Joanna Poncavage

BooksToScreen Fiction Miscellany Pop Culture

Big Little Secrets Set Hulu Ablaze with Premiere of “Little Fires Everywhere”

Celeste Ng’s 2017 bestselling novel, Little Fires Everywhere, starts with a house on fire. So does Hulu’s eight-episode series by the same name, which premieres today, March 18. The arsonist isn’t revealed until the ends of both, and in between are tangled webs of non-stop drama. Reese Witherspoon’s production company,…

Joanna PoncavageMarch 18, 2020

BooksToScreen Fiction Miscellany Pop Culture

Philip Roth’s “The Plot Against America:” Alternative History Turned HBO Miniseries

Scheduled to debut today as an HBO miniseries, Philip Roth’s novel The Plot Against America is oddly and powerfully prescient, published, as it was, in 2004. The plot turns on how, instead of electing Franklin D. Roosevelt to a third term as president, America elects Charles A. Lindbergh, a hugely…

Joanna PoncavageMarch 16, 2020

BooksToScreen Young Adult

Defanged, “The Call of the Wild” Still Grips

When Jack London wrote The Call of the Wild, serialized in 1903 in The Saturday Evening Post, it made adventure story history. The short novel became an international sensation, and it’s never been out of print. It’s the story of a dog, and the man who loved him. London spent…

Joanna PoncavageFebruary 28, 2020

BooksToScreen Thrillers

“The Rhythm Section” Doesn’t Miss a Beat With Revenge-Driven Superspy

In spy lingo, the rhythm section is the body’s heart rate and breath. Learn how to control these, and you control panic, a useful skill for would-be cloak-and-dagger candidates. The Rhythm Section is also the title of a 1999 thriller by Mark Burnell, now the basis of a new motion…

Joanna PoncavageFebruary 14, 2020

BooksToScreen Fiction Miscellany Pop Culture Thrillers

As the Screw Turns: Henry James Classic Gets Another Twist

Published in 1898, the Henry James novella, The Turn of the Screw, has spawned dozens of dramatic interpretations, including movies, television films, an opera, a ballet and a Broadway play. The story of a young governess who arrives at a country estate to care for two orphans has always been…

Joanna PoncavageJanuary 24, 2020

BooksToScreen Fiction

Little Women’s Infinite Playlist

Young women of every generation, at some point, will stare at themselves in a mirror and ask: Who am I, who will I become? Their answers depend on their era, just as every generation that reads Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women will come away with different interpretations. Lady Bird director…

Joanna PoncavageDecember 25, 2019

Nonfiction

A Nightmare of Bad Love “In the Dream House”

Carmen Maria Machado’s new memoir, In the Dream House (Graywolf Press), describes her experience with the pain and anguish of a lesbian relationship gone horribly wrong, though at the time it seemed like true love. Author of a 2018 award-winning short story collection (Her Body and Other Parties, Graywolf Press),…

Joanna PoncavageDecember 6, 2019

Fiction Miscellany Pop Culture Thrillers

“Motherless Brooklyn” Finds Home on Screen Directed by Edward Norton

Edward Norton’s adaptation (or is that adoption?) of Jonathan Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn opens Nov. 1, after closing the New York Film Festival on Oct. 11. The project has been in the works for 20 years, but sadly, the best parts of this 1999 bestseller probably won’t make it into the…

Joanna PoncavageOctober 30, 2019

Nonfiction

You Don’t Know Janis: New Bio on Evolution of First Female Rock Star

Fact-filled and authoritative, the new Janis: Her Life and Music (Simon & Schuster) by Holly George-Warren gives an intimate glimpse into how Janis Joplin became the queen of rock, soul and blues in the late 1960s. “I’ve been waiting for the right person to write the definitive biography of Janis…

Joanna PoncavageOctober 23, 2019

Miscellany

The Boys Are Back in Town in Scorsese’s “The Irishman”

Powerful Teamsters labor union leader Jimmy Hoffa was last seen in a restaurant parking lot near Detroit in 1975. The mystery of his disappearance has fueled books and movies ever since, but it gets star treatment in Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, inspired by Charles Brandt’s 2004 work I Heard You…

Joanna PoncavageOctober 8, 2019

Fiction

Margaret Atwood, the Doyenne of Dystopia and the Dangers of Writing

Just three pages into Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments (Nan A. Talese) is a short phrase that signals a major theme: “writing can be dangerous.” The narrator is Aunt Lydia, founder of the system that trains girls for their future roles in the misogynistic theocracy that has replaced the United States.…

Joanna PoncavageSeptember 25, 2019

BooksToScreen Fiction Miscellany Pop Culture

“The Goldfinch” by Donna Tartt Takes Flight in New Film

Since Donna Tartt’s best-selling novel The Goldfinch (Little Brown & Co.) won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2014, no one has been able to forget it. Now, it is migrating to the big screen with an adaptation by John Crowley, which opens Sept.13. This is an ambitious undertaking. How…

Joanna PoncavageAugust 26, 2019

BooksToScreen Miscellany Pop Culture

“To the Lighthouse” Author Comes to Life in “Vita and Virginia”

Hot, hot, hot. A new film brings the legendary love affair between early feminist writers Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West to libidinous life, opening in the U.S. August 23. Elizabeth Debicki (“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” and HBO’s “The Night Manager”), towering at 6 feet, 3 inches tall, rules…

Joanna PoncavageAugust 23, 2019

Fiction Miscellany Pop Culture

Where’d You Go, Bernadette – to the Big Screen, That’s Where

There’s nothing like a feel-good laugh-fest in a cool theater on a hot summer day. The new film version of Where’d You Go, Bernadette (Little, Brown and Company) by Maria Semple is on track to become a smash hit. It’s a wry, comic tale of an agoraphobic mother, her tech-genius…

Joanna PoncavageAugust 9, 2019

BooksToScreen Miscellany Pop Culture Young Adult

12 Hours to Fall in Love in Face of Cultural Obstacles

“The Sun is Also a Star” is a movie based on the 2016 best-selling young adult novel of the same name (Delacorte Press) by Nicola Yoon. In spite of its YA listing, the book found fans of all ages. What’s not timeless about romance? Romeo and Juliet were only teenagers,…

Joanna PoncavageMay 15, 2019

BooksToScreen Fiction Miscellany Pop Culture

“One Hundred Years of Solitude” To Join Netflix

It’s not often Nobel Prize-winning literature gets the cinematic treatment, but Netflix has acquired the rights to adapt One Hundred Years of Solitude (Harper Perennial) by Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, into a series. It will be the first film version of the novel. Since its publication in Spanish in…

Joanna PoncavageMarch 12, 2019

Joanna Poncavage

Big Little Secrets Set Hulu Ablaze with Premiere of “Little Fires Everywhere”

Philip Roth’s “The Plot Against America:” Alternative History Turned HBO Miniseries

Defanged, “The Call of the Wild” Still Grips

“The Rhythm Section” Doesn’t Miss a Beat With Revenge-Driven Superspy

As the Screw Turns: Henry James Classic Gets Another Twist

Little Women’s Infinite Playlist

A Nightmare of Bad Love “In the Dream House”

“Motherless Brooklyn” Finds Home on Screen Directed by Edward Norton

You Don’t Know Janis: New Bio on Evolution of First Female Rock Star

The Boys Are Back in Town in Scorsese’s “The Irishman”

Margaret Atwood, the Doyenne of Dystopia and the Dangers of Writing

“The Goldfinch” by Donna Tartt Takes Flight in New Film

“To the Lighthouse” Author Comes to Life in “Vita and Virginia”

Where’d You Go, Bernadette – to the Big Screen, That’s Where

12 Hours to Fall in Love in Face of Cultural Obstacles

“One Hundred Years of Solitude” To Join Netflix

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