I read the book and found *it* lacking, so I don't imagine I'll be seeing the movie until it comes out on video. The first part of the book was very imaginative and original, but about halfway through the author seems to get bored with her story and roams off on a variety of different tangents without bringing successful closure to the main story arc (except perhaps as an afterthought). Of course, I believe the point the author was making was that the closure of the original story arc (the murder) doesn't truly bring closure to anything meaningful for the family of the victim, in whose hearts the story goes on. So I applaud her direction. But in the end, I felt that her attempt to defy convention turned into a bit of a mess, IMO. Most of the book-critics (and many readers it seems) liked it, but I felt it was half a good book and half discombobulated character study.
If you're looking for a good book with serious artistic integrity, check out Cormac McCarthy's The Road. It's definitely not a conventional story, and at first it may leave you saying, "where's the rest of it?".. but the story sticks with you, and the writing is undeniably brilliant. There are some critics who are saying it's the most important American novel in the last 25 years, and I believe it deserves to be in the top 10 for sure. They made a movie out of McCarthy's book too (with Viggo as the lead), but I haven't seen it, so I am not sure how it turned out. There's no way they can capture McCarthy's prose though. That stuff just doesn't translate unless you've got the world's most brilliant cinematographer.
The difference between McCarthy and Sebold is that McCarthy is such a damned good writer that he could get away with almost anything.
