Little Fires Everywhere: book vs. miniseries

[rsadelle]

I read Celeste Ng's Little Fires Everywhere in 2018 - twice, because I wanted to read it a second time after I knew what happened. I reread it again this year after I watched the miniseries because I wasn't sure how I felt about two of the changes.

There are two things I thought were fantastic about the miniseries:

First, they got the late 90s vibe completely right. I knew all of the songs, and I wasn't sure if the 90s vibe felt so right because it was what the 90s were really like or because it so perfectly matched 90s teen movie vibes. I was in high school in 1997, and the downside to the excellent 90s vibe is that I couldn't tell if some of the things that I found cringy on behalf of the characters were because they were generally cringy behavior (in a way that was a deliberate part of the story) or because they were giving me mild flashbacks to my own teenage years.

Secondly, with only one misstep (AnnaSophia Robb as a younger Elena), the casting is phenomenal. In particular, the actors playing Lexie, Trip, and Moody are absolutely perfect. I saw Joshua Jackson and Reese Witherspoon in things when they were that age, and the only way Lexie, Trip, and Moody could have been better matches as their children would be if you could go back in time and bring teenage Josh and Reese forward to play them.

Now, the two changes I didn't like.

First, they changed the ending. In the book, Izzy starts the fire at a time when she thinks the house is empty. In the miniseries, Izzy pours the gasoline first, then Elena yells at her with Lexie, Trip, and Moody in the room. When Izzy leaves, Lexie, Trip, and Moody set the fire. I didn't find this believable at all. It didn't make sense for the characters at all, and I thought it was really important in the book both that Izzy sets the fire and that she thinks the house is empty at the time.

Secondly, they made a change to Mia's sexuality and her relationship with Pauline Hawthorne that I didn't like at all. In the book, it's very clear that Mia has never been in love. I also read her as asexual, which depends on how you interpret this paragraph where Mia talks to Pearl about Pearl and Moody's relationship:

"But maybe someday you'll want to be more. I know how it goes-" Mia stopped. She didn't, she realized suddenly; she didn't know how it went, not at all. As a teenager she'd had plenty of friends, some of them boys - but none as close as the friendship between her daughter and Moody seemed to be. They were together constantly, it seemed; they finished each other's sentences, they talked in a patois of inside jokes and shared references that she barely understood. More than once she'd seen Pearl lean over carelessly to fix Moody's collar; just the other day, she'd seen Moody reach out to pluck a wayward leaf from Pearl's hair with such tenderness that she could call it nothing other than love. But she herself had never felt that way about anyone, not as a teenager, not in art school, not since. It occurred to her that except for her brother, when they were children, she'd never seen a man naked. More than that: she'd never touched anyone and felt that warmth, that electric tension at the nearness of someone else. The only thing that had given her that feeling had been art - and then, of course, Pearl. She had nothing useful to say about this, she thought, and the silence billowed out between them.

I thought that was such an important piece of Mia's character, that the only things that have mattered to her so deeply are her art and her daughter. In the miniseries, we see Mia have sex with at least two men, she had a relationship with Pauline, and Pearl tells Moody that Mia sleeps with whoever she wants whenever she wants. In the book, Pauline is older, and she and her partner Mal have an almost parental relationship with Mia. I liked Pauline in the miniseries much less for sleeping with one of her students. The one thing I liked about the change was that Izzy in the miniseries is a lesbian, and she just lights up when Mia tells her that her first time was with a woman she loved.

Overall, I think the miniseries was interesting, but I think I liked the book better.