A vivid portrait of a teenage girl and her family in disarray. Meredith is a wonderful narrator, witty, feisty, full of yearning, and the story she tells is as complicated as life itself. This is a richly satisfying novel.
In terms of it being a first screenplay, literally, my hat is off to him [Wally Pfister]. I didn't see any virgin blather in screen direction, or anything like that. It was just a wonderfully executed piece, and a complicated one. The mathematics involved in putting this film together, between Jack and Wally, and the great support of Alcon, it was not a easy little operetta.