Serena

 The Book


Ruthless corporate business and environmental exploitation are nothing new, as Ron Rash explores in his Shakespearean tale of a lumber company during the 1920s depression. Pemberton and his wife Serena hatch plots and dispatch enemies as they lay waste to the forests of North Carolina.

The book starts as it means to go on with the body count clocking off with the outraged father of a young worker girl, Rachel, who has been made pregnant by Pemberton. He confronts the newly-wed Pembertons at the train station and is promptly disemboweled by the husband, urged on by the unfazed and callous Serena. 


The Macbeth couple murder anyone who gets in the way of their business empire, whilst trying to harvest every living tree on their land before it can be turned into a National Park. 

Serena gains a faithful servant and henchman in Galloway, who she saves from bleeding out when a green lumberjack swings at a trunk and lops off the pointing hand of the foreman instead. He has the useful means of tracking victims through his cloudy-eyed mother, who has the second sight. 


 The workers suffer some brutal and gruesome accidents - snake bites, impaled by falling branches, falling through logging and drowning - but also act as the chorus and sometimes a bit of light relief to the drama.  
Just like the best Classical plays or Jacobean Revenge Tragedies, its a great romp and I relished every cut down and pulped tree page. Ironically, does Serena get the last laugh there? 

Be warned - the review below contains spoilers!

The Movie

No! No! No! What a travesty of the original novel this film is. This is the first time in over 40 posts on this blog that I have had such an adverse reaction to watching an adaptation. I was shaking my head in disbelief and near the end I couldn't wait to get up and walk out. 

If you have seen the film but not read the book, you may be forgiven for thinking that my review above is for a different book! If you have read the book but have not seen the film, DON'T GO! 


I can imagine the Hollywood meeting, where they said Bradley and Jennifer can't possibly portray such a callous capitalist couple. Let's make it all about love and jealousy.


The film starts before the book narrative, with Pemberton discovering the banks might foreclose on his struggling business due to problems with loan repayments and then asking Selena to marry him as he sees her as a source of financial stability. There is the inference that this isn't the first time that Pemberton has used love to gain business backing, as "confirmed bachelor" and business partner Buchanan becomes emotionally hurt when Selena is brought back to break up the happy homestead. 
Jealousy is given as the reason that Buchanan goes behind his back, doing deals with the National Park advocates and Pemberton reluctantly shoots his partner only because it becomes self-defence.
There are disappointingly very few deaths as the film mistakenly aims to portray the couple as a tragic pair. 
 In the book, although Pemberton provides some money to Rachel for her child, he lets Serena and Galloway hunt them down and it is only thanks to her skill and fight that they evade the killer. In the film Pemberton even gives chase to Galloway, jumps on a moving train and defends the mother and child. The hero! 
With so many axed chunks out of the tree, it was inevitable that the whole finale would fall down short. Pemberton and Serena do not get their just deserts in betrayal and revenge but become like two lesser Shakespearean mortals - one exits pursued by a panther and the other Ophelia, taking her own life after hearing the news.

If you enjoyed the book, try reading Shakespeare's Macbeth, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore by John Ford or I Claudius by Robert Graves
If you enjoyed the film, why??