Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson awards, and named to the short list for the Women’s Prize for Fiction.
Here she dreamcasts an adaptation of her newest novel, A Very Inconvenient Scandal:
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.Visit Jacquelyn Mitchard's website.
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 such natural charm and passion. She was nominated for an Academy Award for the wonderful film Brooklyn and also (no coincidence) played Jo March in Gerwig’s Little Women.
The others might be:
Timothée Chalamet as Frankie’s brother, Penn (clearly I’m obsessed with Gerwig’s Little Women, in which Chalamet played “Laurie” Lawrence)
Amy Madigan (in flashback) as Frankie’s late mother, Beatrice. She’s so stunning and reassuring, a consistently great performer.
Kevin Costner as Mack Attleboro. (You think he’s busy?)
Louisa Jacobson (whose mother is Meryl Streep) and who starred in The Gilded Age, would be Ariel.
Jamie Lee Curtis as Ariel’s mother, Carlotta. It would be so against type, but Carlotta, a woman denied, needs an actor with plenty of fire!
Hugh Dancy as Frankie’s journalist husband, Gil.
Javier Bardem as “Sailor” Madeira, Beatrice’s best friend and the sort of benign godfather of the beach, who has secrets of his own.
I know all these actors are just waiting for the call!
My Book, the Movie: Two If by Sea.
The Page 69 Test: Two If by Sea.
The Page 69 Test: The Good Son.
Q&A with Jacquelyn Mitchard.
My Book, The Movie: The Good Son.
Writers Read: Jacquelyn Mitchard.
The Page 69 Test: A Very Inconvenient Scandal.
--Marshal Zeringue
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