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jasonfurman 's review for:
The Investigation
by Philippe Claudel
It is impossible to describe The Investigator without the word Kafkaesque. In fact Kafka with mobile phones might be the most apt description. It is about the Investigator who arrives in an unnamed town to investigate the Enterprise and is thwarted by the Policeman, the Guide, the Manager, and other sundry characters or character types, with the entire novel in the end dissolving into something between postmodernism and hallucination.
It is interesting and readable from beginning to end, some of the scenes are quite funny, and the postmodernism is worn relatively lightly (besides the ocasional aside like when the Investigator says "You're not a policeman. This isn't a luxury hotel. This is not reality. I'm in a novel, or a dream and, what's more, probably not in one of my own dreams but in another's dream, the dream of a complex, perverse being having fun at my expense.") The themes and ideas are not exactly unique, individuality being crushed by modernity as manifested by capitalism, rules, police, etc. But it is still entertaining enough in most places. Although nowhere near as good as Claudel's Brodeck or By a Slow River.
It is interesting and readable from beginning to end, some of the scenes are quite funny, and the postmodernism is worn relatively lightly (besides the ocasional aside like when the Investigator says "You're not a policeman. This isn't a luxury hotel. This is not reality. I'm in a novel, or a dream and, what's more, probably not in one of my own dreams but in another's dream, the dream of a complex, perverse being having fun at my expense.") The themes and ideas are not exactly unique, individuality being crushed by modernity as manifested by capitalism, rules, police, etc. But it is still entertaining enough in most places. Although nowhere near as good as Claudel's Brodeck or By a Slow River.