Over one and a half million copies sold for the original version of The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair (Editions de Fallois / L’Age d’homme, 2012), as much for all the translations… It is an understatement to say that the novel by Joël Dicker responsible for succeeding this publishing phenomenon was expected. Here it is, three years later: The Baltimore Book (De Fallois, 476 p., €22) has been in bookstores since Tuesday 29 September.
Rewarded both, in the fall of 2012, by the Grand Prix of the novel of the French Academy and the Goncourt des lycéens, finalist of the Goncourt tout court, The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair was the second novel by a Swiss author aged 27 – 30 today – who had given up the law to write, and whose first work, The Last Days of Our Fathers (De Fallois / L’Age d’homme) had appeared a few months earlier, in January 2012.
Effective page-turner, but with criticized value
Big thriller-like novel, displaying the American influences of its author, The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair featured a young writer, Marcus Goldman, rendered incapable of writing by the success of his previous work. Learning that his mentor, Harry Quebert, was accused of having killed a teenager three decades earlier, he left to investigate this case in Massachusetts (United States). The novel multiplied the narrative leaps between the past and the present as well as the twists and turns of the situation until the very last of its 700 pages. Without forgetting the aphorisms on writing punctuating the chapters and adding a “literary” cachet to the panting “page-turner”.
Beyond its effectiveness, which is difficult to contest, its value had divided critics and jurors of literary prizes – if the academician Marc Fumaroli judged in Le Figaro that we came out of this book “exhausted and delighted”Patrick Rambaud asserted that we were dealing with “a pleasant beach novel”. The world of booksfor his part, described him as“honest whodunnit”.
The Baltimore Book again chooses as protagonist Marcus Goldman, who tells his family history, and in particular his link with two of his cousins, with whom he founded the “Gang of Goldman”. From flashbacks back to the present, the novel is built around a mysterious “drama”, which forms the heart of the novel. In world of books, Eric Chevillard writes about him: “The shadow of Philip Roth hangs over this laborious romantic enterprise. Joël Dicker believes he is rewriting American Pastoral (Gallimard, 1999), but rather gives us a new episode of five club honorably dressed. »
Marcus Goldman is undoubtedly called upon to return in future novels by Joël Dicker. For now, the first draw of the Baltimore Pound would amount to 280,000 copies, according to L’Express.