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The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair

I won this book on Books And Reviews. The book was mailed to me by Viking/Penguin Press I was in no way compensated for this post as a reviewer, and the thoughts are my own.

The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair by Joel Dicker Translated form the French by Sam Taylor   Publisher: Penguin Press Release Date: May 27, 2014 ISBN:  978-0143126683 Pages: 656 Genre: Thriller / Literary Fiction  Source: Received from the publisher through Books And Reviews Goodreads Buy the Book

This book counts for the following Reading Challenges:

             

MY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS BOOK

Here is finally my review about this awesome novel. I will try my best to convey my enthusiasm about it.
The main plot seems simple enough: Nola, 15, disappears one day from a small place, Somerset, New Hampshire. The famous writer Harry Quebert seems to be involved. His student and friend Marcus Goldman decides to lead his own investigation to try to clear his friend’s name. Nothing too exciting if you stop here. But there’s so much more to The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair.

The novel/thriller is at the same time a reflection on the art of writing, based on the advice received by Marcus from Harry, his mentor. So for instance, each chapter begins with a short advice on how to write, as Marcus just faced a major writer block after his first successful novel.

Connected with that, the structure of the book is super well done and original: you basically go backwards in time:

1. Part One: Writer’s Disease (Eight Months Before the Book’s Publication) – it starts with chapter 31 and goes down to chapter 15
2. Part Two: Writer’s Cure (Writing The Book) – from chapter 14 to 6
3. Part Three: Writer’s Heaven (The Book’s Publication) – from chapter 5 to 1
4. The Epilogue is about One Year After the Book’s Publication

The plot itself thickens as we go along, and the characters, particularly Nola’s, become much more complex than at first look. There’s so much more involved that you first thought.There are many colorful characters, so well developed.

What I really enjoyed is how the writer starts by building up the case, then de-constructing the plot, and then trying to rebuild it up by proposing along all possible scenarios and culprits. Basically everyone involved could be considered the culprit. The novelist manages to convince you so well for each until he slowly reveals you the truth with amazing revelations, which is not anything you could have guessed, I think. This is really an incredible construction.

And it is all along a book within a book, but I won’t tell you more about these connections, you will have to experience them by yourself.

I totally disagree with critics and reviewers who compared this book to Lolita. First there is no explicit sex in this book, and Harry’s relation to Nola is not what you think it could be. The book is also ultimately about love, friendship, guilt and failures, and how to restart from scratch.

VERDICT: Very well rendered in English, this highly original novel will satisfy lovers of both thrillers and literary fiction. Dicker managed to mix both genres in a tour de force you will not easily forget.

WHAT IS IT ABOUT

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Joël Dicker is a Swiss novelist, born on June 16^th 1985.
He is from Geneva, a French-speaking city in western Switzerland.
He attended Geneva schools, and the University of Geneva law school.
He received his Masters of Law from the University of Geneva in 2010.

From an early age, Joël has had a passion for writing.  At age ten, Joël founded La Gazette des Animaux (Animals’ Gazette), a magazine about nature that he directed for seven years. At age 20 he made his first attempts as a fiction writer.  His short story, Le Tigre, was honored in 2005 by PIJA (International Prize for Young French-speaking Authors). At age 24, he wrote Les Derniers Jours de Nos Pères (The Final Days of our Fathers), a novel that tells the true but little-known story of the SOE, an underground branch of the British Secret Intelligence Service.  In 2010, Joël won the Prix des Ecrivains Genevois (Geneva Writers’ Prize), a prize for unpublished manuscripts, for Les Derniers Jours de Nos Pères.  After winning this prestigious prize, Les Derniers Jours de Nos Pères was pubished in 2012.

During the two years between writing Les Derniers Jours de Nos Pères and its publication, Joël was working on a new and more comtemporary novel.  He studied all the critiques he had received for Les Derniers Jours de Nos Pères and worked on his style.  As for North America, he knows it well: as a child he spent every summer vacation in New England.  After two years of hard work, he finished this book in May 2012.  La Vérité sur l’Affaire Harry Quebert is 670 pages long. It has been translated into over 30 languages and is being published in over 45 countries. [from his website]

 

 

HAVE YOU READ THIS BOOK YET?
DO YOU KNOW OF ANY OTHER NOVEL
MIXING LITERARY FICTION AND THRILLER GENRES?
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS  IN A COMMENT PLEASE

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