Rebecca Makkai's "The Hundred-Year House," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Hundred-Year House by Rebecca Makkai.

The entry begins:

Would a reverse chronology translate well to film? I think it would, and my evidence isn’t Memento (because I refused to watch it lest it influence the book) but the infamous backwards episode of Seinfeld. I should emphasize that this was not an influence on The Hundred-Year House, except maybe in the sense that it gave me courage: yes, people are capable of thinking backwards. They might even enjoy it.

The novel starts in 1999, with the core characters who will be our emotional centers even as we move back to the years before their birth. For Doug, who is, if anyone, the book’s main character, I’d want Paul Rudd. He’s so good at winning our sympathy, at getting us to love characters who make poor decisions. A tightly wound Jennifer Garner can play his wife Zee. There’s another woman – Miriam – who moves into their house with them (the event that starts the whole chain of events) and here’s where I need some magic: Andie MacDowell, circa 1992, if she could act.

When we move back to 1955 in the next section, I’m going to keep my magical powers. I need Grace Kelly, somewhere around Rear Window vintage (for Grace, a miserable heiress), plus – for her horrible, violent husband George – the really good-looking guy from...[read on]

Learn more about the author and her work at Rebecca Makkai's website, Facebook page and Twitter perch.

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--Marshal Zeringue