I decided to look into this book as I read that Scott Spencer felt that neither the 1981 nor 2014 film adaptation of this book did it justice. After listening to it on Audible I can see why he was disappointed at both film adaptations.
David is basically unhinged the inciting incident that caused all the events in the story was when he committed arson by setting the Butterfield’s house on fire after being banned from seeing Jade for a month. He thought he’d win them over by being the hero but instead he ruined their lives. Throughout the book you see David’s obsession with the Butterfield family become the motif for many of his actions, and it’s to the point where he’s actively putting himself at risk for facing harsher punishment as he’s actively violating his parole throughout the book by contacting the Butterfields.
The 1981 film adaptation at the very least acknowledges that David is unhinged and obsessed with the Butterfields, however the film didn’t acknowledge the rest that happened after David reunited with Jade and basically glossed over a huge chunk of the story that added a layer of depth. In the end of this film, Jade visits him in jail.
The 2014 film basically disregarded much of the book and made it the typical star crossed lovers plot when that’s really not what it’s about, it’s about an unhinged guy who has an unhealthy obsession with his girlfriend and her family. David wasn’t unhinged in this film, and his dad is your average working class guy when in the book his dad was a communist lawyer who was pretty emotionally detached from David. There was a fire but it wasn’t an act of arson. In the end they run away and live happily ever after.
Both endings of the film adaptations are NOTHING like the ending of the book. Basically David ends up in a different psychiatric facility from the one he was initially sent to and Anne is still looking out for him even though the rest of her family hates him. Jade goes to France and gets married, but she wrote a letter when David was sent back to the psychiatric facility as she had called the cops on him upon learning of his role in her father’s death. David didn’t respond to that letter, but after he’s released from the facility it’s revealed he went back to school and found a new girlfriend and he’s writing Jade a final letter basically accepting that she has moved on from him and how he’s leaving the past in the past but acknowledging his love for her will never die but it doesn’t hold him the way it did throughout the book.
I like the ending of the book, am I can understand why Scott Spencer felt as though the film adaptations didn’t do his book justice as he veered away from the typical ending of love stories by showing they both went their separate ways and how there can be closure with that. David and Jade’s relationship was overly romanticized in the films, when the book shows how their relationship is toxic because of David’s obsession with her and her family. It here are stories where disrespecting boundaries to pursue someone is glorified, but Scott Spencer shows how this is dangerous through David. David is the protagonist of the book as it is all from his perspective, but he is very much the anti-hero. There was even a part in the book regarding his second stay at the psychiatric facility where he considered sexually assaulting another patient who was rejecting his sexual advances and whom he sexually harassed.
From the film you’d view the fire as David being blinded by love and making a stupid decision, but in the book it foreshadows just how dangerous David can be. Neither film did a great job of addressing this and I feel like David’s unhinged nature was pretty downplayed in both films, even in the 1981 version as they didn’t really delve into how manipulative he was with Jade.
With Anne’s obsession with David and her jealousy of her daughter’s relationship and sex life with him, the book did a great job of showing how Anne is the only Butterfield who doesn’t resent David as she herself has some toxic traits just like him.
Overall it was a good book and it is unfortunate how greatly misinterpreted Scott Spencer’s story is by Hollywood.
by InfiniteCalendar1