Favourite Adapted Books

Great books have a tendency to be snapped up for adaptation by ideas-starved movie executives. While this occasionally leads to cinematic brilliance, more often than not a book's greatness can't really be transferred to the screen. So here's a handful of our choices of books that have been adapted to varying degrees of success. Regardless of the films though, we think the books deserve your attention. Have a read, then add your own choices below...

I am Legend (1954) by Richard Matheson

Worldwide disease-based apocalypses are fairly commonplace nowadays, one might say it's even boring, blasé, and unoriginal material. If you want ‘original' end of the world zombie/vampire happenings, you have to travel back in time all the way to 1954, the year the American writer Richard Matheson wrote I am Legend. This work had a major influence on sci-fi/horror, particularly with the vampire (it's often considered the first modern vampire novel) and zombie (popularized the notion of disease turning the world's people into flesh eating monsters) genres.

The book has been made into three feature-length films, The Last Man on Earth (1964), The Omega Man (1971), and I am Legend (2008), all of which deviate from to book to varying degrees. Each also tackles the central notion of legend-creation in a different manner.

Aside from the zombies and vampires, the book also delves into myth creation and explores the origins of superstitions.  Matheson turns one man's story of survival at all costs into something grander and much more terrifying. It's not until the very end of the novel that you come to understand why Robert Neville is ‘Legend.' (Michael Merillo)

In Cold Blood (1966) by Truman Capote

This book was a ground-breaking first at the time it was written - a journalistic novel. In 1959 there was a terrible multiple murder in Kansas - the wealthy Clutter family, shot in their own home in the small sleepy town of Holcomb. Truman Capote travelled to Holcomb and spoke to the suspects, the townspeople, the police, the legal establishment, townsfolk and friends of the family; he followed the murder trial of the two killers and documented their backgrounds and characters. Then he pieced it together using a little artistic license, and the result is a startling and gripping story about the lives that get tangled up in those shocking events.

The way in which he delves into the characters of the murderers - their unfortunate life circumstances and untapped potential - brings a poignant perspective to the plot. Capote leaves moralising at the door, allowing the real-life characters to shine through. Ultimately this book is not just about the shocking, seemingly random and unprovoked murders of a family in cold blood by a pair of ne'er-do-wells. It is a book about America - about how two of its sons went astray, how the law and the media reacted, how lives were altered and how one family paid the ultimate price.

Once I started reading it, I couldn't have put it down if my life depended on it. (Claire Stewart)

The Hours (1998) by Michael Cunningham

I can't remember whether I read the book or saw the film first because I can't actually separate one from the other. As far as I'm concerned, The Hours is one of those very rare gems: a perfectly crafted and beautifully written book that managed to become a stunning movie, with brilliant editing, stunning cinematography, a fantastic soundtrack by Philip Glass and, most importantly, inspired casting choices (Meryl Streep IS Clarissa, Julianne Moore IS Laura Brown and Nicole Kidman - thanks to/despite that infamous prosthetic nose- IS Virginia Woolf!).

The way Michael Cunningham writes (using a very descriptive present tense) also makes the act of reading a very cinematic experience. Unlike with so many disappointing  film adaptations (including the one of Michael Cunningham's A Home at the End of the World), I love both versions of The Hours just as much and would go as far as saying that it is both one of my favourite books and favourite films of all time (and favourite pieces of music as well). (Olivier Joly)

Atonement (2001) by Ian McEwan

This was a book that I stayed away from for a while. My wife read it and loved it, but I wasn't convinced it was going to be my sort of thing. When I finally gave in and cracked its spine, my initial impressions confirmed those suspicions. The opening introduction to imaginative young Briony Tallis, her cold and reserved older sister Cecilia and their family friend Robbie Turner, played out in a balmy pre-war summer in the Tallis's country house, failed to engage my attention, and I wondered if I could be bothered to keep reading.

But I don't like to give up on novels, and as I kept reading I was gradually drawn in by Ian McEwan's writing. I realised that the introduction had actually laid down very precise foundations for the themes of the story, and that McEwan was taking his characters somewhere that I was fascinated to follow. But not only that; he was also investigating the nature and purpose of storytelling itself, and the way in which he brought these themes and characters together in the book's final section left me gobsmacked. My lasting impression of Atonement is of a beautifully constructed, powerfully moving work of fiction - certainly one of the best books I've read. (Paul Gallagher)

The Virgin Suicides (1993) by Jeffrey Eugenides

The Virgin Suicides tells the story of the teenage Lisbon sisters; Cecilia, Lux, Bonnie, Mary and Therese, and their suicides in a quiet American suburb in the 1970s. The narrator is one, or perhaps all, of a group of boys who lived in their neighbourhood, looking back as adults on the girls they loved, and their deaths. It's a beautifully sad novel but the main thing which drew me in and broke my heart was the sisters' absence - lonely ciphers, they float dreamily round the edges of the narrative, never breaking in to tell their stories. Instead the boys reconstruct the final year of the girls' lives through their memories and a series of objects that they still see themselves as custodians of. Mainly personal possessions of the Lisbon sisters, they are evidence that can perhaps give a reason why they took their own lives, but also give proof they existed.

The Virgin Suicides perfectly evokes the liminal state of adolescence, its preoccupations and its innocence, albeit through the hazy nostalgia brought on by maturity. Sofia Coppola's adaptation was pretty faithful and did very well at capturing the atmosphere of a disintegrating suburban idyll that pervades the book. However no film could ever evoke the boys' quiet love and pain in the same way as Jeffrey Eugenides' writing. (Sophie Moxon)