the novel vs the movie
the movie is so different from the novel written by nancy price. I had just finished reading the novel yesterday. in the novel, the drowned woman is actually called Sara Burney and then she changes her name to Laura Pray after she fakes her death and moves to a new city. in the novel, Sara is constantly wearing her wig so that no one recognizes her. She is shown to be financially broke and she is constantly hungry and wants to eat. She is shown to be very skinny and her body is full of bruises resulting from the constant physical abuses by her psycho husband. When Sara goes to visit her mother in a nursing home, she acts a lot smarter than Julia Roberts' character in the movie. She says to the nursing home receptionist that she is visiting another woman in the nursing home while she is actually here to visit her mom as to avoid anyone suspecting her to be alive. in the novel, Sara doesn't say anything to Ben about her previous life. Ben didn't even bother to ask her a lot of questions unlike the character of Kevin Anderson in the movie. in the novel, Ben is showed to be more compassionate and understanding. In the novel, Martin has a hard time catching on to what his wife really did. He almost kills a trespasser mistaking him for Ben Woodward. And the major difference between the book and the movie is in the book, Martin commits suicide while in the movie he is killed off by Julia Roberts.
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