Poor Things Review
When I first saw the movie Poor Things, I was captivated by its oddball charm: hot air balloons floating over dreamlike cities, pastel skies lit by improbable machines, Emma Stone playing a woman brought back to life with the brain of an infant. It felt wild, surreal, and somehow… tender.
But the film’s weirdness didn’t start on screen — The movie is based on a 1992 novel by Alasdair Gray, a Scottish writer and artist you’ve probably never heard of unless you’re deep in literary circles. I hadn’t. But once I started digging into who he was, I couldn’t stop.
Gray was a true polymath — a painter, muralist, poet, essayist, and novelist whose books are as visually rich as they are intellectually wild. He was something of a national treasure in Scotland, but elsewhere, he remained a cult figure, revered by writers, largely unread by the public.
And Poor Things might be his most accessible work. The book is a bizarre Victorian-era mashup of gothic horror, speculative science fiction, and sly comedy, wrapped in a faux memoir and illustrated with Gray’s own black-and-white drawings. It’s narrated by Dr. Archibald McCandless (played in the film by Ramy Youssef), who claims to have rescued Bella from suicide and revived her brain. But by the end of the book, the story unravels into something much more complicated — and much more about Bella’s autonomy than he’d like us to believe.
Yorgos Lanthimos’s adaptation, with a screenplay by Tony McNamara, makes the bold choice to center Bella — giving her story room to grow beyond the satire. And Emma Stone brings a sharp mix of curiosity, chaos, and clarity to the role that isn’t entirely present in Gray’s original version.
Still, the novel has its own magic. It’s messy and brainy, defiantly literary, and full of Gray’s winking humor and political edge. It reminds me of what fiction can do when it’s allowed to be strange and big-hearted at the same time.
If the film left you intrigued or unsettled (or both), the book will take you deeper — and definitely weirder. And if you’ve never heard of Alasdair Gray before, this might be the perfect way in. Just be warned: Poor Things may be the gateway, but Lanark is the rabbit hole.
You’ve been warned.
Find Poor Things on My Bookshelf, or purchase through Waterstones, Bol, or Amazon. For more books that I read, head over to the full list of book recommendations. Leave a book review for Poor Things yourself, or check out what others have said about this book.
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