Audiobook: Matthew Quick - The Silver Linings Playbook

Annoyed at the fact that every paperback has the same picture handsome Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence from the motion picture. Even the audiobook I eventually found at the local library has the same cover. I've seen the movie a few times and I really like it but it doesn't do justice to the anti-hero Pat. The real hero in the novel is God and Pat's faith in Him keeps him afloat through mental illness, amnesia and difficulty to control his aggravations and emotions and on his rehabilitation back to reality. In the movie Pat's faith is replaced by a constant repetition of the Latin expression "Excelsior" but as the witty novelist well knew there is no success without God. In the movie we don't make our way into Pat's head as in the book. The novel dives deep in the relationship between father and son, Pat's dad is much more troubled than Robert DeNiro in the movie. The real problems stem from him. The gloomy family patters and interactions don't however affect Pat, he becomes numb to them. 

Pat's story is interesting, it shows how crazy the world is and how what is "normal" is really weird, this is exemplified in the rituals of the Eagles fans. Pat has lost his memory after committing a crime, he caught his wife cheating with a colleague. Kenny G. is playing on the cd-player when he commits the act of beating him up. All through the book Pat tries subconsciously to get back to this memory, but in the movie this is presented almost as his first memory when he is released from "the bad place" or the mental institution.

There are many interesting elements in the story, many layers, the mentally insane and what is normality? How cruel and unfairly people behave who are supposedly "well" Then there are the patterns of co-dependency between Pat's parents and then between Pat and his ex-wife Nikki. In pursuits of trying to get Nikki back and cross over from the "part-time" into what Pat believes to be "Gods promise" he reads Nikkis American literature syllabus and comments on many of the American classics, "Huck Finn mentions the N word over 200 times" Pat tears apart The Bell Jar in outrage for the depressing book, Catcher in the Rye, Hemingway etc. are all mentioned. The author must be a lover of literature because he narrates through Nikki that the point of American literature and literature in general is to show that one can endure through life's hardships. Throughout the book I imagined Pat as the handsome Bradley Cooper and thus imagined as the story largely made understand that these struggling adults where 80's kids who have, like me, grown up with the notion that life is a romcom or feelgood movie where everything ends well and as we wish. A whole generation of westerners influencing the world make belief Jiminy Cricket was right after all, just wish upon a star. I can't say that the movie industry alone or white western culture solely would account for the mental crash of 80's kids, I think most of us have figured out as we go that things often don't turn out the way we want, the silver lining is that the grander plan may just be in greater Hands.

The part of the movie that i supremely find most hilarious and giving is when Pat takes out Tiffany on a date to the local diner. Pat looks enquiringly at Tiffany as she rambles on, then suddenly Tiffany deciphers Pat's inner thoughts and bursts "You think I'm crazier than you!" and I think this one like is so telling of how things really are, broken women are generally viewed as more screwed up than struggling men. Pat has, fortunately a co-depended mum who shops for him at GAP and gives him pocket money as well as provides for him an at home gym.

The book is much better than the movie, but still the two go hand in hand I just find it slightly disappointing that the movie had to "censor" God.