Sometimes, the book is better.
Like maybe a lot of you, I got pulled into “The Undoing” on HBO a couple of months back. A psychological thriller starring Nicole Kidman as a well-off New York City therapist and Hugh Grant as her debonair doctor husband who’s definitely not what he seems (and possibly may be a murderer), it was a series that promised a lot and ultimately didn’t really deliver.
But I was intrigued enough to seek out the novel the series was based on — particularly after reading that its author, Jean Hanff Korelitz, said in interviews that she had no idea how the series would end, as her book was quite different. Off I went to track down “You Should Have Known,” published in 2014 — and oh, it’s so much better.
Like the series, “You Should Have Known” has therapist Grace at its center; unlike the series, it’s solely about Grace, because her husband Jonathan doesn’t appear at all — the story begins after his disappearance (Grace initially thinks he’s at a medical conference), and we only come to know him through Grace’s memories. And, since we’re not distracted wondering when Grant will show up and say something charming, we can focus on the book’s fascinating premise: how a woman who has based her career in telling others how to pick the right person can do exactly the opposite for herself, and how a picture-perfect life can excruciatingly unravel.
Having watched the series doesn’t spoil this book it all; it just makes you read it appreciating the book’s nuances (Grace and her family, for example, are nowhere near as wealthy as they are in the screen version), its perfectly spun tension, and its portrait of a smart woman slowly realizing her own blind spots. Check it out — and note that Korelitz has another literary thriller out in May, “The Plot.”