Review of THE END OF THE DAY by Bill Clegg (New Release)

 4 Stars

Like many people, I was first introduced to Bill Clegg with his wonderful debut novel Did You Ever Have a Family (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2016/07/review-of-did-you-ever-have-family-by.html), so I was anxious to read his second work of fiction.

Three women are the focus of the novel.  There’s Dana who sets out to visit her childhood friend Jackie; after almost 50 years of estrangement, she wants to tell Jackie some truth about the past.   Jackie, however, is bitter and resentful and wants nothing to do with Dana.  The third woman is Lupita who grew up in the shadow of Dana and Jackie’s friendship because her family once worked for Dana’s parents; now living in Hawaii, Lupita receives a phone call that brings back difficult memories.   The revelation of long-held secrets threatens to upend all their lives. 

Various chapters repeatedly give the perspective of these three women, but other characters are also given some chapters.  There’s Hap, a new father who should be spending time with his newborn daughter but is sitting beside his estranged father’s hospital bed.  Alice, Hap’s mother, and Floyd, Jackie’s husband, appear as well.  The lives of all six people prove to be intimately connected in surprising ways. 

The duration of the novel is one day, but via flashbacks it covers 60 years.  Some readers will probably not like the multiple points of view and the movement between different locations in the present and various times in the past, but this technique develops characters and creates suspense because information about a crucial event in the past is revealed very slowly. 

Characterization is definitely a strong element.  The internal lives of the characters are detailed; we learn their secrets, lies, desires, and resentments.  Readers come to understand motivations for behaviour though they may not always agree with a character’s choices.  Many of the characters are not likeable.  Dana, for instance, is the spoiled rich girl who is accustomed to getting her way and does not hesitate to manipulate others.  Jackie is correctly described as suffering from “titanium stubbornness and deep-rooted pride.”  Hap is “relentlessly uncurious and absent of imagination” so the “great claw of regret . . . [holds] him without mercy.” 

The book explores how decisions can have major impacts on the person making the decision and on others as well.  A person can do what s/he believes is right without realizing the long-term repercussions.  A youthful escapade may result in unforeseen trauma.  Certainly Dana’s manipulations have unintended consequences for herself and for many people. 

The novel also examines the concept of truth.  One woman believes she knows the truth about an event that occurred 49 years earlier, but there are clear hints that she may not.  There are, in fact, several characters who see something and make incorrect assumptions.  Everyone has “bits and pieces of the story, but not the truth.”  One woman knows what actually happened half a century earlier, but her knowledge of the full impact of her subsequent choices is lacking.  There are many misunderstandings because people choose not to tell the truth and because people refuse to listen to the truth.  But of course the truth can be dangerous.  One person’s death, for example, brings “unexpected relief.  Everyone was finally safe from the truth.”  Certainly, there are times when unburying the truth will serve little purpose; one woman admits she would like to speak her truth but "to try would upend too much.” 

Is it necessary or possible to know the truth?  Hap acquires some surprising information but realizes that he can never know the full truth:  “So much discovered in so few days, yet he’s never felt so acutely aware of his ignorance.  The mural had come down, but only to reveal another less complete, but more complicated one; one that would surely fall, too, and be discredited or trivialized by the one that came after.  And on and on.  Life appeared no more than a long, bleak unraveling, a stripping away of layers, like the skins of an onion, one by one, peeled back to expose what?  The truth?”  At the end of the day, people may have to accept not knowing the truth. 

I recommend this book to readers who enjoy thought-provoking, character-driven literary fiction written in exquisite prose.

Note:  I received a digital galley from the publisher via NetGalley.  

Review of CONSENT by Annabel Lyon (New Release)

3.5 Stars 

I remember Annabel Lyon for her 2009 book The Golden Mean which I enjoyed very much.  When I heard about another of her novels being published this fall, I requested an advance reading copy from the publisher.

This book focuses on two pairs of sisters.  Sara and Matti are first introduced.  Sara is an academic who has a love for fine wines, designer clothing, and expensive perfumes; she will spend a fortune on a dress.  Her sister Matti is affectionate and trusting.  Because Matti is developmentally challenged, Sara eventually becomes Matti’s caregiver. 

The second pair is Saskia and Jenny.  Though twins, they are total opposites in terms of personality.  Saskia is the serious, responsible, hard-working university student while Jenny is the glamourous interior designer whose life is dominated by her self-centredness, impulsivity, and thrill-seeking.  Because of an accident, Saskia has to make decisions for Jenny.

For almost three-quarters of the novel, chapters alternate between the two sets of sisters.  In each tale, one sister, without consent, becomes responsible for the other.  There are other superficial similarities like obsessions with clothing and perfume, but I wondered if the two narratives would ever actually intersect.  Then tragedies bring them together in a shocking way. 

The book examines how sisterly love can be entangled with resentment.  Sara loves Matti but sees her as a burden who robs her “of the privacy Sara had sought so fiercely and protected for so long.”  Sara admits to a friend, “’I wanted her at a distance’” and “The truth was that she was mean to Mattie, she was impatient, she was at times very, very cruel.”  Likewise, Saskia loves Jenny but feels she can never escape her twin:  “Jenny was her sun and moon:  there was no escaping her.  Saskia was ever alert to the ways her sister could hurt her, ever afraid of the ways Jenny might hurt herself.”  Saskia thinks about the complicated truth of loving her sister:  “Of course she and Jenny were closer to each other than anyone else.  That closeness didn’t shield her from Jenny’s manipulations, her cruelty.  Of course Saskia loved Jenny.  That didn’t mean she wasn’t also frightened of her, and frightened for her . . .  Jenny was the kind of person who could fly away or go up in flames at any moment.  It was exhausting to be her counterweight, her rock, her extinguisher, her control.”

The novel also explores how grief can be entangled with guilt.  Sara makes decisions for Matti without considering what might be best for her sister:  “She had taken the sun and the moon from Matti.”  A friend points out to Sara that she has not suffered because of having Matti in her life; he asks her sarcastically, “’Tell me all the opportunities you’ve had to turn down.  Tell me all the jobs that were refused you.  Tell me about your life of poverty and disenfranchisement and abuse.  . . . You have money and education and power.’”  Sara finds herself “chained in the masturbatorium of her own guilt, clawing at her own pinkest places.”  Though she claims guilt will not consume her, Saskia says she is the one responsible for her sister’s fate:  “’Me . . . I’m the one . . . I wanted her to know it was me.   . . . Just like I want you to know it was me.’” 

As the title indicates, consent is a theme.  As a medical ethicist, Sara writes a paper, with Matti in mind, “on capacity and consent in adults with special needs” and Saskia, thinking about Jenny’s choices, writes a literary essay “on the implications of consent in Réage.”  Neither Sara nor Saskia consents to the responsibilities thrust on them.  Most significantly, the novel asks the reader to consider what s/he might consent to because of love. 

I became impatient with parts of the book.  Sara’s focus on perfumes and fashion and the purchase of a particular dress becomes tedious, as does Saskia’s later fixation with clothes.  These sections have a purpose:  “Clothes as costume and code.”  It is noteworthy that Sara wastes an inheritance and what she spends on clothes “’could put a kid through college.’”  Even Saskia asks, “’And I’m wearing my sister’s clothes, so whatever that says about me -.’”  I just found that many of the descriptions were too detailed.

The novel’s best quality is its portrayal of relationships between sisters.  I think anyone with a sister will acknowledge the realism of the complex sisterly relationships developed in this thought-provoking book.

Note:  I received a digital galley from the publisher via NetGalley.  The book will be released on September 29, 2020.

Review of HERE WE ARE by Graham Swift (New Release)

 4 Stars

This short novel is primarily set in three time periods.  During World War II, eight-year-old Ronnie Deane is evacuated from his council house in Bethnal Green and sent to Evergrene, a manor house in Oxfordshire.  In 1959, Ronnie has become Pablo, a magician and illusionist, who, with the help of his assistant and fiancée Evie White, has become the star of a variety show in the pier theatre in Brighton.  His friend Jack Robbins is the master of ceremonies.  In 2009, 75-year-old Evie, Jack’s widow of one year, looks back to the events of 1959. 

Mystery pervades the book.  Why did Evie end her engagement to Ronnie and marry Jack:  “One day that September, after the show had finished and after the police had said she was free to leave Brighton, she . . .  went to the end of the pier, took off the [engagement] ring and threw it in the sea”? What happened to Ronnie who, after the summer of 1959, “never appeared again at all”?  Did Evie every really know Ronnie?  Did Jack?  And there’s also the question of whether Evie regrets her choice.

The title refers to a phrase often used when offering something or announcing someone on stage; it is inevitably stated in an upbeat tone suggesting happiness.  Of course, the happiness is often an illusion.  Evie, for instance, is taught by her mother:  “’And you must keep smiling, never forget your smile.’”  And she remembers that lesson, keeping an “indomitable and gleaming smile” so that it becomes a part of her:  “The last thing she would put on was her smile, though did she really need to?  Wasn’t it just a part of her, like her flashing blue eyes?”  A cake celebrating a performer’s 50 years on stage has “the two famous masks, but not in this case of comedy and tragedy – both masks must be smiling.” 

This book reminded me of lines in Shakespeare’s As You Like It:  All the world’s a stage,/And all the men and women merely players;/They have their exits and their entrances;/And one man in his time plays many parts (II,vii, 139-142).  The book examines how people assume different identities throughout life.  Of course, there are the stage names so Ronnie Deane becomes Pablo and then The Great Pablo; Evie White becomes Eve; and Jack Robbins becomes Jack Robinson and then Terry Treadwell.  Different roles are assumed:  Jack begins life as a “song-and-dance man” but then becomes a film star and a Shakespearean actor.  Evie, the glamorous magician’s assistant, morphs into a serious businesswoman who “found the all-important key in the small of [Jack’s] back and learnt how, carefully, lovingly, to turn it, when all the [other women] were too busy just wrapping their legs around him.”  Even as a child, Ronnie becomes two different people:  he goes from being the son of a charwoman and a seaman to being the surrogate child of a couple living in a country manor, a transformation so complete that he is alienated from his mother.  When he performs his first magic, “He himself had become a different person.” 

The point seems to be that our lives are little more than “a flickering summer concoction at the end of a pier.”  Who is the real person behind the roles we adopt?  For example, Evie imagines her prospective mother-in-law asking, “And who’s she, anyway, when she’s at home, the one with all the sequins and feathers and precious little else, looking like she’ll never stop smiling?”  We act, we give our audience what they want, a lesson Ronnie teaches Evie:  “’You have to give the public what they want and expect” while diverting their attention from what you don’t want them to see.  In her skimpy costume, Evie’s job as assistant is to divert the audience’s attention from Ronnie.  On the anniversary of Jack’s death, Evie has a good cry and then gets ready to have dinner with a friend:  “she’d got up again, not a sobbing child but a seventy-five-year-old woman, and prepared herself slowly . . . She’d put on her face.  The cream blouse, the straight black skirt, the little black jacket, the pearls.”  One persona disappears and another emerges.  Evie thinks, “The batty old woman in the garden and the bawling infant had turned into a princess sitting in a Mayfair restaurant, and now she was going to have to play her part.”  At the end, she wonders who would dare say “She couldn’t act,” because she feels “she had performed her best.”

This novel seems deceptively simple and straight-forward but it has complexity, leaving the reader thinking about the illusive nature of identities and life itself.  Illusions are not found only on the stage.  But I do not think that it’s an illusion that the author has created some magic in this finely crafted novel. 

Note:  I received a digital galley of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.  The book will be released on September 22. 

Review of REDHEAD BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD by Anne Tyler

 4 Stars

This novel appeared on the 2020 Booker Prize longlist, though it didn't make the shortlist.  

Forty-three-year-old Micah Mortimer runs a one-man computer tech help service and moonlights as the super of his apartment building.  “He lives alone; he keeps to himself; his routine is etched in stone” (2).  He has a “woman friend” of three years, Cassia Slade, “though they seem to lead fairly separate lives” (4):  “they had reached the stage where things had more or less solidified:  compromises arrived at, incompatibilities adjusted to, minor quirks overlooked” (20).

Micah’s orderly, comfortable existence is shattered when the son of a college girlfriend arrives on his doorstep thinking Micah may be his biological father.  Then Cass is facing possible eviction and Micah’s response to her predicament –  “’you’ve got a car of your own you can live in’” (48) – has her ending their relationship. 

The redhead in the title is not a new girlfriend but a metaphor for Micah’s inability to see things clearly.  Having difficulty with social cues, he often misreads relationships.  There’s a wonderful description of his awkwardness:  “Sometimes when he was dealing with people, he felt like he was operating one of those claw machines on a boardwalk, those shovel things where you tried to scoop up a prize but the controls were too unwieldy and you worked at too great a remove” (151). 

Because he has such a strong need for order, Micah wants everything to be perfect.  Of course, in relationships this is not possible so his habit is to walk away when things become uncomfortably chaotic.  Certainly he has decided that “living with someone full-time was just too messy” (38).  When his routines don’t bring him comfort and he has a “nagging ache in the hollow of his chest” (93), can Micah learn to live with the disorder inherent in human interactions? 

There is a great deal of quiet humour.  Micah talks to himself in a fake French accent when he’s cooking, and when he’s driving, he imagines a Traffic God “operated by a fleet of men in shirtsleeves and green visors who frequently commented to one another on the perfection of Micah’s driving” (8).  Many of his clients are older women:  “Old ladies had the easiest problems to fix but the greatest number of fractious questions” (5).  When Micah’s sisters remember so many details about the people they’ve met, Micah thinks “Shouldn’t they be periodically clearing out their memory caches or something” (80)? 

Micah is mildly eccentric but a decent, likeable person.  He doesn’t ask a tenant to pay for grab bars because she “had cancer and was getting progressively weaker and more prone to falling” (39).  I love the little telling details which reveal so much about his personality:  he has a calendar which seems stuck to the past; his apartment is so minimalist; he’s always fiddling with his glasses so he can see; his apartment gradually becomes more and more disordered. 

During this pandemic, many aspects of our lives have become chaotic so perhaps we can learn along with Micah about living with disorder.  This book is a short but wonderful read.

Review of THE AOSAWA MURDERS by Riku Onda

 3.5 Stars

This unconventional Japanese psychological thriller was published in 2005 but not translated into English until this year.  The author has won several Japanese writing awards and I certainly hope more of her books will be translated.

The novel is set 30 years after the murder of 17 people in an unnamed seaside city in 1973 during a family celebration.  Drinks, delivered as a gift, prove to be poisoned.  The only survivors are the housekeeper, who sipped only a little bit of a poisoned drink but suffers ill-effects for a long time afterwards, and Hisako, the beautiful, enigmatic, and blind daughter of the Aosawa family who was present at the party but did not have a drink.  The case is considered solved when a man commits suicide and leaves a note admitting his guilt.  There is, however, no explanation of motive so some people suspect that the mastermind of the murder plot has not been caught.  Makiko Saiga, a neighbour of the Aosawa family, wrote a book about the tragedy a decade later, but she offered no conclusion.

The book has a non-traditional structure.  The narrative unfolds through one-sided interviews (really monologues), letters, and diaries offering the perspective of various people.  We hear from Saiga, her brothers, her assistant, her editor, the housekeeper’s daughter, the chief detective investigating the case, a shopkeeper, and others.  Each sheds more light on the tragic event. 

A theme is that truth is entirely subjective.  This idea is introduced early on:  “Each person has their own idiosyncratic biases, visual impressions and tricks of memory that shape their perception, and when one also takes into consideration the individual knowledge, education and personality that influence each single viewpoint, one can see how infinite possibilities are.  Hence, when hearing about the same event from a number of people, one starts to notice that all the accounts are, without exception, slightly different.  .  . . it’s impossible to ever really know the truth behind events.  Once one accepts this, it follows that everything written in newspapers or textbooks as ‘history’ is actually an amalgam of the greatest common factors from all the information available.  . . . Only an all-seeing god – if there is such a thing – could ever possibly know the real truth (48 – 49).  This idea is then repeated again and again:  “truth is nothing more than one view of a subject seen from a particular perspective” (59) and “the truth is nothing more than a subject seen from a certain perspective” (69) and “What is the truth, really” (236)?  Even in writing, “the notion of non-fiction is an illusion.  All that can exist is fiction visible to the eye.  And what is visible can also lie.  The same applies to that which we hear and touch” (21).

More than one person suspects Hisako:  “it’s a very simple story.  If there are ten people in a house and nine die, who is the culprit?  It’s not a whodunit.  The answer’s easy – it’s the survivor, of course” (43).  Several people believe that a woman was an accomplice, and one of the detectives feels strongly that Hisako arranged the mass murder.  There is, however, no evidence linking Hisako to the poisonings.  In interrogations, she remembers only being outside a blue room with a white crepe myrtle flower.

In a novel that argues it is probably impossible to ever really know the truth, the reader should not expect a tidy ending in which everything is resolved.  A motive is suggested but not fully explained.  Saiga’s book is described as follows:  “The book was about the murders but wasn’t written as a mystery and didn’t have any kind of conclusion” (251).  This description also fits this novel quite well. 

This novel will not be to everyone’s liking, but I found it an intriguing read.  It is cleverly constructed and actually requires re-reading to find the details that are missed on first reading. 

SCHATJE'S REVIEWS OF THE SHORTLIST OF THE 2020 INTERNATIONAL DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD

10 novels have been shortlisted for the 2020 International DUBLIN Literary Award.  This award, the world’s most valuable annual prize for a single work of fiction published in English, is worth €100,000 ($165.000+ CAN) to the winner.

Of the 10 titles, I’ve read 6 thus far so I’ve included links to my reviews where applicable:

The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker (British):  4 Stars https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2018/12/review-of-silence-of-girls-by-pat-barker.html

Milkman by Anna Burns (Irish):  4 Stars  https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2019/01/review-of-milkman-by-anna-burns.html

Disoriental by Négar Djavadi (Iranian-French). Translated from the French by Tina Kover.

Washington Black by Esi Edugyan (Canadian):  4 Stars https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2018/11/review-of-washington-black-by-esi.htm5. 

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones (American):  4 Stars https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2018/10/review-of-american-marriage-by-tayari.html

History of Violence by Édouard Louis (French). Translated from the French by Lorin Stein.

The Friend by Sigrid Nunez (American).

There There by Tommy Orange (Native American):  3.5 Stars  https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2019/04/review-of-there-there-by-tommy-orange.html

All the Lives We Never Lived by Anuradha Roy (Indian).

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk (Polish). Translated by from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones:  3.5 Stars  https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2019/12/review-of-drive-your-plow-over-bones-of.html

The winner will be announced on Thursday, October 22. 

Maggie O'Farrell Wins Women's Prize for Fiction!

Maggie O'Farrell won the 2020 Women's Prize for Fiction for her novel Hamnet and Judith.  I recognized it as an exceptional novel!

https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2020/07/review-of-hamnet-and-judith-by-maggie.html

Review of THE DARKEST EVENING by Ann Cleeves (New Release)

3.5 Stars

I am familiar with Vera Stanhope from the television series starring Brenda Blethyn, whom Ann Cleeves calls “magnificent” in the Acknowledgements.  As I read this ninth Vera novel, I pictured Brenda and heard her voice throughout.

Vera is on her way home in a snow storm when she comes across an abandoned car with a toddler inside.  She takes the child and stops at the nearest residence which is called Brockburn, the once-grand ancestral home of the Stanhopes where Vera’s father Hector grew up.  Since Hector was the black sheep of the family, Vera has only distant memories of visiting Brockburn.  This visit proves to be eventful and one of many because the body of the child’s mother is found on the grounds.  As Vera and her team try to find the murderer, they also uncover some Stanhope family secrets.

There are a number of suspects who have possible motives to kill the young woman, so the reader is kept guessing.  Though there are several characters who could be guilty, the author does a great job in helping the reader not get confused.  Of course, the culprit is identified at the end, but I think few readers will guess correctly.  Though there are clues, there are also red herrings, so the ending is not predictable.

I have always loved Vera, perhaps because I identify with her.  She’s a frumpy older woman who is physically out of shape.  She can be socially awkward.  Many people underestimate her intelligence; for example, one man describes Vera as looking like a bag lady and asks, “’Do they really think she’s competent to run the investigation?’”  She is a flawed person; one of her team thinks that Vera has difficulty understanding “the difference between her own morality and the constraints of the law.” 

Because the book gives us more of Vera’s inner dialogue, Vera is further developed.  There is quite a contrast between her gruff, no-nonsense exterior and her sensitive interior.  For instance, we learn that “food had always been her comfort, her means of escape.  Her own private addiction.”  She has never married and doesn’t want to give up her independence, “Though it might have been nice to be asked, she thought.  Just once.”  Vera is secretly thrilled to be appointed “an honorary auntie” though she doesn’t want to babysit:  “She wouldn’t go that far.  She was so cack-handed she couldn’t contemplate changing a nappy.”

This novel develops the working relationship between DC Holly Jackman and Vera.  At the beginning Holly feels “taken for granted within the team . . . hard done by” and Vera thinks of Holly as “a cold fish.”  Though she doesn’t openly admit it, Vera’s opinion matters to Holly and she tries hard to win her boss’s approval.  When Vera praises Holly’s work, “Holly wished that didn’t mean so much to her, that she didn’t feel as she had when she’d just been given a gold star at school as a five-year-old.”  Holly and Vera spend more time together during the investigation, and they end up developing more respect for each other. 

This is a solid police procedural with interesting characters, a delightful whodunit that does not disappoint.  Those familiar with Vera will certainly want to pick up this book; those who have not met her are in for a treat and will undoubtedly want to check out the previous books and watch the television adaptations if possible.

Note:  I received a digital galley from the publisher via NetGalley.

Review of BEFORE SHE WAS HELEN by Caroline B. Cooney (New Release)

3 Stars

Clemmie Lakefield is a semi-retired Latin teacher living in a retirement community in South Carolina.  Because she hasn’t heard from her neighbour Dom, she lets herself into his home.  She doesn’t find Dom but she sees a door connecting Dom’s unit with the neigbour’s, and she can’t help but snoop.  She discovers a beautiful piece of glass art, and she can’t resist taking a photo.  This picture she shares with her grand-nephew who then shares it on social media and thereby inadvertently places his great-aunt in a dangerous situation involving a drug dealer.  Then, a body is discovered next door.   Clemmie worries that her real identity will be revealed and that she will not only be implicated in the murder next door but connected to a 50-year-old murder case which has recently been re-opened.

There are actually two narratives in the book.  One involves the present where Clemmie, a septuagenarian, is living as Helen Stephens.  Interspersed are flashbacks to the 1950s when Clemmie was a teenager and young woman; these flashbacks explain how and why Clemmie became Helen.

Other than Clemmie, none of the other characters are developed in any depth.  Many are portrayed as rather stereotypical seniors whose lives revolve around card games, golf, line dancing, gardening, art classes, and book clubs.  Many are also nosy busybodies whose behaviour and gossiping provide several touches of humour. 

It is Clemmie’s young life in the 1950s which has no humour in it.  She suffered a tragedy which has shaped her life.  Since what happened to Clemmie would (hopefully) not be regarded in the same way today, the author takes great pains to explain what life was like in the mid-20^th century.  There are several passages explaining life in the past:  “Promiscuity in the 1950s and early 1960s was rare.  The price to be paid was too high. . . . There was birth control in the form of condoms, but few girls could picture how that worked, let alone acquire such an item.  The pill had not yet been invented.  The only way to avoid pregnancy was not to have sex” and “There were no divorces to speak of in the early 1950s” and “In the 1950s . . . hardly anyone had a passport or went abroad” and “in the 1950s, you didn’t confess you had a problem because it was wrong to burden others.  Presenting your own problem was nothing but whining.  Furthermore, in the 1950s, people just soldiered on” and “in the 1950s and well into the ‘60s, you protected your enemy because of your firm belief in courtesy and your need to retain your community standing” and “The word stalking had not been used for people in the 1950s and ‘60s.” 

There are two murder cases and neither is resolved realistically.  The resolution of one seems contrived and that of the other seems a cop out.  There are other issues as well:  the re-opening of a 50-year-old murder case just as Clemmie becomes involved in a murder next door is just too coincidental, and the clueless behaviour of the grand-nephew is unconvincing.

Despite its flaws, the book is an easy, entertaining read.  A reader will inevitably find him/herself cheering for Clemmie and hoping she escapes all the dire consequences she fears. 

Note:  I received a digital galley from the publisher via NetGalley.  The book will be released on September 8, 2020.

Review of THE MYSTERY OF HENRI PICK by David Foenkinos (New Release)

4 Stars

This quirky book, part comedy and part mystery with a dash of romance, is for bibliophiles.

Crozon, in the Brittany region of France, has a library which houses manuscripts rejected by publishers.  Delphine Despero, a young, ambitious editor, finds a gem amongst these rejects and works to have it published.  The book, entitled The Last Hours of a Love Affair, was purportedly written by a now-deceased pizzeria owner, Henri Pick.  Interest in this unlikely writer rises to a fevered pitch, though there are some, like Jean-Michel Rouche - a once-influential literary journalist, who cannot believe a man who never read could have written the book.

The book examines all aspects of the publishing industry; we meet writers, editors, publishers, book representatives, reviewers, librarians, and readers.  There is gentle mockery of virtually all these people; for example, “Writing is the only job in the world where you can stay under the duvet all day long and still claim to be working.”  We meet an editor for whom “the choice of keeping or deleting a comma could make her heart beat faster.”  Publishers are skewered for using whatever means they can to promote sales:  “This is often how the fate of a book is decided; some are given a head start.  The publisher’s enthusiasm is the deciding factor; every parent has a favourite child.”  Even controversy is welcomed because the attention it brings can boost a book’s sales.  A librarian examines “each reader’s physical appearance in order to work out which author they needed.”  Even readers are gently spoofed:  “Readers always find themselves in a book, in one way or another.  Reading is a completely egotistical pleasure.” 

The author’s opinion is that we are “edging towards a complete domination of form over substance.”  Pick’s novel, for example, becomes a best-seller, not because of the quality of the book itself, but because of the mystery surrounding its writer:  “people were talking much more about the mystery of Henri Pick than about his book.”  The life of Pick’s widow is turned upside-down once the book is published.  At the end of the book, there is a reference to “our society’s obsession with form over substance.”

The book explores how recognition and fame affect people.  Joséphine, Prick’s adult daughter, for instance, is depressed about the state of her life until journalists turn their attention to her in an attempt to learn about Henri:  “Like a briefly famous reality-TV star, she was seduced by the idea of being special” and “discovered a taste for the drug that is fame.”   She parlays her moment of fame to improve sales in her lingerie shop:  “People queued up to buy a bra from the daughter of a pizzeria owner who’d written a novel in absolute secrecy.”  Unfortunately, she becomes so accustomed to the limelight that she lets it consume her and fails to realize that someone might take advantage of her for personal gain. 

How people deal with a lack of recognition is also explored.  Delphine’s boyfriend is a writer whose first novel is not a commercial success, and he has to learn how to deal with failure.  Likewise, Jean-Michel Rouche was once a powerful voice in the literary world but, after being fired, realizes that he might soon be forgotten, so he sets out to re-establish his reputation by proving that the publication of Pick’s novel is a literary hoax. 

Romance is not a favourite genre for me, but the romantic touches in the book are delicate.  The stories of several of the characters illustrate the theme of Pick’s novel:  the last hours of a love affair.  The romance behind Pick’s novel is certainly touching. 

The many allusions add to the novel.  Because many of the literary references are to French literature with which I am not very familiar, I found myself doing some research as I read.  I’ve not read The Possibility of an Island by Michel Houellebecq and had never even heard of HHhH by Laurent Benet.  I wish I had read The Lover by Marguerite Dumas so I could understand why it is the novel one of the characters needs in her life.  I even went on YouTube to find a recording of the French singer Barbara singing “Göttingen”, the song which was so impactful on Joséphine (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2beYoAxxC8A).  And I learned that there is an actual library of unpublished manuscripts:  http://www.thebrautiganlibrary.org/about.html.

There are some wonderful turns of phrase:  “The burning question was on her lips, as impossible to hold back as a man fleeing a house on fire.”  One man is described as being “capable of withdrawing into himself like a Russian doll.”  Authors drop off their rejected manuscripts “to rid themselves of the fruits of their failure.”  An unhappy woman regains “the use of her zygomatic muscles.  Now she could be seen parading outside her shop, looking like a lottery winner.” 

The humourous touches are pitch-perfect.  The television interview with Pick’s widow is a wonderful scene.  Pick is described as “the Fitzgerald of pizza”!  An overweight woman has an affair and worries that her size is unattractive.  Her lover tells her, “”I like women with curves.  It’s reassuring.”  She replies, “’Did you need that much reassurance?’”  And there’s the man who wonders about a woman’s interest in him:  “It had been a long time since a woman had driven three hundred kilometres to see him without warning.  In fact, it had never happened before.”

I’ve read a couple of other feel-good books with a French connection for book lovers:  The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2015/07/review-of-little-paris-bookshop-by-nina.html) and The Girl Who Reads on the Métro by Christine Féret-Fleury (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2020/06/review-of-girl-who-reads-on-metro-by.html), but The Mystery of Henri Pick is the best.  It is deceptively light-hearted; the mystery is actually secondary.  The book comments on subjects like society’s superficiality, the impact of fame, and human nature in general.  I think that most readers picking up this novel will feel they have “the right book in their hands, a book that [speaks] to them.”

Note:  I received a digital galley from the publisher via NetGalley.