This is a book which never was a priority for me to read. Maybe you know that The Dark Fields is called now Limitless after the movie apparently inspired by it. What I have never understood is how one can take a good book, and believe when I tell you that The Dark Fields is a good read, make a script after it and then destroy every logic structure and make a second-hand movie.
The Dark Fields, the novel published in 2001
[source: goodreads]
The Dark Fields on short, actually on very short
When I watched Limitless in 2001, Bradley Cooper was far away from being one of my favorite actors, on the contrary, I considered him weak. He got my attention when he played the bipolar boy in The Silver Linings Playbook. By the way, that’s another book distorted in a movie where only his partner took home the statuette. Unbelievably (by my standards, of course, I’m not talking here what their armies of fans believe), Cooper was better than Jennifer Lawrence, but she was the one getting the Oscar.
The book, The Dark Fields, is not about a looser, on the contrary, it’s about a very intelligent guy who works as a copywriter. I didn’t exactly understand what he did, he wrote reference books or something, and he wasn’t a fiction author with writer’s block. He was very underrated at the small publishing house where he was employed. His name is Eddie Spinola. He has been married for five months to a lady who evolved into some kind of a junky, like his brother-in-law who dealt all kind of substances, mostly cocaine. Her name is Melissa. They often sampled the merchandise together.
One day, a nine or ten years after the divorce, Eddie meets his former brother-in-law, Vernon Gant, on the streets. Eddie didn’t look very well, he was tall, but he gained some weight, and was generally confused about his job. He worked at an illustrated book about the twentieth century named “Turning On: From Haight-Ashbury to Silicon Valley”, and his thoughts were dark, like his mood. Vernon looks smart and dressed likewise.
They’re gonna have some drinks, Vernon is a furniture dealer now, Eddie tells he is so anxious or bored that he can’t do a thing. Vernon tells him that he can help out with that, then talked a little about Melissa, who now has two girls and lives next to nowhere, in a place called Mahopac. Her husband walked out on her two years ago.
Eddie remembered Melissa as being smarter than him and her brother. She was tall, had perfect skin and shiny black straight hair. She also said that their marriage was only “a coke thing”.
Eventually, Vernon said that he worked for a pharmaceutical corporation and gave Eddie a no-name pill, saying that it’s legit. It wasn’t a drug, he said, it was a brain stimulus. Now he had to go but leaves Eddie his card, just in case. Eddie took the pill and in no time he discovers a new power in him.
Irish author Alan Glyn
[source: www.irishtimes.com]
What’s in the movie
Van Loon is tall and is not obnoxious. He really appreciates Eddie. He has a 19 yo daughter. He’s married. Eddie doesn’t have a girlfriend who dumped him (like Abbie Cornish), and he wasn’t late with his rent.
Two things are almost the same. First, a replica: “He’s … mercurial – one day he’s your best friend and the next he’ll look right through you” – referring to Carl Van Loon, and second, that The Russian (Gennady in the movie) wasn’t the smartest guy in the world.
The Dark Fields was published in 2001. In 2011, the author Alan Glyn changed the title in Limitless, to match the released movie, with Bradley Cooper, Robert De Niro, and Abbie Cornish. Oh, and Melissa was played by the towering tall, Anna Friel.
This is a very good novel, a techno-thriller, as described by its Irish author. A page-turner from beginning to start. Doesn’t matter if you watched the movie or not if you watched it, it’s even better.
Alan Glyn wrote three other successful novels.
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