In her Shoes - the Movie

Having read the book, In her Shoes, I thought I would get the DVD of the movie out and watch it.
It was an ok sort of a movie and if I hadn't have read the book it would have been good, but I was a bit disappointed.
A whole section of the book was missing from the movie.

In the book, after Maggie is kicked out of Rose's apartment for 'having it off' with Rose's boyfriend, Maggie travels by train and ends up, in Maggie's way, living at a College campus free of charge. There she sleeps in the back of the library where there is a toilet, gets free meals from the cafe and reads old books that are stored in the room she sleeps in. Maggie has struggled with a reading disability, dyslexia, and this is part of Maggie turning a corner in her life.  She also sneaks into poetry lectures and learns the appreciation of poetry. She also is asked by a male to act in a play he has written. She gets a cleaning/carer job for a blind lady she becomes very friendly with, which is where she escapes when finially the guy she 'seduced', when she first got into the Campus, discoveres her and threatens her.
Then, she goes to her grandmother who has been searching on the net for some time to find her two grand-daughters. At first Maggie is very reclusive and hardly talks to her Grandmother as she is half waiting for the moment when her Grandmother, like the rest of the people in Maggie's world, turns her out again.
And this is over a few months.
Rose is establishing her dog walking, personal errand business and her relationship with Simon. In fact there is one section in the book where Rose is trying on Wedding gowns that was very humorous, and even my youngest wanted me to let her know when that bit was on. But it wasn't.

In the movie, Maggie goes straight to her grandmother's, and 'the-learning-appreciation-of poetry' happens when she works in the care unit at a hospital and one of the blind patients asks her to read poetry to him.

Perhaps they wanted to condense the movie but I feel the time at the campus is part of the character of Maggie and omitting it reduces the extremes she will go to, to try to get on in life on her own.
As an extra on the DVD there is a bit about the filming and parts of an interview with Jennifer Weiner, the auther of the book, who has praise for the movie so she must have not thought it was necessary.

I have come to realise that it is better to read a book first and then watch the movie as a stand alone story so as not to be disappointed.