The follow-up to The Truth About The Harry Quebert Affair is a prequel of sorts, a tale of the same narrator's childhood. The style of the previous book is apparent here, and borrows from the structure too. The story takes place across many years, and the book switches timelines frequently throughout.
The premise is a oft referenced "tragedy" which looms over the book like the sword of damocles. Every character is presented as a before and after version of this tragedy. And some of these characters are just awful. Awful people, completely self absorbed and unable or unwilling to see beyond their own privileged lives.
While the story was somewhat engaging, and the book easy enough to read, there were a few issues, perhaps in the translation. Dialogue was just simply ridiculous, sentences uttered that wouldn't pass the lips of a real person. The narrator, as unreliable as you could imagine, presenting events as a matter of fact, when he couldn't possibly know what was happening in certain moments, was honest to a fault. From his horrid jealousy, to his shame directed at his "poor" parents, to his almost stalkery behaviour towards the Mary-Sue who illogically represented pretty much everyone's love interest. Peripheral characters weren't much better, seemingly only there to fill pages, and could easily have been purged by a less forgiving editor, who could have chopped the page count by half and not lost any of the essence.
A decent enough book, but unfortunately these quibbles mean it is considerably less than its predecessor which suffered from many of the same problems. It seems Dicker didn't improve in the intervening years, and perhaps the translation of his books will not survive to another effort.
While the story was somewhat engaging, and the book easy enough to read, there were a few issues, perhaps in the translation. Dialogue was just simply ridiculous, sentences uttered that wouldn't pass the lips of a real person. The narrator, as unreliable as you could imagine, presenting events as a matter of fact, when he couldn't possibly know what was happening in certain moments, was honest to a fault. From his horrid jealousy, to his shame directed at his "poor" parents, to his almost stalkery behaviour towards the Mary-Sue who illogically represented pretty much everyone's love interest. Peripheral characters weren't much better, seemingly only there to fill pages, and could easily have been purged by a less forgiving editor, who could have chopped the page count by half and not lost any of the essence.
A decent enough book, but unfortunately these quibbles mean it is considerably less than its predecessor which suffered from many of the same problems. It seems Dicker didn't improve in the intervening years, and perhaps the translation of his books will not survive to another effort.
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