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A review by kivt
The Meursault Investigation by Kamel Daoud
2.0
I wanted this book to be good, and occasionally it was. Every four or five pages there was a small passage that practically made my heart stop, but the pointlessly and indulgently dreary filler between those passages made this book almost impossible to finish. It's a huge disappointment because the premise is great. Unfortunately nearly nothing about the execution is worthwhile. The basic plot is unnecessary and somewhat insulting, the prose is repetitive, and constant comparisons of cities to "old whores" is particularly tasteless and boring. Sometimes authors revel in their characters' misogyny as an attempt to make a story "gritty" or "realistic," but it usually falls flat if the reader is even halfway awake. This is a good example.
I want to clarify that I don't think the book was bad because the protagonist was "whiny" "entitled" or "boring." Rather, the author's specific choices of how to explore the protagonist's (and his mother's) trauma were misogynist, boring, and immensely disappointing. The choice to echo the structure & events of "The Stranger" was unnecessary and poorly executed besides. There's a lot to explore about what the concept of "the absurd" even means in a post-colonial context, or what "the absurd" might mean to a family whose son was abruptly murdered and thoroughly erased, but Daoud either doesn't attempt any of this or is very bad at it. The book needed much stronger editing.
I want to clarify that I don't think the book was bad because the protagonist was "whiny" "entitled" or "boring." Rather, the author's specific choices of how to explore the protagonist's (and his mother's) trauma were misogynist, boring, and immensely disappointing. The choice to echo the structure & events of "The Stranger" was unnecessary and poorly executed besides. There's a lot to explore about what the concept of "the absurd" even means in a post-colonial context, or what "the absurd" might mean to a family whose son was abruptly murdered and thoroughly erased, but Daoud either doesn't attempt any of this or is very bad at it. The book needed much stronger editing.