DNF at page 100It took me more than a month to fight my way to page 100. The 1st chapter was excellent, with an interesting protagonist and then the author abandoned him to other characters less and less compelling. The writing is nothing extraordinary, for sure not worthy of a literary prize. I try to read it both in original French and in Romanian so I can assure you it is not a matter of translation. The idea was interesting but after it was sifted through Oulipian* restrictions, whatever the...

A fast, clever and interesting read, but I didn’t feel much connection with any of the characters and I expected more from the winner of the Prix Goncourt 2020In The Anomaly the world is confronted with a plane appearing twice. The how and why is not the centre of the book, the reactions towards this event, illustrated by various passengers and a few scientists and military staff, is. Hervé Le Tellier takes as along in short chapters from various perspectives one might imagine on a transatlantic...

The Cosmos As Divine Bon MotHervé Le Tellier seems to give his game away when he describes his duplicated alter ego: “… he knows that it would take only one of his sentences being more intelligent than he is for this miracle to make a writer of him.” And this he pushes for most assiduously. Every page has an appropriate bon mot or droll aphorism. And they are mostly ostentatiously witty and almost always original. Occasionally he packs them together in a writerly flood of exuberant showmanship,

With anti-mask vigilantes, the omicron virus and lost luggage, you already have enough to worry about when flying.But here’s one more variant of concern: Before landing, you might be spontaneously duplicated.That’s the mind-bending premise of France’s hottest novel, “L’anomalie,” by Hervé Le Tellier, a former science journalist and a member of experimental writing group Oulipo. Winner of the 2020 Prix Goncourt, “L’anomalie” has already sold more than a million copies in the author’s homeland, an...

Lively Carbon CopiesSuppose you were in hospital dying from a terminal disease and you got a totally unexpected visit from yourself — yes, you would be your very own visitor in hospital. I think that would be the best human approach to a Schrödinger cat — you would be almost dead and alive at the same time 😜That (still) can’t happen in real life, but… in this crazy creative plot… it perfectly could! 😜I guess your curiosity must be a bit hungry by now, huh?! Well... I bet you’ll know what to do!

My own mother heavily insisted I read this book, so I tried to listen to her, for once, and picked it up. Do NOT read the reviews if you plan to read this, as they spoil everything. Better to go blind into this one. The plot is actually very original, I figured it out quite quickly (because I love SF I guess) and the development is satisfying. I loved seeing all the reactions to this “issue”, from the army to POTUS, the spiritual leaders, the media but also all the characters involved. Diverse c...

What a strange book. 3.5? The Anomaly was recommended to me as getting buzz in the book world, but that’s all I knew going in. I read the first chapter and loved it – it’s from the perspective of a hit man, and the writing is clean. The second chapter is from the perspective of a female film editor, and I liked it less (no reflection on her occupation, nor her gender - I just wanted more of the hit man). I kept reading and meeting a new character in every chapter, and by page 80 I felt like I’d

An anti-thriller, really. I saw this on a thriller list and it 1000% does not belong there. Thrillers are fast, with action and suspense. This book is clearly actively subverting all of that. It is so clearly in the vein of a Crichton-style thriller (it reminded me of SPHERE and his other work more times than I could count) but turns the whole thing on its head. Instead of starting off with the big thing, we actively ignore the big thing for the entire first third of the book. I almost didn't ke...

Well ... this was a bitter disappointment. Leila Slimani claims You won't want to put this book down and I would agree. I don't want to put it down I want to fire it from a canyon into the nearest bonfire.The only possible character of interest for me in this entire thing was 'Blake' and he is in it for maybe a handful of pages. I don't understand the logic of setting up the backstories of half a dozen or so characters in Part 1 only to catastrophically nose-dive into metaphysical philosophica...

Enjoyed this crazy little thought experiment immensely!What happens if reality as you know it proves not to be what you thought? What if there are no clear definitions of who you are and where you cease to be you? What if a replica of you turns up, basically out of thin air?Are you still you then? And how many of you are you?Searching the roots of identity, while poking fun at the "real" messes of our current world (status quo of 2020, which to me at least seems like light years away in a distan...

A middle of the road spoof on bestsellers that ended up too close to a commercial bestseller itself. Entertaining, easy read, not totally stupid, but not much more that this. I would never guess it is written by a French author. It reads more like a novel by an American. Not surprisingly, a big chunk of the characters are American. It posses this global gloss which I personally do not find appealing: American Princeton scientists look very scruffy; a Nigerian character plays rep and is surrounde...

I'm not going to contradict that this is quite an entertaining book that starts from a fascinating premise: what if an airplane flying through a very severe storm comes through in a split-off version, that is twice the same aircraft with the same crew and passengers, but with 100 days in between? It's a fun thought experiment with a strong science fiction slant. Like in a movie Le Tellier takes a long run to introduce about 10 characters involved and to portray their strange experience. The conf...

Like a plane rapidly losing elevation, this novel descended from its initial cruising altitude of 4 stars and crash-landed at 2.Le Prix Goncourt has been awarded to such luminaries as Proust, de Beauvoir, Modiano, and Houellebecq. It has also honored many excellent writers who lack such instant name recognition. Like any literary prize, however, it is not always given to an author whose submitted work has necessarily elevated the art of writing. As harsh as that judgment sounds, I would say that...

my brain is overheating i feel like it's going to explode what did just happened omg ?? 🤯

The potential for this book was real, but I can't say I enjoyed it. It started off well as sort of an ensemble cast. I was curious about the stories of the people Le Tellier introduces and what was going to happen to these people. Unfortunately, once you meet all these characters, the book takes a sci fi turn, and it didn't work for me at all. Even if you could get your mind around the premise from a physics standpoint, the storytelling just dropped off a cliff. It's bad when the setup for the s...