Marcus Goldman is having an existential crisis. After publishing his first book to great acclaim he is now months overdue on his next book, and even though his publisher is threatening to sue he still cannot write a single word.  In desperation he decides to visit his college professor, Harry Quebert, in the small isolated beach community of Somerset, New Hampshire, hoping that the quiet and comforting presence of his professor will help him with his awful writer’s block.

And it does work, but just not in the way Marcus expected. Shortly after he arrives, the bones of Nola Kellergan, a young girl who went missing years before under suspicious circumstances are found on Quebert’s property and Marcus finds out that his professor was having an affair with this under age girl at the time she went missing. Quebert is arrested and Marcus, desperate to help his professor, investigates and begins to write the truth about Harry Quebert’s affair and the murder of Nola.

This book by a young Swiss author was a bestseller in Europe and won numerous French literary awards. With such high acclaim, many here in the US were touting it as the next “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” phenom, creating huge expectations among readers.  As a result the reviews are rather mixed, with some loving it and others hating it.  It was this dichotomy that made me intrigued and want to read the book; after all how could a three time award wining novel in France, with 32 million copies sold in Europe get a review on Amazon as an “over-hyped piece of trash?” 

While I agree that this is not award winning literature, I did find myself enjoying the book for what it is: a whodunit in the Agatha Christie style, with a rather unsophisticated volunteer detective in Marcus Goldman, a young and misunderstood victim, a suspect who has moral failings that make him look guilty, and a village full of witnesses and other suspects.  The fun of the book is the twist and turns in the story, where suspicion falls on first one person and then another and then another who are each then exonerated in turn by the bungling and inefficient detective work of our rather ineffective detective.

That being said the characters are not well developed and Marcus comes across as arrogant and narcissistic.  The dialogue overall is a bit stiff and and feels more like how Europeans think Americans talk rather than how Americans really talk…and I think this is the rub. This book was written by a European, about an American character in an American town.  Dicks may not have gotten it all right, but he has definitely struck a cord with Europeans, who have embraced this portrayal of Americans in a big way. So although this book may not be literature per se, it certainly is worth reading to see how Americans are viewed by Europeans, and that portrayal is both cringe inducing and unsettling.

Brenda’s Rating: ***(3 Stars out of 5)     

Recommend this book to: Marian

Book Study Worthy: no

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