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laurenfai 's review for:
La Vérité sur l'Affaire Harry Quebert
by Joël Dicker
After reading more than 600 pages I don't have the strength for a proper review. A list will have to do.
The good:
- The protagonist's mother is a prejudiced and melodramatic emotional manipulator while his editor is a profit hunter without remorse nor respect. They're both abject and delightfully entertaining.
- Would be authors can identify with parts of the story and might glean some useful (albeit basic) tips here and there.
- The book is an easy read and the perfect beach companion for those who want to shut down their brain during holidays.
- One good twist I didn't see coming ().
- The format is interesting: a book in a book, which is actually the book we're currently reading. Each chapter starts with a piece of advice about writing once given to the protagonist, then said advice is applied to the writing of the chapter itself or illustrated through the events taking places.
- I could hear Tamara Quinn talk when reading her lines. I have known people who talk exactly like her.
- The verbal jousting between the policeman in charge of the investigation and the protagonist created a comfortable and comforting constant.
The bad:
- The prose is either plain or tries to be dramatic but falls flat.
- The book would benefit from a good pruning.
- The final answer to the "who dunnit?" question is disappointing and a surprisingly short amount of time is spent explaining it. Here's a writing piece of advice that was forgotten: if you set readers' expectations, you must fulfil them!
- Too many plot twists and extraordinary coincidences emerge one after the other, hurting the story's plausibility.
- Harry Québert's book and love letters are supposed to be incredibly romantic literary masterpieces of which each word is wonderful but... when extracts are presented, the prose is as mundane as the rest of the novel. At some point the author reveals to us a snippet of a character's journal (one of those vulgar and uneducated characters I talk about hereunder) and I found it infinitely more touching.
- Two mistakes in the French version ("les grosses légumes" instead of "les gros légumes" and "vous en seur" instead of "vous êtes en sueur").
The ugly:
- Instalove.
- The instalove interest speaks as if she was playing in a bad high school play and her personality is dangerously close to "codependent manic pixie dream girl".
- The instalove interest is a 15-year-old girl but is described as looking older because she is well-endowed and is referred to as a "woman" throughout the book. This, on top of the fact that characters presented as rational and educated claim that her relationship with a man more than twice her age is "more complicated than that" and "but it was true love" while vulgar and uneducated characters denounce that relationship and give it the name it deverves, could give the impression that there's a subtle defense of ephebophilia hidden in the book.
The good:
- The protagonist's mother is a prejudiced and melodramatic emotional manipulator while his editor is a profit hunter without remorse nor respect. They're both abject and delightfully entertaining.
- Would be authors can identify with parts of the story and might glean some useful (albeit basic) tips here and there.
- The book is an easy read and the perfect beach companion for those who want to shut down their brain during holidays.
- One good twist I didn't see coming (
Spoiler
Harry Québert actually didn't write the book "Les Origines du Mal".- The format is interesting: a book in a book, which is actually the book we're currently reading. Each chapter starts with a piece of advice about writing once given to the protagonist, then said advice is applied to the writing of the chapter itself or illustrated through the events taking places.
- I could hear Tamara Quinn talk when reading her lines. I have known people who talk exactly like her.
- The verbal jousting between the policeman in charge of the investigation and the protagonist created a comfortable and comforting constant.
The bad:
- The prose is either plain or tries to be dramatic but falls flat.
- The book would benefit from a good pruning.
- The final answer to the "who dunnit?" question is disappointing and a surprisingly short amount of time is spent explaining it. Here's a writing piece of advice that was forgotten: if you set readers' expectations, you must fulfil them!
- Too many plot twists and extraordinary coincidences emerge one after the other, hurting the story's plausibility.
- Harry Québert's book and love letters are supposed to be incredibly romantic literary masterpieces of which each word is wonderful but... when extracts are presented, the prose is as mundane as the rest of the novel. At some point the author reveals to us a snippet of a character's journal (one of those vulgar and uneducated characters I talk about hereunder) and I found it infinitely more touching.
- Two mistakes in the French version ("les grosses légumes" instead of "les gros légumes" and "vous en seur" instead of "vous êtes en sueur").
The ugly:
- Instalove.
- The instalove interest speaks as if she was playing in a bad high school play and her personality is dangerously close to "codependent manic pixie dream girl".
- The instalove interest is a 15-year-old girl but is described as looking older because she is well-endowed and is referred to as a "woman" throughout the book. This, on top of the fact that characters presented as rational and educated claim that her relationship with a man more than twice her age is "more complicated than that" and "but it was true love" while vulgar and uneducated characters denounce that relationship and give it the name it deverves, could give the impression that there's a subtle defense of ephebophilia hidden in the book.