Just a note: This review is going to be mostly me comparing the book to the movie.

So apparently 2018 is the year where I prefer the movie/show over the source material. It started with Handmaid's Tale. I read the book a couple of years ago and even though I thought it was an important story I didn't really care for the writing or the structure. Then I saw the Hulu adaptation and LOVED it. Seriously, everyone should watch this show.

Then it was Stardust by Neil Gaiman. I've seen the movie several times and absolutely love it. I just got around to reading the book and for me it just fell short. I explain my feelings in my review.

We can now add Big Fish to the list of adaptations I prefer to the book. I remember when I first saw Big Fish. I absolutely loved it. I loved the characters, the Tim Burton aesthetic, the quirky structure. I just loved everything about it.

I've wanted to read the book ever since I first saw the movie, and finally this year saw the book for a good deal on book outlet and bought it. Unfortunately, I don't feel like the book is as successful a narrative as I was expecting.

First of all, the book and the movie are completely different. Completely. Pretty much the only similarities are the character's names. Most of the 'myths' told bear little to no resemblance to the movie.

I actually didn't mind the structure of the book. I liked the quirky, anecdotal nature of the book. It was very fairy tale-esque. However, I felt like the movie was more successful in creating a cohesive narrative. There was more depth to the characters, which isn't usually the case with movie adaptations. I think that was where the book's structure failed. It was difficult to connect to Edward or William because we didn't get much of anything actually between them. Many of the myth chapters were told in 3rd person, which made it even more difficult to connect.

My biggest issue with the book is the passage where Edward

buys Specter and then has an affair with Jenny. I hated this. On page 121, it feels like the groundwork is being laid down for Edward to be a piece of garbage philandering man.
William is talking about their life after he was born and how Edward and Sandra were in kind of a rut:
"...Edward watched helplessly from his chair, suddenly tired, excruciatingly tired of the noise, the sleepless nights, the smell. Tired of his wife. So he missed the old life sometimes, the freedom, the time to think things through--but did that make him different from any other man? It was different with women, they were made to raise a family, they had the attention span for it. Men had to go out of the house and work, that's the way it had always been, from the time of the hunter-gatherers it was so and still was today. Men were born this way' they had to be two people, one at home and another away, while a mother had to be but one."

What a bunch of enabling garbage. As soon as I read this, I knew that Edward was going to go out and cheat on his wife and I was pissed. I'm not saying that they couldn't introduce some marital strife between Edward and Sandra, but to have the author so ineptly foreshadow Edward's infidelity and also excuse his behavior through the voice of his own son was gross.

One of the things I loved most about the movie is that Edward was in love with Sandra, end of story. After everything he went through to meet her and prove his love to her, it would've been a disservice to the character to have him be unfaithful. But that is another huge difference in the movie. Their relationship is more developed and you root for them. The scene with Jessica Lange and Albert Finney in the bathtub makes me cry every darn time. I just love it. But you don't feel that at all in the book.

The movie is just so much richer and quirkier than the book. The entire circus subplot is completely original to the movie. Many of the characters in the book are only there for one story or not mentioned at all. Karl, the giant, plays a much bigger role in the movie, as does the two-headed sister character (Ping & Jing in the movie; unnamed in the book) and Norther Winslow makes a couple of appearances that make his character meaningful instead of a one-off.

I still did enjoy this book to a certain extent. There were moments where the tone gave me that same whimsical note that the movie accomplishes. However, overall I just didn't feel like it had the magic I was yearning for.