They are quite similar in theme and in some scenes and such, but, there are also big differences too (because of the difference in what media it's being presented in (although, I don't quite understand the change in a ton of the names between the book and the movie).It's about Evelyn. I wonder if I would have appreciated the book even more if I wasn't constantly comparing the book to the movie. In some ways I'm sorta sad that I saw the movie before I read this book. So the book has a happy ending-hooray! I thought it was worth my reading time. The book is interesting also for it's descriptions of Nevada, the casinos, and that whole world. She meets a quirky younger woman, Ann Childs, who works in a casino, and has her own struggles with intimacy. This is back when divorces were harder to get, and so it meant staying in Reno for 6 weeks and pretending that she was establishing residence there. Evelyn Hall comes to Reno to get a quicky divorce.

But she is a good writer, I think, and the story is interesting. That said, I do think that at times Rule is just to serious and philosophical. There was very little room, and that time, for an independent woman, and absolutely no room for an out lesbian to live safely. I had to remind myself that, for the error, the drama made sense. In, there were times when I felt that the characters were way to serious and melodramatic for the situation. I had to remind her that for that time, that was a happy ending. She was kind of complaining that the movie left her feeling so sad. I was talking just the other night with a friend about the movie Carol. The other thing is its just hard to remember, in 2016, how much things have changed, and how hard it was to be a lesbian just a generation ago.

I think that back then I was just excited to read books that reflected my life, so I wasn't super critical. I was rather afraid to re-read, because often lesbian fiction that I liked in the old days doesn't hold up. I had read this book years and years ago, and quite liked it then.

Desert of the heart by jane rule