A review by elleries
The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair by Joël Dicker

0.5

at the start of this book i wasn't sure if it was a bad parody or just regular bad. around the middle i became certain it was a parody -- and i got some enjoyment out of the author's contempt (as if a european has the right to that! but it's still funny) for americans -- but now i think it's just regular bad. there's probably some element of comedy to the author's antisemitism, racism, attempts to capture small town americana based exclusively off whatever melodramatic films he's seen before, but it's not enough to make the work as a whole anything other than a sentimental mystery played straight.

at the beginning i also made some predictions. as follows: 1) that the luther character would fulfill a disgusting lenny of mice and men role (correct), 2) that there would be a twist where nola was actually responsible for her own murder via being a manipulative 'slut child' (partially correct; though i didn't ancipate the really abhorrent and comedically stupid take on DID), and that 3) it would continue to insist that harry and nola being in 'love' gave meaning to his abuse of her (correct). i also assumed he would be revealed to be the killer in the end (doing it for love?) but i was wrong about that. the actual reveal was very boring. rotating through 4 or 5 different 'actually, this person did it!' reveals in the course of like, 3 chapters doesn't make a book exciting! i don't know -- maybe that was meant to be parodic, but it didn't work at all to me.

awful protagonist, awful comedy, awful mystery, offensive in a myriad of ways without ever justifying itself as taking the piss out of those tropes, very long and boring book. at least it's easy to read? lol.