afraid of killing off some of our favourite characters. As the immortal line goes: Valar Morghulis (All men must die).

But what I like best about Martin is that he has given us some of the strongest female characters I have ever met in fiction. You may well carp and moan about the excessive sexual violence and the ‘objectification’ of women, but I am loath to impose modern standards of feminism and gender justice on a fantasy set in what most closely resembles medieval times. 

I would much rather rejoice in the strength and complexity of the women in Game of Thrones. They are smart, they are cunning, they are brave, they are good, they are evil, they take no prisoners (except, of course, when they do), and they stand up for themselves in a hostile and frightening world. 

There is no easy black-and-white study here, every character is delineated in shades of grey. Lady Catelyn Stark may be earth mother to her children but is the stepmother from hell, who cannot bear to even lay eyes on Jon Snow, her husband Eddard Stark’s bastard. Cersei may be an adulterous, incestuous, harpy with an alcohol problem but there is no doubting her unconditional love for her children (yes, even the monstrous Prince Joffrey). Sansa Stark may have lost her moral moorings momentarily in her infatuation for Joffrey but she recovers to show true courage and quiet grit in surviving in a court full of intrigue and malevolence.

As I read my way through the books, though, I began thinking back to the other delightful female characters I had encountered in fiction, those women/girls who had shared my growing-up years, who had served as role models, life lessons, even witty companions as I negotiated my journey from child to teenager to adult. So, here is no particular order of importance is my top five list of my favourite fictional characters.

• Arya Stark: This was a close-run thing, because with Daenerys Targaryen, mother of dragons, in the mix, it is tough choosing any one single character from Game of Thrones. But in the end, Arya made the cut, because of her indomitable spirit, her soaring courage, her refusal to stay within the confines of gender stereotypes, her water dancing, and of course, her proficiency with her tiny little sword called Needle. When it comes to dealing with life’s villains, “Stick them with the pointy end” is a philosophy I can get fully on board with.
• Scout Finch: She begins the book at five years and is only eight when it ends, but the entire story of To Kill A Mockingbird is told from her perspective. The view of the adult universe as seen from a child’s eyes brings with it a particular poignancy, as we see her struggling to understand how the world works and trying to cope with her dread of the unknown, as symbolized by the mysterious Boo Radley. If life is all about confronting one’s demons, then Scout Finch could teach us all a lesson or two.
• Elizabeth Bennet: Intelligent, spirited, lively, Elizabeth is a young lady who is convinced of her own worth. And such is her self-esteem that even the pompous Mr Darcy, with his obsession with class and station, can’t destroy it. In the modern world, I am sure that Liz would go on to have a fabulous career as a writer, make her own fortune, and live happily ever after alone. In Austen’s world, she has to make a good marriage, but she manages to do so on her own terms. And in that era, that was victory enough.
• The Grand Sophy: The heroine of Georgette Heyer’s eponymous Regency novel, Sophy is a woman to gladden every feminist heart. She rides a horse better than any man, she thinks nothing of confronting an evil money-lender with a lethal little pistol, she handles her own finances, she match-makes like the best of interfering mamas, and she does all this looking like an Amazonian vision. And best of all, she brings her young cousins the greatest present of all: a monkey called Jacko to grace their nursery. How can you not love her?
• Barbara Havers: The working-class detective in Elizabeth George’s novels, Havers is prickly, defensive, angry, and very conflicted. She is torn between the demands of her career and caring for her aged mother who is suffering from Alzheimer disease; between her class hatred of her boss, Thomas Lynley (also the Earl of Ashteron), and her recognition of his innate decency. But somehow, despite her chaotic private life, her disastrous eating habits, her very questionable fashion sense, and her hostility to all authority figures, Havers manages to make that detection gig work quite brilliantly. Full marks for that.