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A review by jlmofo
La Vérité sur l'Affaire Harry Quebert by Joël Dicker
1.0
To be fair, I read this in translation. But the unrelenting cheesiness, the triteness, the one-dimensional characters, particularly the women, cannot possibly be all the translator's fault. I can't believe I read the whole thing! I guess I was waiting for some kind of twist, not the clichéd "and then there's this new suspect, wow!" kind the book offered, but something to tell us that the writer was consciously playing with cheesy cliché to make some kind of larger point all along. Not so.
This is what Dicker's narrator considers "that extraordinary woman of whom writers all over the world undoubtedly dream": a girl who, at fifteen, for her thirty-five-year-old lover, does "everything she could to protect" him. Who "gradually become[s] both the muse and the keeper of his masterpiece." Who "manage[s] to create a sort of bubble around him, allowing him to concentrate on his writing and to produce the greatest work of his life." Oh, and, of course, she is five feet two, weighs 100 pounds, and has long blond hair. There is truly no ironic wink anywhere, nothing that characterizes this narrator as unreliable in any way. Readers are meant to buy what he thinks, wholesale.
I would fear that Dicker has some kind of Nola figure in his life, creating "a sort of bubble around him, allowing him to concentrate on his writing and to produce" what he probably thinks of as "the greatest work of his life," going into "rhapsodies," telling him "it was a magnificent novel, that it was the greatest thing she had ever read," making him feel "ten feet tall" as she blathers about seagulls, the oceans, and "freedom"--but such an insipid, unreal creature surely does not exist outside the realm of Dicker's novel.
It was funny bad until I started thinking of the implications of an author viewing women this way and of said author's insipid book becoming an international bestseller and winning the novel prize from the Académie Française and being a finalist for the Prix Goncourt. (French culture, I no longer respect you.)
This is what Dicker's narrator considers "that extraordinary woman of whom writers all over the world undoubtedly dream": a girl who, at fifteen, for her thirty-five-year-old lover, does "everything she could to protect" him. Who "gradually become[s] both the muse and the keeper of his masterpiece." Who "manage[s] to create a sort of bubble around him, allowing him to concentrate on his writing and to produce the greatest work of his life." Oh, and, of course, she is five feet two, weighs 100 pounds, and has long blond hair. There is truly no ironic wink anywhere, nothing that characterizes this narrator as unreliable in any way. Readers are meant to buy what he thinks, wholesale.
I would fear that Dicker has some kind of Nola figure in his life, creating "a sort of bubble around him, allowing him to concentrate on his writing and to produce" what he probably thinks of as "the greatest work of his life," going into "rhapsodies," telling him "it was a magnificent novel, that it was the greatest thing she had ever read," making him feel "ten feet tall" as she blathers about seagulls, the oceans, and "freedom"--but such an insipid, unreal creature surely does not exist outside the realm of Dicker's novel.
It was funny bad until I started thinking of the implications of an author viewing women this way and of said author's insipid book becoming an international bestseller and winning the novel prize from the Académie Française and being a finalist for the Prix Goncourt. (French culture, I no longer respect you.)