Is HBO's "Lovecraft Country" Better than the Book?

I have been enjoying “Lovecraft Country” on HBO. It’s been a quite a ride, and now that the first season is over I wanted to compare the two. So I checked out the Book “Lovecraft Country”. I assumed the series likely took the basic ideas and little more in part because it feels like the show has a specific vision and voice. It surprised me both by how much from the book it kept and how many of the things it changed kept the spirit of the book while making something that worked better on TV.

Comparing HBO’s “Lovecraft Country” with the Book

Aside from some smaller details, the beginning of the book “Lovecraft Country” is similar to the TV show. Atticus has recently gotten out of the military and is traveling to Chicago because his father has gone missing. He has some similar issues getting there except that he is driving himself, so it is his car that has a flat rather than the bus. A few events that happen later in the series happen early in the book, such as the sundown county appearing very near the beginning.

Once he gets into Chicago, he meets with the rest of his family and Letitia, who is more religious than on the show but otherwise not all that different. They agree to take her with them to visit her brother who lives near Ardham where his father asked them to come. On the way they stop in a diner that is supposed to be safe, but it is no longer safe as the building was burnt down likely because of their kindness to the people who suggested it was safe. The primary difference in this to the TV show is that no one shoots at the escaping heroes until after they shoot, but the chase ends up with a similar car crash in which something odd happens and reveals the first hint of the supernatural.

The next section of the book is written in a more Lovecraftian manner, as you don’t really see exactly what happens. They are, as in the show, pulled over by the police who are planning to lynch them for a series of crimes they couldn’t have had anything to do with. But the action scene is much shorter here, with Atticus waking up and not remembering exactly what happened. Both fit well into their respective media with a more explicit view of the monsters in the TV show because it would have been exceptionally frustrating to not see it and the book keeping the sense of strangeness by showing less.

Once they arrive in Ardham, Atticus discovers that he is the last descendant of a powerful Natural Philosopher with only Caleb Brathwaite and his father Samuel the same rank as them. Like in the show, they try to sacrifice Atticus to achieve immortality, but to me the book was more clear as Caleb uses the chance to kill his father and the rest of the lodge members by saving Atticus. This is honestly one of the few places where I think the book was superior.

There is a time jump after they return home and Letitia buys a house with some money she comes into and deals with the harassment of her neighbors and ghosts. In the book, it’s more directly connected to the Braithwaite’s and the three boys who are intending to burn down the house aren’t killed but locked away until the police arrive. As a ghost story, both are fairly good and honestly feel almost entirely unnecessary.

As the plot continues Caleb convinces George and Montrose to break into the natural history museum to get a book. They bring several freemasons with them rather than the other leads of the story in the book. Having the shows leads go with them and a few more interesting traps is better on the show. On the other hand, I wasn’t all that happy with how they used the character they introduced on the TV show here in part because having Montrose kill someone with little on no consequence felt wrong and in part because it felt a bit too much like the bury your gays trope but with an even more marginalized group. Another significant change is that in the book after getting the pages they are given a significant amount of money.

The Hippolyta Disturbs the Universe Section is where things stray from the book more dramatically and the part that I felt the HBO show had the biggest advantage in quality. In the show Hippolyta finds an advanced species that lets her explore the universe Hippolyta and leads to some of the most fun and most powerful sections in the entire series. In the book Hippolyta finds the observatory and use it to travel to another world, but finds that several black people were exiled there twenty years ago by Hiram Winthrop who died before he could return. Only one of them remains and she lets Hippolyta go, but only if she promises to destroy the key, though Hippolyta does not do so. This section in the book is strange and I’m not entirely certain why some events happen.

With the politics of the natural philosophers taking more center stage, in the book we discover that there are orders of wizards all over the country, each holding onto their own secrets. This is also when Ruby, Letitia’s’ sister, is recruited by Caleb to help him and give a potion that temporarily turns her into a white woman. Meanwhile Atticus and Montrose go to find Henry Winthrop, the son of the man who locked the people away on another world. He is dead, but they can speak to his ghost and get his father’s book. The parts of the book from this section that made it into the show are spread out over more of the season and the parts that were left in likely would have clashed with the goals of the show. Though having someone on the show who was both white and not evil might have been a pleasant change of pace even if he was already dead.

There is a chapter with the youngest member of the Freeman family being cursed and chased by a doll. They work with Caleb to kill the police officer who cursed the young boy. The major difference from the show being that it is a doll that is attacking him rather than the creeping dancing girls in the show and he isn’t infected, but that is a major difference and the show comes out ahead considerably though the outcome is largely the same.

The book ends somewhat abruptly as they discover a way to alter the mark of Cain that protects Caleb so it will make it impossible for him to go to certain places and stops him from doing any magic and the family is largely happy. This is almost entirely different from the end of the first season of “Lovecraft Country” on HBO in a number of different ways that anyone who has seen the end of the show will understand.

What I liked about “Lovecraft Country”

The horror in this book is well written cosmic horror. Neither relies on the shock that so much horror does and even though there is plenty of blood it typically feels at least a little relevant. Truthfully in both the horror is more disturbing than simply scary. Beyond that, the themes of racism being a bigger threat in most ways that the cosmic horror and monsters are from the book and is done well in both. Mostly though it really does feel more Lovecraftian than almost anything I have seen on film.

What I liked less about “Lovecraft Country”

Both the TV show and the book felt disjointed at times. In the book some parts of it really do feel more like a series of short stories rather than a novel and some sections feel largely unnecessary. The TV show had some of the same problems but the parts that were most disconnected from the main narrative of the story were generally interesting and more integrated into the end of the HBO series than in the book.

Which is Better

The TV show feels like it took all the best parts of the book and used them sometimes even improving them rather than what often happens when books are turned into movies where a lot is cut out and while I’m glad that I read “Lovecraft Country” I feel safe to say that if you’ve watched the entire first season of the TV show, it’s likely that you will not get a lot more out of the book and some characters feel flat compared to the characters brought to live by the actors on the show. So, if you love to read, I wouldn’t discourage anyone from picking up “Lovecraft Country” by Matt Ruff, but if you read it after watching the TV show and expect it to go deeper or explore the ideas more deeply you’ll be disappointed. So I have to say that this is one of the rare situations where I think that the show is better than the book.