The Sweet Hereafter Novel compared to the Movie
             'The Sweet Hereafter' is a gripping tale of a small U.S town and the people who dwell in it. A saga of four vivid, sensitive souls linked in a school bus tragedy: the bus driver, the widowed Vietnam Veteran, the lawyer who tries to shape the heartaches of the towns people into a winning case, and the beauty queen, Nichole, who was left crippled by the crash. The novel was written by critically acclaimed author Russell Banks, from which spawned the Oscar Nominee movie of the same name directed by Atom Egoyan. The movie stays true to the spirit of the novel yet was still a notch below its artistry. Those who love both movies and books to the same measure would prefer the novel version to the movie due to Banks exquisite use of narration (four different narrators), character and shifts in time period.
             Credit must be given where it is due, there is no doubt that 'The Sweet Hereafter' movie is an exceptional piece of work, but the fact remains that its is still two steps behind the novel from which it was adapted. There were a few characteristics of the movie that made it less worthy than the novel. One thing lacking in the movie, which is present in was novel was the narrative voice of different characters such as that of Dolores Driscoll, each character chosen by Bank's was remarkably different, providing contrasting angles and meanings on the same event. In the beginning of the novel the reader is introduced to Dolores, she was the woman behind the wheel of the bus when it plunged into a reservoir. She is a sympathetic character in the book; the reader shares the overwhelming grief and guilt that she feels over the accident which killed 14 of the town's children. In the movie she hadn't enough exposure for the viewers to understand how she felt, and to see her perspective on the whole issue, all the hardships she went through were not revealed to t
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