Serge Joncour

A well translated mystery – or is it contemporary fiction? There’s one mystery, but it’s not a who-dunnit, it’s simply what happened to the people who owned and who own the house on the hill above an abandoned village. There are two stories in alternating chapters, the first, the mystery which takes place in 1914 and 1915 and the second story, which takes place in 2017 when a couple rent the house for three weeks.

There is quite a bit of buildup on both stories, as jealousy, meat shortages, WWI, and unexpected love occur in the first and the evolution of the man from town-dwelling-cellphone-wielding producer to cunning adversary in the second. There are some beautiful descriptions and interesting perspectives on how people reacted to the Great War early on in a small village and interesting perspectives on Lise and Franck’s marriage and what motivates each in the isolation of the house on the hill. I couldn’t imagine how each story would resolve, which kept me reading although there was such detail and focus that it had to be read with deliberation and a slow pace in order to fully appreciate the nuances.… (mere)

It's difficult for me to judge a translated work because I don't necessarily know which aspects are inherent to the original text. In this case I was definitely conscious the entire time that I was reading a translation -- in many places it felt clunky and occasionally even incomprehensible. (That's not to suggest it's all bad. There were also some really beautiful moments in the text, eg "They paced nervously up and down in a sort of symmetrical dance, the choreography of famished beasts.") I also felt that the story itself was rather repetitive. I love a good slow burn (and I also like unlikable characters!), but just because the action is taking a long time to build doesn't mean I need to hear the characters' motivations repeated endlessly. I almost think this story might work better as a slow film, where strategic silence could be used effectively in place of such circular storytelling. The plot itself had a strong appeal for me and I would like to find a copy in the original French to see the difference.… (mere)