Herve Le Tellier: The Anomaly

The Anomaly is a good reminder how artificial genre divisions are. It ticks all the boxes for a thriller: it is a dark, high stakes, suspenseful plot-driven story. It has tonnes of the common tropes: mysterious turbulence, arrogant Pentagon general, inexplicable stranger, nerdish math prodigy, prim FBI agent, double life contract killer. It is a page-turner, and it does not require bigger mental effort than reading Dan Brown. And yet, this book got one of the most prestigious French literary prizes, the Goncourt, in 2020.

Then again, Le Tellier is not the only “real” writer to venture to the fields of science fiction/speculative fiction. Just recently I’ve reviewed Rosa Montero’s dystopian Husky series [link]. There are further examples: Robert Merle’s Les Hommes Proteges (The Virility Factor); Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go; Kurt Vonnegut’s Galápagos, just to name a few I have actually read. Whether it even makes sense to delimitate “real” literature from other genres would be a much longer discussion, but it is indisputable that some authors crossed the boundary lines, and often what they created is enjoyable and thoughtful at the same time.

While not burdening the reader with literary or metaphysical weightiness, The Anomaly is a carefully written book, and the writing adapts to the narrating character, from sophisticated French cookies to Nigerian singer to seven-year old girl. The narrative reflects at least 10 characters whose point of view at different points, an unusually high number, but they are described in such depth and their stories are so gripping that it is easy to keep track of them. It’s a basic, and I believe deliberate, contradiction that none of these deep and well-rounded characters seem to have any influence whatsoever on how the events unfold.*1

To save you spoilers, I placed some of my comments in footnotes – jump there if you don’t mind too much information.

I was reading The Anomaly as a thriller, with solemn intention of being entertained and nothing more. It works perfectly well as a thriller. But beware of stealthy metaphysics: some thoughts hidden in the text keep popping back to my head, rather like a disturbingly insightful fortune cookie.*2

Lastly, one more very positive feature – The Anomaly has a lot of subtle and less subtle humor, and it made me laugh out loud at least once, and smile a good many more times. Perhaps the funniest storyline is the two fresh graduate nerds concocting a topology study for FBI and falling to the temptation of inserting some childish jokes. In the novel, their prank spectacularly backfires into their face twenty years later. It’s so hilariously funny exactly because it could easily come to pass in real life…

  1. If we take the interpretation of the simulation, as suggested by the scientists and the ending of the book, we can argue that nothing what these characters felt or did had any influence on whether the simulation stopped or continued: seemingly the only relevant action belonged to the US President, when he ordered to shoot down the third plane.   ↩︎
  2. All my adult life, I’ve treated the “do we live in a simulation” debate as totally irrelevant. I felt rather smug when a media celeb philosopher spelled out exactly my views in The Anomaly, saying that whether we live or not in a simulation does not have implications for our attitude in our everyday life, so we can totally disregard the question. Except that The Anomaly’s ending throws doubt on this very comfortable intellectual posture. If we live in a simulation, would it not be in our interest to ensure that the simulation continues – and if yes, is there anything we could do about it? ↩︎

Comments

2 responses to “Herve Le Tellier: The Anomaly”

  1. Dwayne Hanks avatar

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  2. […] winning French authors are not afraid of writing speculative fiction. Long before “The Anomaly”, renowned French author Robert Merle had already published several works that could be […]

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