After watching eps 3 I went off hunting for spoilers on-line and managed to ascertain that Sugar took Sophie. I then bought the book and read it as I had to find out what the hell William did to deserve to have his child kidnapped - to be honest, he didn't do anything that warranted that. I had thought Sophie must be in some kind of grave danger but she wasn't at all.
I have to say whilst I loved this adaptation, the book is a lot less sympathetic to Sugar and Agnes which makes their actions for more understandable.
Agnes has the readers sympathy as she is mad (and was mad long before she met William) but she is not a nice character at all. Sugar even sees her as an incredibly selfish, spoilt woman and makes the comment when reading her diaries that it's all 'I, I, I, where is William, where is Sophie?' She treats William appallingly because he doesn't become a famous writer and keep her in fine dresses as she expected.
Sugar has the readers sympathy because of her circumstances but you are never without the understanding that she's a hard nosed prostitute who will do whatever it takes to keep William, her meal ticket, in her grasp. Her relationship with Sophie is not as sweet as we saw in the adaptation and in fact some of it is bloody disturbing. She never gives ay of her money to Agnes to aid her escape and in the book, nobody (including the reader) knows that it isn't Agnes who's found dead.
I personally feel that by trying to be more sympathetic to the main female characters, parts of the story then don't 'fit'. Like making Dr Curlew some kind of shadowy villian, just waiting to abuse poor Agnes - he's not that at all, he's just a doctor (arrogant granted) who's trying to do his best by his patient - unfortunately for Agnes's particular hang-ups, madness in women involved alot of internal shuftying about. He's also right, she's a complete fruitloop who needs to be in an institution - it's never alluded to that there's some kind of sinister plot involved.
They also made Emmeline Fox another sisnister, shadowy character when in fact, I think she's the most sympathetic of everyone. She's very much in love with Henry and vows to marry him after her illness passes and in the end, is slightly 'eccentric' and keeps cat turds in a box!
I would highly recommend the book, it is beautifully written but very, very graphic and at times, very disturbing.
Ooo this is such fun - is this what being in a Book Club is like??