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A review by severine_aurelia
L'anomalie by Hervé Le Tellier
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.5
Note: I read the (original) French version.
If I squint, I can see why it won the Prix Goncourt: there were some beautifully and cleverly constructed phrases, some moments where I genuinely appreciated it as a piece of writing. There were chapters that might have made fantastic short stories. As a novel, however, or even as a story more generally, I found it a disappointment. This is the first book I've read by Le Tellier, and my initial impression is that he's a good writer but a lacklustre storyteller.
The premise was interesting, but the way it was approached and handled was clumsy and facile. Many aspects of the government reaction to the crisis were completely implausible bordering on laughable, which would have been fine if it had been in the service of making some interesting point. It seemed, however, that Le Tellier genuinely wanted the reader to accept his proposed reactions to the anomaly as believable, and it just didn't work. In addition, quite a few of the main characters came across as generic archetypes rather than fully fleshed out people.
The choice to include fictional versions of real-world individuals (Macron, Stephen Colbert, Trump, Xi Jinping, etc.) was also a mistake in my opinion; the portayals felt amateurish and thus a distraction.
If I squint, I can see why it won the Prix Goncourt: there were some beautifully and cleverly constructed phrases, some moments where I genuinely appreciated it as a piece of writing. There were chapters that might have made fantastic short stories. As a novel, however, or even as a story more generally, I found it a disappointment. This is the first book I've read by Le Tellier, and my initial impression is that he's a good writer but a lacklustre storyteller.
The premise was interesting, but the way it was approached and handled was clumsy and facile. Many aspects of the government reaction to the crisis were completely implausible bordering on laughable, which would have been fine if it had been in the service of making some interesting point. It seemed, however, that Le Tellier genuinely wanted the reader to accept his proposed reactions to the anomaly as believable, and it just didn't work. In addition, quite a few of the main characters came across as generic archetypes rather than fully fleshed out people.
The choice to include fictional versions of real-world individuals (Macron, Stephen Colbert, Trump, Xi Jinping, etc.) was also a mistake in my opinion; the portayals felt amateurish and thus a distraction.