What Book to Read?

Roman Polanski has been in the news recently for all the wrong reasons. But being under house arrest in Switzerland – from which he has now been released – didn’t stop him making an excellent film out of Robert Harris’s thriller The Ghost.  Harris worked with him on the script, and the film, called The Ghost Writer, starring Ewan McGregor and Pierce Brosnan, was recently released to general critical approval. Polanski won ‘best director’ at the Berlin Film Festival for the film.

In my view, it’s Harris that should get most of the credit, because the original book is so good. No doubt you can make a good film out of a bad book – though I can’t think of one – but it is much easier to make a good film if the story has good bones to start with.

The story is told from the perspective of an unnamed protagonist who is employed to finish a manuscript which purports to be the memoirs of Adam Lang, a recently retired British Prime Minister. The original ghost writer has died, but the book still needs work. He sets about reshaping what he considers a rather boring account, only to find that information left behind by the original ghost writer doesn’t tally with the public record. He investigates further, and finds that all is not as it seems. What will happen if he pokes around too vigorously in Lang’s past?

There are no prizes for guessing that the retired PM is meant to be Tony Blair. Alongside the protagonist’s investigation runs the account of an attempt to indict the ex PM in the International Criminal Court for war crimes in relation to the invasion of Iraq. Harris said he half expected a writ against him when to book was published in 2007. 

The story is presented in a relatively low key way, an intellectual puzzle rather than a blood and guts action thriller, though of course there is action and blood. There is also a twist in the story, which isn’t that surprising to readers of Harris’s work; all his thrillers have plots that are carefully constructed and contain surprises. But in this one, the greatest surprise to me came at the end – a real sting in the tail.

There are a few points where the film and the book differ, but not to any material degree. The film captures the bleak winter landscape of the book, and for me succeeded in building a high level of tension, even though I had already read the book. But if you have the choice, read the book first. The first person account in the book seems to me to give the story – and especially the ending – more punch than a film about the protagonist can do, however well acted and directed.

Polanski originally wanted to film Harris’s book Pompeii (2003), even though it would have been an incredibly expensive project. Now he’s free, maybe he’ll look at it again. Get in first and read the book. Robert Harris rarely disappoints, whatever you think of Polanski.