ichirofakename's review
3.0
Nice long French sentences roll along, not quite Whitman-like. Needlessly grim story of hostages that only becomes gripping when the blood begins to flow. Then you turn the pages till all the bad guys are dead and all the good guys recovering.
jazzy_cat's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Injury/Injury detail and Violence
Moderate: Toxic relationship, Animal death, and Violence
Minor: Alcohol, Mental illness, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Bullying, Cursing, and Physical abuse
vkce23's review against another edition
challenging
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Slow start that really ramps up in the last third of the book. It was very compelling and tense, but I did find the prose challenging at times, with the constant switch between what was happening and what characters were thinking. All laid out in long sentences with limited punctuation, blending past and present. Clever, compulsive but long!
_amaca's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
sknight's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
ispeakbooknerd's review
1.0
This book was just not written in a style that was palatable for me. It is very wordy, which after a certain point, makes it difficult to follow along with what is trying to be conveyed at any given time. There are glimmers of the potential this story has, which kept me attempting to read it for around 150 pages. However, life is too short, and I have way too many books on the backburner to spend more time on something that hasn't managed to grab me even a little bit in the first fourth of its pages. I suspect this is a beautiful novel in its native French; however, I believe something may have been lost in translation. It may just be that the writing style used, even in the native French, wouldn't appeal to me. C'est dommage.
chad_vinny's review against another edition
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
A slow burner of a thriller that takes excruciating time to set the scene and discusses the inner emotional states of each character as the story progresses to it gripping dénouement. Highly recommend.
ellies_shelf's review against another edition
2.0
Daniel Levin Becker's biography cites him as the 'youngest member of Oulipo', and it seems as if the Oulipian constraint in this translation is to make it read as if it was fed into ChatGPT to generate a translation. This is a personal qualm but I would prefer a novel to read well in English rather than to maintain this level of fidelity to the original syntax of the French. I have gripes about translations from French (and Spanish) which don't nod in any way to the completely different requirements of English fiction (e.g. use of determiners, sentence structure). I do think in this case the same effect of tension built up by nested sentences could have been preserved whilst adding in just a few more sentence breaks or changing some of the word order. In addition to this there are some lazy translations - I have literally never gone to any fast food restaurant and ordered a 'cheese bacon burger' as opposed to a bacon cheeseburger. But hey, maybe Daniel Levin Becker has.
Translation aside. While reading this long and deliberately cinematic novel I couldn't help but wish I was watching it as a Canal+ TV series. I couldn't get over the oddness of the author trying to break thriller prose conventions whilst still maintaining such conservative characterisation & plot. There are some nice references to film framing & narrative (like the repeated motif of framing a scene in a French window) that show how tension could be built on screen. I didn't find Mauvignier's prose successful at all in building tension in the novel - in fact it built frustration and made the twists (when I finally got to them) underwhelming.
This is a tortuous novel. It is Proustian but I think you would read Proust for a completely different reason. Overall not good.
Translation aside. While reading this long and deliberately cinematic novel I couldn't help but wish I was watching it as a Canal+ TV series. I couldn't get over the oddness of the author trying to break thriller prose conventions whilst still maintaining such conservative characterisation & plot. There are some nice references to film framing & narrative (like the repeated motif of framing a scene in a French window) that show how tension could be built on screen. I didn't find Mauvignier's prose successful at all in building tension in the novel - in fact it built frustration and made the twists (when I finally got to them) underwhelming.
This is a tortuous novel. It is Proustian but I think you would read Proust for a completely different reason. Overall not good.
bibliobethreads's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0