Having already seen the film adaptation of The Bourne Identity, I knew the basic plot… or so I thought. In fact, the book is completely different.
The characters are shaded differently: the book’s Bourne is a darker and significantly less stable character. The Marie character in the movie is just along for the ride, whereas in the book she plays a more central role, stabilizing the brink-of-self-destruction Bourne.
And the book is 22 years older than the movie, making it less high-tech. For example, the fancy LED projector extracted from Bourne’s hip at the beginning of the movie began its life as a simple piece of microfilm. To put the time difference in perspective: in 1980, when The Bourne Identity was published, Paul Allen and Bill Gates began writing DOS 1.0.
The storyline of the book is different, and significantly more complex: Bourne isn’t who he thinks he is — or is he? And much of the plot is driven by the hunt for Carlos, the international assassin, who doesn’t appear in the movie. As the original NYT review exclaimed, “Ludlum stuffs more surprises into his novels than any other six-pack of thriller writers combined.”
The nice thing about the disparity in stories is that the book becomes a rich, compelling, fresh experience for people who enjoyed the movie. I had a hard time putting it down.
Patronize these links, man:
posted to area: Fiction
updated: 2004-05-18 16:19:10
