adam_mcphee 's review for:

The Birthday Party by Laurent Mauvignier

4.0

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Really interesting as a study in how to build tension. Mauvignier's got a lot of great tricks. One of them even goes back to the first work of French literature, The Song of Roland, in the way the narrative stops time to go back and revisit a moment from another angle. I also liked how it withheld information and slowed down time, especially in the first half of the book, to really make the intrusion so much more threatening because you share the family's confusion, you don't know why they're here and you don't know what they're capable of. Though at times it got a little bit frustrating (huge chunks of text with an often annoying syntax and plenty of repetition), I really appreciated it and was on the edge of my seat for most of the novel.

But who was sending Christine the letters? We never find out.