![]() ![]() Though it’s remembered for its groundbreakingly matter-of-fact treatment of menstruation, the book Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret is equally if not more concerned with the effects of this dual-faith household on its heroine’s evolving spirituality. These additions to the character of Margaret’s mother pull from elements of the author’s own life story: In the 1960s, Blume, too, was an unfulfilled stay-at-home mother in New Jersey, trying to find a way to express herself creatively while raising two children and keeping house for a working husband. In the film, as played by a never-better Rachel McAdams, Barbara Simon is a more ambitious and complex figure: an art teacher who gives up her job in Manhattan to move to the suburbs with her husband and daughter, unsuccessfully attempting to reinvent herself as a kitchen-bound PTA mom. In Blume’s novel, Margaret’s mother is a stay-at-home parent who paints a little as a hobby. With Margaret, she takes that skill to the next level of difficulty, adapting a property familiar to generations of readers-one that its author long resisted turning over for cinematic adaptation-and finding new things for us to love in it, while staying true to those we loved already. Writer-director Craig’s 2016 debut The Edge of Seventeen established her as a keenly observant chronicler of adolescence. ![]()
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