As for The Woods, that’s a very flawed film (McKee sort of disowns it nowadays, as it was subject to a lot of studio interference) but worth your while nonetheless. However, as I’ve said before, you MUST try to get your hands on a copy of the mighty May, in which Angela Bettis delivers the kind of knockout performance that regularly wins Best Actress Oscars in some alternate universe where the Academy Awards are not a complete joke.

If I had the time to do it (which, sadly, I don’t), I would’ve loved to have written more about The Woman but to be honest I’m still processing it, even months later, especially now that I know it’s the sequel to another movie. Wish I’d known that before seeing it. Still got The Woods on my Sky+ box. Been there since middle of last year.

Apparently Nicholls has figured out that if you combine these with situations that are instantly familiar to your readers you can sell fuckloads of books and make a fortune despite being a complete fucking charlatan.

And yes, I realised as I laid into the gooey confection of One Day that I was probably dissing the book too, as the movie’s screenplay is bad enough to cast doubt on all of his writing, but I wanted to be fair, having not read it. Your comment, and others on Twitter, have shown my initial misgivings were correct. Didn’t you dislike Starter For Ten as well?

*Written while half asleep, not checked for errors etc.*

“What could have been the tragic romance of the year is in fact indistinguishable from some kind of unhinged parody … Any possibility of emotional connection between character and audience is ruined by the gimmicky structure, leaping through time from one improbable event to another as we see two poorly-realised caricatures do and say things you only find in badly-written books. Every possible cliché of the romance genre is crammed in, leaving no room to explore a thought or express an emotion; everything here is exposition, a cacophony of out-of-tune notes blasted at a disbelieving audience … a pompous confection for a middle-class audience”
Sounds like a pretty faithful adaptation.