Residents in Macau have recently being playing Sherlock Holmes as they feel perplexed by the suicide case of a local senior official. However, humans are all forgetful and, after some chitchat over the dinner table, the matter will likely be disappear from people’s minds, as they start planning their Christmas and New Year’s holidays. Regarding the pursuit of truth, we might not be as insistent and passionate as we thought, and this reminded me of a book I read called La Vérité sur l’Affaire Harry Quebert.
The book is written by Joël Dicker. Born in the 1980s, Dicker is a resident in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Although he was passionate about writing in his youth, it was not until the age of 24 that his novel Les Derniers Jours de nos père, a story based during the Second World War, was published. However, what truly brought him into the spotlight was La Vérité sur l’Affaire Harry Quebert published in 2012. The work was also translated into 37 languages and published in 45 countries.
So, what is so special about La Vérité that created such a sensation? The basic setting of the book is a detective fiction. It tells the story of a 28-year-old writer called Marcus Goldman, who gained fame with his first published novel. However, after receiving a huge amount of royalty payment prepaid by his published for his second novel, Goldman gets writer’s block and is unable to write one single word. As a result, he seeks help from his mentor Harry Quebert, a giant in American literature.
Nevertheless, when Goldman is hiding in his mentor’s small town and focusing on writing, he accidentally discovers a forbidden relationship that took place many years ago between Quebert and a 15-year-old girl called Nola Kellergan, who has been missing for 33 years. What is more astonishing is the fact that Kellergan’s remains were actually buried in Quebert’s backyard. But Goldman firmly believes in his mentor’s innocence and decides to investigate the matter himself, as well as writing the book La Vérité sur l’Affaire Harry Quebert to record the investigation process.
This book is so special because the author inserts one story into another, with the detective fiction now including a story the character is writing. This creates a book within a book, a mystery within a mystery. Different clues and plots intertwine with each other and create one twist after another.
What appealed to me in this story is the author’s depiction of two authors of two generations, one full of life and enthusiasm, the other frail after having suffered through so much. Quebert has taught Goldman all he knew, including the 31 theories of writing. The amity and growth between the two is apparent throughout the process of teaching and learning.
La Vérité is a story that uses a decades-old missing person case as an introduction. Through two books and the stories of two writers, it paths a complex maze of humanity. Although it is a detective story, La Vérité tells us that the crux is not finding the perpetrator, but an eternal enquiry about life – facing the omnipresence of twisted and dark humanity, how should we carry ourselves in order to avoid becoming an accessory?
