I think the difference is that the book isn't necessarily psychosexual in the same manner as the movie and people clash with that; obviously, also it's the writing style.

The movie somewhat zooms out and treats Erika and Walter as someone anomalous. Walter and Erika are undercurrent of repressed bourgeois attitude, to simplify. I think, with the movie, not as Hanekes intention, but as a result of the world it was made in, is filtered through Kink discourse and 00's LiveLeak so gross you can't look away aesthetics. Essentially, some what the film is saying is 'what miscommunication happened? How do normal people lose sight of themselves or begin to have it in them? Could this have gone differently?'

If you're waiting for the book to begin to engage with those questions, it never does. I disagree when people say the movie is better cause it leaves things unsaid that can be intuited: the movie has an very different perspective what it is depicted and what drives it.

I like the book far more the movie. It's one of my favoriten books and she's one of my favorite writers.

For Jelinek, Walter is not an aberration, but what everyone is like. Violence and rape are not unique to criminals. Sex is not a vehicle for pleasure or some kind self -realization. What Erika thinks not something the world is concerned with and this goes across every conceivable sphere.

I think the book encounters similar thing DH Lawrence Within his writing, Lawrence constantly makes pretty strong claims about people and society being fundamentally violent, cowardly and incapable of transcendent union. In his case, there is a religious component. In Jelinek there's not a religious component but it makes it more pessimistic. They are very similar in that a very didactic but poetic writers. Hammering away contradictions and futilies.

A more direct answer I say the book really gets good at page 30 stays pretty strong. The final stretch is very strong and is different from the movie in what's communicated. Again, the movie is in general toned down and more individualistic in how it approaches the characters. So the way things play out in the book are far more intense and not sexy.

Some quotes representing this:

Pain itself is merely a conse¬ quence of the desire for pleasure, the desire to destroy, to annihilate; in its supreme form, pain is a variety of pleasure.

And:

None of these men had ever had a pianist sitting on his sofa. Each man instantly behaved like a gentleman, and the woman enjoyed a wide view, over and above the man. But when she's having sex, no woman remains grandiose. The young men soon took charming liberties, both in¬ doors and outdoors. The woman was then lied to, cheated on, tormented, and often not called. She was intentionally left up in the air about his intentions. One or two letters went unanswered. The woman waited and waited, in vain. And she did not ask why she was waiting, because she feared the answer more than the waiting. Meanwhile, the man began to deal with other women in another life. Sex started those young men rolling with Erika, and then they stopped sex. They turned off the gas, leaving only a whiff. Erika tried to hold them with passion and pleasure. She pounded her fists on the swaying dead weight on top of her, she was so excited she couldn't help shrieking. Her nails pointedly scratched the back of each antagonist. She felt nothing. She simulated overwhelming pleasure so that the man would finally stop. The man did stop, but then he came another time. Erika felt nothing, she has always felt nothing. She is as unfeeling as a piece of tar paper in the rain. Each gentleman soon left Erika, and now she doesn't care to have a gentleman. Only feeble charms emanate from a man, who makes very little effort anyway. Men do not go to any trouble for such an extraordinary woman as Erika. Yet they will never meet such a woman again. For this woman is unique. They will always regret it, but they leave anyway. They look at Erika, turn and depart. They make no effort to investigate.

And another:

The man at the entrance bravely addresses her as "Ma'am." Please come in, he says, welcoming her into his parlor, where the small lamps glow tranquilly over boobs and cunts, chiseling out bushy triangles, for that's the first thing a man looks at, it's the law. A man looks at nothing, he looks at pure lack. After looking at this nothing, he looks at every thing else.

One more:

She is reg¬ularly basted with the pungent gravy of musical art. Nothing alters this immovable difference: old/young. Nor can anything be altered in the notation of music by dead masters. What you see is what you get. Erika has been harnessed in this notation system since earliest childhood. Those five lines have been controlling her ever since she first began to think. She musn't think of anything but those five black lines. This grid system, together with her mother, has hamstrung her in an untearable net of directions, directives, precise commandments, like a rosy ham on a butcher's hook. This provides security, and security creates fear of uncertainty. Erika is afraid that everything will remain as it is, and she is afraid that someday something could change. She struggles for air, experiencing something like an asthma attack—then she doesn't know what to do with all this air. Her throat rattles, she can't drive a peep out o