Jacquelyn Mitchard's "A Very Inconvenient Scandal," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: A Very Inconvenient Scandal: A novel by Jacquelyn Mitchard.

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A Very Inconvenient Scandal is the story of powerful people in a powerful seaside family who clash when 60-year-old Mack Attleboro, a famed marine biologist widowed for one year, announces his marriage to his daughter Frankie’s lifelong best friend, Ariel: they’re expecting a baby and Mack couldn’t be happier. But his news fractures the family. Frankie, an acclaimed young underwater photographer, feels undermined not only because she, too, is getting married and expecting a baby, but because no one, not even Frankie’s brother Penn, confided in her. It was easy for the home crowd to keep the secret because Frankie is usually in some far-flung destination required by her work. Grieving for her mother, Beatrice, and feeling alone in the world except for her fiancé, Gil, Frankie is further unsettled when Ariel’s reprobate mother, Carlotta, returns after a ten-year absence, claiming to have turned over a new leaf – a claim everyone except Frankie seems to believe. Things only get worse when Mack and Ariel’s baby is born, the labor deliberately induced on Frankie’s wedding day. Although Frankie and her new husband planned to live near her family on Cape Cod (another surprise that went flat) they instead be estranged from her all of them forever.

If there were a movie version of this novel, I would love for Greta Gerwig (who directed the latest and best version of Little Women in 2019) to direct it. I think Greta Gerwig should direct every movie because she is so intelligent and sensitive to personalities and nuance and doesn’t fear real drama. She would be just the right person for this story about tangled family relationships.

If I could cast the roles, I would choose Saoirse Ronan as Frankie. Frankie … she’s so wonderful and has...[read on]

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--Marshal Zeringue