Five modern novels destined for movie adaptations
Some of the earliest narrative films were adaptations of novels, such as Alice in Wonderland, Cinderella, and Little Women. Using a preexisting story saves a lot of time when writing a film, but the written medium allows screenwriters and directors to interpret a novel however they like.
Thus, certain books have been adapted multiple times, each with a different tone or envisioning of the characters. Alice in Wonderland has been transformed into a Disney animation with psychedelic imagery, an unnerving part-live action, part-stop-motion version (Alice by Jan Švankmajer), and a gothic Tim Burton version, just to name a few.
While classic stories are most commonly used as source material – their enduring popularity making the success of their adaptations more promising – many filmmakers look to newer releases, finding incredible acclaim as a result. For example, when Stephen King’s Carrie and The Shining were adapted into movies, both stories had only been written several years prior, and the author was still in the infancy of his career.
Evidently, if a story is strong enough, audiences will enjoy it in cinematic form, regardless of whether they’ve read the book. There have been some great new releases in the past few years that would certainly find success as films; we’ve compiled five below that we would like to see on the silver screen.
Five modern novels destined for adaptations:
Paradise Rot (Jenny Hval, 2009)
While you might recognise Jenny Hval’s name if you’re into experimental folk music, the musician is also a writer. In 2009, she published her first novel, Paradise Rot, which wasn’t translated into English for another nine years. The stunning novel takes a descent into the surreal, making it perfect for an arthouse filmmaker to take on, using Hval’s ambiguous language to create a fascinating cinematic interpretation.
The novel follows Jo, a student who has moved to England for university, finding herself surrounded by a foreign culture that she must acclimatise to. She’s a virgin, but she’s also not sure of her sexuality and gets caught up in a world of confusion and blurred identities as the narrative continually becomes more grotesque, with biblical allusions, rotting fruit and piss all becoming frequent images within the prose. Get Julia Ducournau behind this one, and it’ll surely become a twisted coming-of-age classic.
Boy Parts (Eliza Clark, 2020)
Eliza Clark made her debut with Boy Parts in 2020, a powerfully enticing tale narrated by the unreliable Irina. When we first meet her, she is working in a bar while working as a photographer behind the scenes. Interestingly, she likes to take photos of naked young men, often in uncompromising positions, and she soon finds her newest victim in a meek supermarket worker. Irina is intense, chaotic, and obsessed with explicit and graphic films, and she uses these as inspiration for her work.
Boy Parts is a black comedy through and through, with Clark’s natural British wit seeping through each page. At the same time, many of Irina’s actions are questionable and sometimes quite harrowing, and by the end of the book, we don’t know what’s real and what’s not. It’s the perfect story for the big screen, full of shocking revelations and humorous scenes that would easily draw a dedicated fanbase.
Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl (Andrea Lawlor, 2017)
Now, this one might be slightly harder to adapt because our protagonist, Paul, shapeshifts between a male and female identity throughout the novel, using this to his advantage to explore himself and his sexuality. He can even grow breasts and a vagina, getting rid of them whenever he likes. Set in the early ‘90s, author Andrea Lawlor makes references to many queer artists, events and locations from the period, taking inspiration from their own experiences of growing up during that time.
Throughout the novel, Paul engages in many sexual encounters, some more romantic than others, while navigating the world through various identities. One of the greatest parts of the novel is spending time with Paul, who you can’t help but love, even if he makes some questionable decisions. Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl is a sprawling character study with enough compelling side characters to make for a fun yet poignant film about gender and sexuality.
Paul (Daisy Lafarge, 2021)
Another great debut novel is Daisy Lafarge’s Paul, a sizzling summer novel about betrayal and deceit. We meet Frances shortly after she’s graduated from university, setting off on a journey to the Pyrenean Valleys to work on a farm in exchange for free accommodation. Having just moved from Paris, where she’d been living with her university professor, engaging in an illicit affair, Frances hopes this will be a nice retreat. She soon finds herself captivated by the farm owner, a mysterious and well-read man named Paul.
Yet, as the story unfolds, Frances comes to realise that the older Paul isn’t as great as she initially thinks. She uncovers clues in his house and through conversations with his friends that reveal an uncomfortable and criminal past. A subdued, quietly potent cinematic version, bubbling with tension and foreshadowing, would work perfectly—think Eric Rohmer, but much, much darker.
A Girl’s Story by Annie Ernaux
Nobel Prize winner Annie Ernaux has a flawless bibliography. Her 2001 memoir Happening, about illegal abortion in ‘60s France, has already been made into a fantastic film, so why not adapt another? A Girl’s Story is a deeply personal blend of memoir and fiction, in which Ernaux processes her first love, the ghost of him following her through her future experiences.
Unable to truly write about the girl she was back in 1958 when she first slept with a man, she writes about wanting to forget her “desire and madness, her idiocy and pride, her hunger and her blood that ceased to flow,” adding, “I have never managed to do so”. The tender story is compelling, truly digging into her psyche and how we can get so attached to someone who offers us very little in return. As a film, this would, like Paul, work well as a more subdued tale told in poignant retrospective vignettes.
