No need to make excuses for this lousy story

I just finished the rather awful book so I Netflix'd the movie out of curiosity. I see a lot of people here trying to ponder out Stephen's and Julia's actions.

Folks, don't bother yourselves. These characters were badly and lazily conceived in the book, and the movie does no better. The author, Josephine Hart, simply _declares_ these deeeep loves (or attractions or whatever they are) without ever trying to convey the emotions or to persuade the reader. "I saw the stranger across the room. And then I knew I had to kill everything in my path to get to her and would end my days in desolation, but that was okay as long as I touched her first." You feel as much detachment and confusion reading the book as you do watching the movie.

Josephine Hart fooled some critics and readers with her first book (Damage), but afterwards no one bit. Her subsequent books were called pretentious, relentlessly aphoristic, self-parodist, frustrating, irrational. She was discovered to be a one-note writer, and that one note not very deep.

So if you're scratching your head over these characters, leave your scalp in peace. It's not you, it's them.


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