Winston Bloom's Forrest Gump is a bittersweet tale that will have readers laughing one moment and reaching for tissues the next. Forrest's innocent and straightforward perspective on life leads to humorous mishaps, but also puts him in heartbreaking situations. Despite the tears, the book's underlying message of resilience and hope shines through, making it a truly uplifting read. ( )

Having read this many years ago, I decided to revisit it if for no other reason than laughs. What I'd forgotten was that Gump was an 'idiot savant', something left out entirely in the film. Capable of high level math and good with the harmonica, Forrest was higher functioning that Hank's character would have us think; he was also a rather large fellow and didn't run across the country. His adventures included others not shown in the movie, though its not unusual at all. A good laugh when he meets Nixon who pulls him aside, rolls up his sleeve and asks, "wanna buy a watch?"... Not a Pulitzer winner but fun just the same! ( )

This book swings from profound to utterly ridiculous so fast and back again, that I have mental whiplash. I can't tell if this book has aged terribly or exceptionally when it comes to how offensive some statements are, since it's meant to offend, and society has become a lot more sensitive towards some of these things since the 80s.

Either way the first 5 or 6 chapters and the last 3 or 4 chapters are worth thinking about when it comes to how society sees and treats people with deficiencies, and also how a person can have everything they could ever want, without actually having what they want - and only someone who thinks simply, would choose to leave it behind to pursue a life that he enjoys. Everything in between though, is a comedy of errors that, in my opinion, go way too far for the sake of a cheap laugh. ( )

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I thought the book even worse than the film (with the exception that the ending is a bit better, Forrest and Jenny don't actually get back together and he makes his peace with that). A particularly offensive section involves him being recruited for NASA for a space mission with a woman astronaut and an orang-utan; they crash on a tropical island where they are nearly eaten by cannibals. The film made some odd choices but leaving this out is understandable. ( )

I've loved the film Forrest Gump ever since I was a kid growing up in the Nineties. Some of its scenes are among my most vivid early memories. It was my crash course in 20th century history; it was where I first learned about Elvis, JFK, John Lennon, Vietnam, Watergate… the list goes on. It's where I first understood heartbreak (Jenny), wanderlust ("I just felt like runnin'") and melancholy (Lieutenant Dan in the bar as everyone sings 'Auld Lang Syne').

It's a film that uncovers its layers over time (as a kid, I somehow overlooked Forrest's mama's grunting episode with the teacher, or the reason Jenny threw rocks at her childhood home) and I can rewatch it again and again as comfort, as nostalgia, as storytelling. It's also a damn good film besides, and I can watch it as a fine piece of filmmaking. All in all, it's fair to say I enjoy Forrest Gump. But I've never been more convinced that it deserved its Oscar for best adapted screenplay than I am now, having read its source book by Winston Groom.

It's so different, it's startling. I won't list all the differences between book and film – we'd be here for hours – but I have to say, without hyperbole, that Eric Roth, the screenwriter, must be responsible for about 90% of the film's content. All of those famous lines and scenes – none of which are in the book. It's an odd feeling. It's not the usual feeling where you feel a film dominate your impressions of its source book, or vice versa. Rather, it's like peering into an alternate universe, one in which the film Forrest Gump never existed – like trying to imagine a world in which the Beatles never formed. Groom's Gump is so far removed from Tom Hanks' character that you see the familiar names on the page but they don't seem right – like you've been told 'up' is 'down' now, or like driving on the other side of the road in a foreign country.

Once I overcame this disappointment – and, to be honest, I had fair warning from all the other reviews of this book – I still found myself in the position of not rating Groom's novel. His Gump is different from the one we're used to, yes, but it also becomes rapidly clear that his Gump is also lesser. His narrative voice is less well-rounded and more dislikeable. His motivations are less endearing, or consistent. His character arc is bumpy, and the story's message is limp. Gump's experiences are less resonant (both for himself and his audience), including – in the book's two plummeting nadirs – a stint as a wrestler known as 'the Dunce', fighting another wrestler known as 'the Turd', and a spell as an astronaut who crash-lands in the jungle, where he plays chess with 'bongo-bongo'-style cannibal tribes.

The book as a whole is throwaway, short-changing on character and structure. I know some people don't like the film, seeing it as a saccharine Boomer fever-dream, but I don't think anyone can deny it's a tight piece of filmmaking, rewatchable, accessible to all ages, with great acting and direction and some truly thoughtful moments. The book, on the other hand, is petty, cynical, juvenile – and glib. It's not a coincidence that I find myself referring to the film's character as 'Forrest', but to the book's as the more impersonal 'Gump'. There's none of the film's heart in evidence here.

Rather than bringing it all home with Forrest, Jenny, Lieutenant Dan and Forrest Junior, as Zemeckis and co. do in the second half of their film, Groom writes the second half of his novel into the ground. The main companion for Gump in this turgid, leaden limp to the finish line is not Jenny or Dan or his own inner monologue, but a male ape called Sue. Winston Groom might have provided him with a few basic cues, but Eric Roth earned that golden statue (and let's not forget he was up against Frank Darabont for The Shawshank Redemption that year). Under our noses, he seemed to have performed a feat of pure alchemy. ( )