I just finished reading "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel". A story about a bunch of older Britishers who move to India to spend their declining years in affordable gentility. I was glad to have seen the movie first. A movie I was fairly disappointed in I should add, though other elders have raved about it. I found it simplistic and, well, Hollywoodized, though it had a great cast. The cast just couldn't override the pathetic script, in spite of Maggie's crispness, Judi's jolliness and Bill Nighy's wonderful nighyness.
The book, though I did not rate it a 5 star, was so far removed from the movie as to be a completely different tale. There was more complexity to the characters, a couple of love stories that were more believably human and also character redemptions that weren't based primarily on sex. India was depicted in its new persona of industrialized silicon valley contrasted with extreme ragged poverty. The failed capitalistic model wrought in a new century of technological advancement, but alas, for all, less enlightenment.
The big flaw I found in the book was that of too many characters and their offspring. I just hate having to flip backwards through pages to take a refresher course in characters as in: who was (s)he again now? Readers shouldn't have to do physical work along with the mental.
But the discrepancy between the book and the movie is one of the worst I've ever seen, one bears no relation to the other.
Call me a grumbling geezer.
