The book Poor Things is based on is even stranger than the film

polygon.com:

Poor Things is a pretty odd movie. The film, now available to stream on Hulu, and up for 11 Oscars, fits the expectations for a project from Yorgos Lanthimos, the absurdist director of such curiosities as The Lobster and The Favourite. But the movie isn’t half as odd as the 1992 novel it’s based on, by eccentric Scottish writer and artist Alasdair Gray.

Lanthimos read the book and decided to adapt it as far back as 2010. “Immediately when I read the novel, I felt like I haven’t read anything like it, and especially, I was drawn to the character of Bella Baxter,” Lanthimos told Polygon in an interview in late 2023. “I just found her a fascinating character and someone that could definitely carry a film.”

Lanthimos met Gray at the time and was impressed by his energy and enthusiasm. (Gray was then in his 70s; he died in 2019.) The author dragged Lanthimos on a speed-walking tour of his native Glasgow, “showing [him] the necropolis, the cemetery, the university, parks, things around his neighborhood, and just talking about the novel and the characters,” Lanthimos recalled. Gray said he had seen Lanthimos’ film Dogtooth and thought it was great, and gave the Poor Things adaptation his blessing.

The movie Lanthimos eventually made is pretty faithful to Gray’s book. The story follows the same lines, and the extraordinary concept — a reclusive Victorian surgeon brings a dead woman back to life by transplanting the brain of her unborn child into her adult body — is straight from the book. That character, Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), is just as startling, spirited, and lovable in the movie as she is on the page. The film echoes many of the book’s themes — free will, sexual liberation, escape from social norms — and screenwriter Tony McNamara finds a tone that is not so far from Gray’s in its mix of mordant humor and warmth, silliness, and seriousness.

But even though Poor Things the movie may seem like a lot, Poor Things the novel is even more. Lanthimos and McNamara made