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buddhafish 's review for:
The Most Secret Memory of Men
by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr
32nd book of 2024.
3.5. Alan was desperate to read this book and I was vicariously with him on his journey, chomping at the bit, waiting for this to be published from French. He already knew he was going to love it, he told me, and he did love it. I came to it expecting just as much; the novel's blurb calls it a 'love letter to literature', and the plot sounded like a Borges or Bolano novel. In fact, I'd almost say it was quite evident that I would love it. Then add the countless 5-star reviews, too.
But sadly, I did not. I liked it. It's a long, messy novel. It's plays with things we've seen before. It's clearly inspired by one of my favourite novels, One Hundred Years of Solitude, but also reminded me of the above writers, the narratives in the narratives, like some Barth stories I've read. All promising but Sarr's delivery didn't sell me. I found the middle 200 pages a slog. At one point the story is being told by a woman, who heard it from a woman, to our narrator: it was at this point that I was seeing the events happening through so many 'mirrors' that it felt as if I wasn't even there, or wasn't reading the real story. The half-hearted foray into magical realism/supernatural didn't fit with the rest of the novel at all, it felt like a cool afterthought. Oh, people kill themselves because of magic, maybe. And when it comes down to it, the detective story at the heart about Elimane and his novel... I didn't care about Elimane once. No, there's one startlingly bit concerning his parents that I thought was powerful, but other than that, hardly at all. I wanted more of Faye, our narrator. The book essentially leaves him for 300 pages. It reminded me of a piece I wanted to write at university about one of my ancestors. I wrote it as a fictional story with him as the protagonist. My lecturer, a Sebald superfan, said, No, no, no. No one cares about him. Who is he? They care about you. The writer. So she made me rewrite the entire thing as an investigation of my ancestor, but through me. In the same way, I didn't care about Elimane. I wanted to explore him through Faye, but he got so distant and disjointed from the plot that my interest waned.
3.5. Alan was desperate to read this book and I was vicariously with him on his journey, chomping at the bit, waiting for this to be published from French. He already knew he was going to love it, he told me, and he did love it. I came to it expecting just as much; the novel's blurb calls it a 'love letter to literature', and the plot sounded like a Borges or Bolano novel. In fact, I'd almost say it was quite evident that I would love it. Then add the countless 5-star reviews, too.
But sadly, I did not. I liked it. It's a long, messy novel. It's plays with things we've seen before. It's clearly inspired by one of my favourite novels, One Hundred Years of Solitude, but also reminded me of the above writers, the narratives in the narratives, like some Barth stories I've read. All promising but Sarr's delivery didn't sell me. I found the middle 200 pages a slog. At one point the story is being told by a woman, who heard it from a woman, to our narrator: it was at this point that I was seeing the events happening through so many 'mirrors' that it felt as if I wasn't even there, or wasn't reading the real story. The half-hearted foray into magical realism/supernatural didn't fit with the rest of the novel at all, it felt like a cool afterthought. Oh, people kill themselves because of magic, maybe. And when it comes down to it, the detective story at the heart about Elimane and his novel... I didn't care about Elimane once. No, there's one startlingly bit concerning his parents that I thought was powerful, but other than that, hardly at all. I wanted more of Faye, our narrator. The book essentially leaves him for 300 pages. It reminded me of a piece I wanted to write at university about one of my ancestors. I wrote it as a fictional story with him as the protagonist. My lecturer, a Sebald superfan, said, No, no, no. No one cares about him. Who is he? They care about you. The writer. So she made me rewrite the entire thing as an investigation of my ancestor, but through me. In the same way, I didn't care about Elimane. I wanted to explore him through Faye, but he got so distant and disjointed from the plot that my interest waned.