I just finished reading The Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick, after of course watching the movie, and completely falling in love with how Jennifer Lawrence, one of my favorite actresses, plays Tiffany. The ironic part about this whole ordeal is that I picked up the book long before I saw the movie and never came around to flipping to page one. Then I saw the movie, and said “OH GOSH THIS IS MY FAVORITE ROM COM EVERRRRR” when the credits rolled, so of course, I tore through my two book shelves and the three piles of books I have, looking for it.
Luckily for me, I live in a very organized mess, now a bit messier because of the search for this book that I have yet to clean, because of my reading.
I digress (and apologize for doing so haha).
I started this book hoping that I would find out what it is that Pat whispers into Nikki’s ear at the end of the dance competition. I had hoped that maybe there was this great secret that only the readers would know. I had hoped that like many other book-to-movie experiences, I would find the book pleasant, amazing, and so much deeper than the movie let on. Like Harry Potter, Lord Of The Rings, fucking Twilight. TWILIGHT! But no. In my opinion, while the book does have the same basic ideas as the movie, the book is just… totally different.
Pat is released from a mental health facility at the very beginning of the story, but his relationship with his father, while it does rely on the football games that kind of shape the backbone of his family and home life, is not as… strong(?) as it is in the movie. And thats saying something, seeing as they don’t really play catch every other scene, if you get my drift. Tiffany is the same rambunctious dark-haired female, with the same messed up past, but somehow I feel like she comes off much older in the book. Possibly because Pat never asks her how old she is, and so she doesn’t sass him with the “Old enough to have been married” remark.
While there are so many similarities, the differences, the little things, are glaring at me. If I were to take a red pen to the book, the whole thing would be marked up from beginning to end.
They’re GREAT by themselves. I like the book a lot, save for how it ended. I preferred the movie’s conclusion. But the movie is cute, its charming, its.. fun.. in a way. The book is less fun and more… spastic. Which makes sense, since it is narrated by Pat, and so it provides more insight into how his mind works. It feels like he is embellishing a few things. It feels like there might be a few things he changed just so that you could believe everything he says, and give him a bit more credibility. While the movie doesn’t rely on him, but it relies on the performances and dialogues of every character.
I feel like they’re two different stories, but they’re following the same timeline. They’re parallel to each other, rarely breaking to cross paths from beginning to end.
I like the movie more….purely because I get to watch Jennifer Lawrence be one of my absolute favorite characters of all time since Angelina Jolie’s Gia Carangi. It’s an interesting RomCom that has it’s intense moments, which make it memorable.
This movie also started the whole Jennifer Lawrence x Bradley Cooper train that I hopped onto. They’re just so great on screen together.
