I used to think this book was so awful. I remember being addicted to its pages, polishing it off, then wishing I could erase it from my mind. I felt tainted by it. Like its contents were nothing but impurities that I needed to precipitate off (help me, chemistry buffs! is that how it's said. how sad, I've forgotten the terminology.).
Then, six years later, I watched the movie. And the ending made me reconsider it entirely. Here's a mother who messed up her daughter's life sorely, I mean, no denying it. Selfish decision after selfish decision, sometimes veiled in manipulative, seeming-helpfulness, sometimes in outright bitter, negative speech towards her very own offspring. And the movie made the mother's ability to finally love her daughter -- her daughter who tried so hard to defy her mother's harmful influence, and whose wisdom outweighed her mother's -- so much more plain and stark than the book ever did. With the book, I was left with a feeling of entangledness that made me feel like I was covered with sinful moss, like the mother-daughter relationship was a feedback loop with no hope or reconciliation. But the movie showed the mother's one moment of strength, when she took her daughter's own advice to not make her lie up on the court stand to get her mother free out of jail. The mother found it in herself to sacrifice something for once for her daughter. And that thing was her entire life behind bars. Kudos to the moviemakers and actresses. I was convinced and changed my mind about the book. No need to erase it, now.
Look what time apart, cooling down from a dramatic plot, and a new artistic interpretation of another work of art can do.
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