Review of 'Poor Things' by Scottish writer Alasdair Gray

Poor Things: Episodes from the Early Life of Archibald McCandless M.D., Scottish Public Health Officer is a novel by Scottish writer Alasdair Gray," states the first sentence in Wikipedia. When I went there to recover what I had already forgotten, I found myself contemplating a common experience: How often do you find a story better told in a movie than in a book? Not quite often, right? But it pains me to say that in this case, I found the story much more focused in the movie.

There are a lot of additional twists and elements in the book that I was happy to discover, of course, but what I am saying is how impressed I am by Yorgos Lanthimos and Tony McNamara's ability to streamline this chaotic story and turn it into a focused project. After I saw a certain clip, I almost lost respect for the director and his vision, thinking it was an imitation of the "Metropolis" (1927) movie. What finally made me realize that this was not a cheap copy-paste trick, but a homage, was reading the book. Lanthimos and McNamara were able to fuse these two properties, creating this new masterpiece. Just like Godwin Baxter created Bella using his surgical knowledge, the director and the writer stitched together one of the most original Oscar-winning movies of last year.

Using the charisma, uniqueness, nerve, and talent of Emma Stone played a crucial role in the success of that creation. I feel that the director's vision and Emma Stone's playfulness, along with their willingness to take risks, inevitably made the book a lesser experience than the movie. Usually, after a good movie, the book serves as an extension, providing more to the story and upgrading the experience. Here, with all due respect to everyone who thinks otherwise, the author's views are stretched into an internal bashing on your head, whereas in the movie, they are spread cohesively, streamlined, and more focused.

Until I went to Scotland this year, I could have sworn I didn’t know much about this region. All of a sudden, one of my favorite bands (Garbage) turned out to be Scottish. This incredible video turned Scottish after that, and not to forget realizing that the book I write about is written by a Scottish author, which you now probably understand why I mentioned it in the first sentence. I also left it because the title of the book is absurdly long, and I couldn’t leave it as the title to this article, yet you can observe I left "Scottish" there also. People deserve to know where these properties came from.

Even with my newfound old love of Scottish art, I cannot say that "Poor Things" would be this slam dunk without the vision of Lanthimos and the acting of Emma Stone. Of course, those are two different media, and comparing them would be crazy if there wasn't an obvious connection between them, making this comparison legitimate. It was weird to rediscover the story of Bella Baxter mostly from the point of view of others, as if she wasn’t playing the big role she has in the movie. You can still enjoy both of them at the same time, or just one, depending on which medium you are most familiar with. There are some fantastic insights and observations that are enough for you to go through this book. I know people who will probably disagree with me on which storytelling was better. What do you think?

Some favorite quotes:

• “Only bad religions depend on mysteries, just as bad governments depend on secret police. Truth, beauty, and goodness are not mysterious; they are the commonest, most obvious, most essential facts of life, like sunlight, air, and bread. Only folk whose heads are muddled by expensive educations think truth, beauty, and goodness are rare private properties. Nature is more liberal. The universe keeps nothing essential from us — it is all present, all gift. God is the universe plus mind. Those who say God, or the universe, or nature is mysterious are like those who call these things jealous or angry. They are announcing the state of their lonely, muddled minds.”
• “Many lives and limbs have been lost, McCandless, by excluding women from the more intricate medical arts.”
• “If medical practitioners wanted to save lives,” said Baxter, “instead of making money out of them, they would unite to prevent diseases, not work separately to cure them.”
• “You, dear reader, have now two accounts to choose between, and there can be no doubt which is most probable.”
• “Does life mainly evolve through small gradual changes, or through big catastrophic ones?”

After going through these quotes, you can certainly understand that this book is valuable and the author is smart and inventive. The book covers far more subjects than the movie, making it busier and more unfocused. Many things could be missed and forgotten on a first read. I'll give it another try in some years. Published in 1992, the book addresses themes such as identity, sexism, social injustice, and inequalities that are still relevant today. 

You can read my thoughts on the movie "Poor Things" here.

Iliya Badev