So, I've read the book and seen the movie. Not quite in that order, but sort of. Lissa Evans's Their Finest Hour and a Half (published in the US as Their Finest ) was longlisted for the Orange Prize (back when it was still the Orange Prize) in 2009. I think I have owned my copy (the UK edition below left) since it came out in paperback, and best intentions and all that--it took the adapting of the story to the big screen for me to finally give myself the excuse to read it.
I really liked the book, which I read about half of before breaking down and seeing the movie (since it was in the theater for only a short run), which I really loved. It was sort of a strange read since it was interrupted halfway by seeing the film. Probably not the best way to do either, but maybe it somehow made me appreciate both a little more and in different ways, I think.
I don't ever like to give away spoilers, but I am going to share a few details (no worries, not all of them or anything really climactic). I think I appreciated the relationship between Catrin and Buckley more in the movie than in the book. Ambrose (played by the wonderful Bill Nighy) has most of the best lines in both the book and the movie. He was especially appealing in the film and totally brought to life by Nighy, snobbish curmudgeon though he was. But oh my, that wonderful dry wit. There was far more to the book than the movie, but isn't that always the case. That said the film was pretty true to the story, there were simply a few storylines and quite a few characters left out.
Now let me backtrack just a little to fill in the story in case you're not familiar with Their Finest: A Novel. It's WWII and Catrin Cole's work writing advertising copy puts her in good stead to take on a job writing propaganda for the Ministry of Information. (Forgive me if I overlap details from the movie onto the book--it has all started to jumble together now). Her help in writing dialogue for films is what Buckley calls, or what is commonly known as writing "the slop", or the women's dialogue. Yes, I know. Maddening, but here we are in the 1940s.
Now Catrin a most likable young woman from Wales could not wait to leave home. Leave home she did, by following an artist back to London. Ellis Cole works for one of the ministries painting. They have an interesting relationship, not quite mutually beneficial, but that's a detail I think I'll leave unremarked upon. So Catrin works across from Tom Buckley, who has an opinion about everything. He's whip smart and fast on the draw when it comes to witty comebacks. To be honest I had to look a bit harder after seeing movie previews for their budding romance, which seems more obvious in the movie than the book. They work together writing a script to be filmed to help shore up support for the war and maybe even help influence the Americans to join in the effort. They banter back and forth but ultimately come to respect one another.
Ambrose Hilliard is an aging actor who refuses to accept that he is no longer wanted for those dashing young heroes parts and he makes miserable the life of his agent Sammy Smith (and pretty much everyone else around him). What happens to Sammy and subsequently Ambrose's association with his agent's sister Sophie is changed quite a lot from book to movie. Softened shall we say. Curiously it works in both book and movie, though I can see why it was changed in the movie--(rather like those propaganda films, I suppose, to please and influence the audience). Some of my favorite scenes were with Ambrose. And Cerebus the dog.
The story arc is essentially that this group of screenwriters and actors have come together to make this film. They decide to base it on the true story about two young women, twins, who took their father's fishing boat out and over the Dunkirk to help save the soldiers stranded on the beach. Only things get more than a little twisted as in reality the girls never quite made it over there, the boat having broken down and they had to be towed back. Still, a tiny morsel of the story is true but highly embellished in the end. In the book there is the addition of several characters who feature fairly prominently--Arthur, a young man on loan from the army to serve as the film's "special military advisor" and Edith a seamstress from London who was bombed out in the Blitz and has come down to Cornwall to settle her nerves. There is a nice little romance in this corner that is left out entirely in the movie.
I really enjoyed the book, which was more serious than I expected, though with plenty of humorous relief. There are scripts and dialogue interspersed and the chapter headings/section breaks give hint to what is coming (kind of like a feature film). There was a lovely sense of time and atmosphere and I thought it was a story that translated well onto the big screen. Evans has a knack for writing well about this era. A couple of years ago I read Crooked Heart by Evans, which I think I liked even more than Their Finest. Both book and movie are worth taking in and I look forward to whatever Lissa Evans comes up with next.