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  • The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair

  • By: Joël Dicker
  • Narrated by: Robert Slade
  • Length: 20 hrs and 30 mins
  • 4.3 out of 5 stars (1,524 ratings)
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The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair

By: Joël Dicker
Narrated by: Robert Slade
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Summary

A crime story. A love story. More than 2 million copies sold worldwide.

And now a major 10-part MGM TV series starring Patrick Dempsey and Ben Schnetzer.

August 30, 1975. The day of the disappearance. The day Somerset, New Hampshire, lost its innocence.

That summer, struggling author Harry Quebert fell in love with 15-year-old Nola Kellergan. Thirty-three years later, her body is dug up from his yard, along with a manuscript copy of the novel that made him a household name. Quebert is the only suspect.

Marcus Goldman - Quebert's most gifted protégé - throws off his writer's block to clear his mentor's name. Solving the case and penning a new best seller soon merge into one. As his book begins to take on a life of its own, the nation is gripped by the mystery of 'The Girl Who Touched the Heart of America'.

But with Nola, in death as in life, nothing is ever as it seems.

©2012 Editions de Fallois / L’Âge d’Homme (P)2014 WF Howes Ltd

Critic reviews

"A spellbinding literary thriller… It is maddeningly, deliciously impossible to guess the truth" ( The Time)
"The cleverest, creepiest book you’ll read this year ... Twin Peaks meets Atonement meets In Cold Blood" ( Daily Telegraph)
"A tour de force, this seems set to be a huge success" ( Metro)
"Quietly compulsive…with a deliciously shocking twist" ( Daily Express)
"Big, assertive and clever… hard to resist" ( Independent on Sunday)
"Like Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy [it] combines literariness with compulsive readability" ( GQ)
"Enough plot twists to fill a truck" ( The Economist)

What listeners say about The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair

Average customer ratings
Overall
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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

I don't wanna know the truth about the affair

This was vastly disappointing. I'm not going to go in too deep about the storylines which are readily available in the summary.

What I want to say is
a) this book is a structural failure. A guy writes about himself, his past and how he came to write the book about "the affair". This he does partially in retrospect, partially in first-person narrative in the present, but, and this is done really badly, partially from the view of other characters. Clearly we have a protagonist in this story, but every so often he doesn't tell the story anymore, but someone else. In another setting this might be nice to follow, but this is a murder investigation, so it doesn't make ANY SENSE (sorry for shouting!) to give insights to third person's thoughts if they are not communicated to the investigator. How do they reach him?
It is so thoroughly illogical that it made me want to scream.
Our hero drives around town, visits someone in prison, switches on a tape-recorder, someone else begins to talk and suddenly the story switches to yet another person, recounting events from 30 years ago in the present tense. Then, suddenly, we are back in the skin of the author who continues his investigation.
To clarify: this is a book about the production of said book, told from multiple angles and multiple periods in time. I guess the author wanted to be very crafty, but the threads of the story become convoluted, misleading, hard to tell apart (who's talking now? Waitress? Author? Cop?) and most of all: tedious.

b) this book is stylistically bad: Endless annoying dialogues end without any conclusion, solution or explanation why the reader/listener had to suffer through them.

c) the story itself is sordid. If it isn't, it has become so with the narrator. It is supposed to be about an affair between a 15-year old girl, oh so sweet, oh so lovely, and a 34-year old jaded and self-centered writer. They aren't likable. The girl is whiney, childlike in her demeanor and, ha-ha, her name is Nola. (not Lolita, no, Nola) The author tells himself repeatedly that he really shouldn't be with a 15-year old girl, but he loves her! He wants her! And so he lies to her! Repeatedly! To make her adore him even more!
Enough already. I have given the matter some thought: If the author of the book wanted to write a love-story gone awry, he failed. Nola is no Lolita, she clearly is still a child (or at least rendered one by Robert Slade) and so the affair was, in my eyes, absolutely inappropriate. Disgustingly so. I have no patience whatsoever with the sympathetic depiction of, let's face it, chronophilia.

d) Robert Slade has succeeded in depicting all characters as nasty creatures. I didn't like ANY of them. They were, with his voice and modulation, annoying, whining, hard to distinguish personas that I wasn't invested in at all.

Of the clever ending, well ok, I'll credit the author with some ingenuity, but the hours before that were hard to digest.

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59 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

well i quite liked it

Any additional comments?

I suppose it's all a question of taste but I really liked this book. I laughed a bit and was completely sure I knew who did it........until I found out I was completely wrong, I liked most of the characters ( have to say thought Harry was a little unpleasant) and stayed up way passed my bed time to listen to the end. In my experience there are 3 types of audio book 1. Book you only get half way through and give up on it, 2. Book you finish but never return to and 3. Book you listen to again and again, returning to it like an old friend. This book, for me, is definitely type 3.

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37 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

The Truth Is It's Too Long

The protagonists share 31 rules on what it takes to write a great book. If you aren't put off by the 20+ hours it takes to be force fed these rules, feel free to contact me when you spot one rule I didn't: the one that recommends constructing the story on (a) a smug, self-obsessed thoroughly dislikeable inevitably friendless author trying to save (b) another friendless author whose excuse is his unashamed predilection for under age girls with the help of (c) a bungling detective who is more than happy to share every step of his criminal investigation with his unlikely civilian companion whilst he races to bang the cuffs on everyone short of himself in (d) a town full of folks who share a photographic memory of the events of 33 years ago. There was decent book lurking somewhere in those 20 hours. I don't expect to be recalling it word for word in 33 years' time

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26 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

What a disappointment!

This book is fatally marred by implausible characters, clunky dialogue and a plot full of holes.

Don't bother.

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19 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

A waste of 20 hours

What would have made The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair better?

Where to start.....?

What could Joël Dicker have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

Not described every single relevant, slightly relevant and irrelevant event in painful, plodding, pointless detail. Cut down on the cliche's.

What didn’t you like about Robert Slade’s performance?

It might just be the dialogue itself but the characters voices became intensely annoying. Especially Nola who just came across as a whining, superficial annoyance.

You didn’t love this book--but did it have any redeeming qualities?

An interrsting enough tale, I suppose.

Any additional comments?

I can't recommend enough that this book be avoided. The story is interesting enough but the dialogue is incredibly slow and plodding. And boring. Nothing is left to your imagination; everything is over-explained. The voices are intensely annoying. The characters are one-dimensional. The cliche's come thick and fast. By about the 16th hour, I wanted to throw it out but had to grind out the last 4 hours just to hear the ending and the twist. Neither of which was worth the wait. Or they might have been but I was long past caring by then.

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16 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Loved It!

I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
The characters were well written and, considering the original book was written in French, the translation was excellent and the narrator superb.
It was a fascinating and long story (around 18 hours) with many twists and turns along the way.
An excellent first novel and deserving of the many plaudits it has already received.
I look forward to many more novels from this author.

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15 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

So boring!!!!

If this book wasn’t for you, who do you think might enjoy it more?

The premise of reading a book about the challenges of writing "a great book" in its self is a nonsense concept! Ironically it is about one of the worst books i've listened to. I don't want to hear the name Harry Quebert ever again!

What could Joël Dicker have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

He could have got down from his perch and wrote a better book.

What didn’t you like about Robert Slade’s performance?

Not enough diversity between the characters

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Bordom

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14 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars
  • DT
  • 15-07-14

It's complicated, Marcus.

Would you try another book written by Joël Dicker or narrated by Robert Slade?

Yes.

Would you be willing to try another book from Joël Dicker? Why or why not?

Yes. It would be interesting to see what this Swiss writer does with contemporary and/or American culture. Also, this novel has been such a massive hit, that I'd like to know what the author has already written or goes on to write.

Which character – as performed by Robert Slade – was your favourite?

Detective Perry Gahalowood

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Disappointment, after a very long read.

Any additional comments?

“It’s complicated, Marcus.” And it is! Until this literary detective novel runs out of suspects, the plotting is expertly handled, while the telling of the story through rapid and multiple time-shifts over a period of thirty-plus years is very clever, indeed.

It is a literary detective story in two senses. First, threaded into the story of the murders, thirty-plus years earlier, of fifteen-year-old Nola Kellergan and an elderly female neighbour is an effort by the new literary star, Marcus Goldman, to cure his own writer’s block by writing up his and Detective Perry Gahalowood’s investigation into the Harry Quebert affair, that is, the arrest of Quebert for the two murders. Second, the investigation becomes a search for the meaning of a literary masterpiece, specifically a novel enigmatically entitled “The Origin of Evil”, published by Goldman’s mentor, Harry Quebert. A version of the novel is found with Nola Kellergan’s corpse when it is discovered three decades later, buried in Harry’s garden. The description “masterpiece” is bandied around and finally attached by Quebert to Goldman’s “The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair”, as the student takes over from his master. These complexities of time-periods and texts are at least set primarily in one town, Somerset, New Hampshire, full of small-town characters and rivalries, with some episodes in New York City and locations in between. Also interwoven into the investigation and giving it a time-scale of deadlines and writerly pressures, is a sharp satire of the publishing industry, as Marcus’ appalling publisher determined to publish Goldman’s book before the Obama election monopolises book-sales.

For all the literary dressing, “The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair” is best appreciated as a detective story in the classic sense, but given a European fascination with diners, automobiles and small-town protocols. It has, mostly, a closed location, red herrings (more than in any detective story I have read), astute plotting and skilful narrative switches, but also stereotypical “flat” characters, some of whom are quite embarrassing. There are no insights into what literary greatness might be, and certainly not in the quotations from the supposed masterpiece, “The Origin of Evil” or in the book we are reading, unless the translation is weak. Indeed, these excursions into literary appreciation are very stilted.

One definition of a literary classic is that many readers re-read it and find different insights, rather than being confirmed in their values or judgements. I might re-read “The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair” but only to work out what happened in Somerset, New Hampshire, on August 30th, 1975, because I’m still not sure I quite got it, assuming that there is much to get.

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12 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Repays the effort!

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

This book took quite a while to get going, but it certainly re-pays the effort of staying with it, as it becomes gripping towards the end, with it's many twists and turns. Not so much an unreliable narrator, but rather unreliable witnesses informing him. Your relationship towards the characters is constantly shifting towards the end.

What other book might you compare The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair to, and why?

None particularly

Which character – as performed by Robert Slade – was your favourite?

Very well read, an audio book very often stands or falls by the narrator. This one, though slow at the start kept my interest by virtue of the narrator's investment in the characters.

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

I can't believe I stuck it out

What disappointed you about The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair?

The characterisation - I didn't believe in any of them. Marcus is some kind of bland cypher who asks the most inane questions, you can't believe he is no naive. The female characters are stereo-typical to the point of comedy - lascivious child/woman, ambitious conniving mothers, dumb blondes.

What was most disappointing about Joël Dicker’s story?

The length. I had that "I've paid for it so I should stick it out" feeling. Then I got to the end and was just angry. The plot is complicated and unbelievable. I shan't give away any spoilers but really.....some of the "tricks" involving psychological issues were laughable (if I hadn't felt so mad)

Did the narration match the pace of the story?

Narration was fine. I just hope he was paid a goodly sum to have read it.

You didn’t love this book--but did it have any redeeming qualities?

No, not really. I feel bad about giving it a stinky review as, like Thumper's father, I believe in the "if you can't say something nice, then don't say anything at all" school. I must be way off beam as I believe this has won literary prizes.....*shakes head and walks quietly away

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11 people found this helpful