Slice of Swiss cheese not that sharp
The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair arrives with a pedigree: The mystery novel, set in a sleepy seaside New Hampshire town, has been a huge success in Europe.
The young author of the novel, Joel Dicker, is a Swiss national who spent childhood summers in New England coastal towns.
Despite the hype, the novel, originally published in French and translated by Sam Taylor, is not so much a literary sensation as an adequate beach read: chatty and undemanding.
The novel is structured as a book within a book. Marcus Goldman, whose first book was a bestseller, has writer’s block and is being hounded by his publishers to justify a substantial advance.
He seizes the chance to redeem himself when his mentor, Harry Quebert, is accused of murdering a
The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair 15-year-old girl almost 40 years ago.
The body of Nola Kellergan has just been found in the garden outside the house where Harry was living at the time. It becomes clear that there was an attraction, at the very least, between Harry, then 35, and the girl, a waitress at a local diner. Marcus sets out to find the truth behind the story in the hope of clearing Harry’s name and, not coincidentally, writing another best-seller.
The novel skips from Marcus’ investigation in the present to the passages he writes about what he finds, with chapters headed by the cryptic advice Harry gave Marcus as a student at a little college in Massachusetts.
One would assume that the structure would call for close reading: Is Marcus skewing the facts, or is he deluded by those he interviews?
In fact, the form just gives Dicker a chance to repeat what he has already said: Any reader who has drifted off will be brought up to speed again and again. Marcus’ purple prose, which one might hope is meant to be parodic, turns out to be meant sincerely.
The solution to the mystery, which depends on a rush of concealed information delivered in the final few chapters, has all the emotional impact of Colonel Mustard wielding a wrench in the conservatory.
It doesn’t help that Dicker keeps hinting at a connection between Nola and Nabokov’s Lolita: His book is as bland and uncomplicated as Nabokov’s is slyly complex and verbally seductive.
The book’s main charm might be its through-thelooking-glass version of American life. It’s set in a world where Pentecostal preachers from the Deep South find willing congregations in New England villages; editors say things like, “Oh, Goldman, I’m so sick of your morals and lofty principles”; and the hero is unironically dubbed “Marcus the Magnificent” by classmates in his New Jersey high school for his achievements in volleyball and cross-country.
If nothing else, Dicker offers a lot of words for the buck, and readers who miss Stieg Larsson’s verbose thrillers might find him an acceptable replacement.