Fionnuala's Reviews > L'Anomalie
L'Anomalie
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If on a winter afternoon a plane flies into a super-cellular storm...
If I'm paraphrasing Italo Calvino, it is because Hervé Le Tellier's book seems to be an homage to Calvino, and to some other members of Oulipo from the 1960s and 70s such as Raymond Queneau and Georges Perec, both of whom he references—and Le Tellier is the current president of Oulipo.
Like Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, L'Anomalie begins with a series of story fragments seemingly unrelated to each other, but, as in Calvino's book, the more of the fragments we read the more we understand how they lock into each other like pieces of Lego.
The initial fragment concerns a man who leads two lives. One is the comfortable life of a middle-class family man, the other is the life of a hired assassin who changes his personal details with every job so that his identity becomes a long series of duplications.
The second fragment introduces a failed writer (called Victor), who makes a modest living translating other writers' work including the Russian writer Goncharov, creator of the character Oblomov whom Victor resembles in his tendency towards passivity and day dreaming about an idyllic future. Victor always carries a single piece of red Lego in his pocket in memory of his father who died when Victor was a child and who used to help him build Lego models. He has sometimes mislaid the piece in the years since his father's death but has replaced it with an identical piece each time, not caring that it is only a duplicate.
When Victor is on a flight from Paris to New York, a flight on which the hired assassin from the first fragment is sitting a few rows in front of him (though Victor sees only a man in a hoodie), the plane flies through a series of super-cellular storms, and the experience marks Victor in an unusual way. When he returns to Paris he writes a novel entitled 'L'Anomalie' which is an immediate bestseller and which several of the people who were on the same flight later read. And just as in Italo Calvino's book, the reader begins to ask herself if the book she is reading is the book the readers in the book are also reading, or if the book she is reading is a further book Victor writes a couple of months later, after a repeat of his strange experience, and which he also wanted to call 'L'Anomalie' except the title was already taken. Oh, and he now owns a second piece of red Lego.
How many duplications can there be in one book, you are no doubt asking. The answer is 'many'. As many as the verses Georges Perec created using heterograms of the eleven-letter word ulcérations—and incidentally that number is thirty-five, the same as the number of sections in Le Tellier's book. If I've mentioned that, it's because the word ulcérations appears in the final very fragmented sentence of L'Anomalie, a sentence that looks for all the world like a Lego model that has been kicked to pieces.
Or a sand-timer that is running out of sand.
That old sand-timer has been busy in the course of the book in any case. L'Anomalie features a man for whom the sand runs out not once but twice, another man for whom the sand runs back up into the timer, and a man who gives new meaning to the phrase 'he killed himself working'.
Oh, and there's a toad who has a reverse sand-timer episode too—and another crapaud who, in 2021 when the book is set, seems to be still living in The White House. Now there's an anomaly!
If I'm paraphrasing Italo Calvino, it is because Hervé Le Tellier's book seems to be an homage to Calvino, and to some other members of Oulipo from the 1960s and 70s such as Raymond Queneau and Georges Perec, both of whom he references—and Le Tellier is the current president of Oulipo.
Like Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, L'Anomalie begins with a series of story fragments seemingly unrelated to each other, but, as in Calvino's book, the more of the fragments we read the more we understand how they lock into each other like pieces of Lego.
The initial fragment concerns a man who leads two lives. One is the comfortable life of a middle-class family man, the other is the life of a hired assassin who changes his personal details with every job so that his identity becomes a long series of duplications.
The second fragment introduces a failed writer (called Victor), who makes a modest living translating other writers' work including the Russian writer Goncharov, creator of the character Oblomov whom Victor resembles in his tendency towards passivity and day dreaming about an idyllic future. Victor always carries a single piece of red Lego in his pocket in memory of his father who died when Victor was a child and who used to help him build Lego models. He has sometimes mislaid the piece in the years since his father's death but has replaced it with an identical piece each time, not caring that it is only a duplicate.
When Victor is on a flight from Paris to New York, a flight on which the hired assassin from the first fragment is sitting a few rows in front of him (though Victor sees only a man in a hoodie), the plane flies through a series of super-cellular storms, and the experience marks Victor in an unusual way. When he returns to Paris he writes a novel entitled 'L'Anomalie' which is an immediate bestseller and which several of the people who were on the same flight later read. And just as in Italo Calvino's book, the reader begins to ask herself if the book she is reading is the book the readers in the book are also reading, or if the book she is reading is a further book Victor writes a couple of months later, after a repeat of his strange experience, and which he also wanted to call 'L'Anomalie' except the title was already taken. Oh, and he now owns a second piece of red Lego.
How many duplications can there be in one book, you are no doubt asking. The answer is 'many'. As many as the verses Georges Perec created using heterograms of the eleven-letter word ulcérations—and incidentally that number is thirty-five, the same as the number of sections in Le Tellier's book. If I've mentioned that, it's because the word ulcérations appears in the final very fragmented sentence of L'Anomalie, a sentence that looks for all the world like a Lego model that has been kicked to pieces.
Or a sand-timer that is running out of sand.
That old sand-timer has been busy in the course of the book in any case. L'Anomalie features a man for whom the sand runs out not once but twice, another man for whom the sand runs back up into the timer, and a man who gives new meaning to the phrase 'he killed himself working'.
Oh, and there's a toad who has a reverse sand-timer episode too—and another crapaud who, in 2021 when the book is set, seems to be still living in The White House. Now there's an anomaly!
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Reading Progress
May 28, 2022
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Started Reading
May 28, 2022
– Shelved
June 18, 2022
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Ray
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Jun 22, 2022 06:25PM
![Ray Nessly](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1448132512p1/32183987.jpg)
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![Fionnuala](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1368182051p1/5498525.jpg)
It's maybe trying to make you duplicate the Like over and over, Ray—which would fit perfectly with the theme:-)
![Katia N](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1370960553p1/7381993.jpg)
But it is possible I might miss a fair bit as I was reading in translation.
![Fionnuala](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1368182051p1/5498525.jpg)
I didn't read it under the right circumstances, Marc. I started it ages ago and then life and other books got in the way. I'd make sporadic attempts to get back into it but, at least in the first half, that method challenged my memory as to who was who and so my interest waned. I eventually got serious about the reading and read to the end, then returned to the beginning where I began to admire how well Le Tellier had laid the foundation of this strange story in the early sections. I was almost tempted to read all the way through again but once the nationality of the characters switches from French to US, the writing changed somehow and I felt I was watching it happening on TV rather than reading prose—which is very skillful on Le Tellier's part—but I couldn't make myself watch those episodes again.
But once I got into the book, I enjoyed the puzzle aspect.
![Fionnuala](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1368182051p1/5498525.jpg)
Thanks for a great comment, Katia, you've set me thinking further—as usual!
The Perec link could do with being more meaningful, and I expect it is—just that I can't see further into it, for yet, anyway. I mean I was a little excited when I took down my copy of La Bibliothèque Oulipienne Volume I and found there were 35 verses in Perec's Ulcérations. And you could say that each heterogram in each verse is a duplication—but they offer variations, and Le Tellier's duplicated characters don't, except for Victor perhaps?
And the Queneau link seems to be that the three titles of the separate sections are from one of his poems (Kalliope pointed that out in her review):
Aussi noir que le ciel
La vie est un songe, dit-on
La chanson du néant
The Calvino link has to be the strongest I feel. Not only in the fragmented narratives but in the focus on the book within the book. Maybe you remember Calvino's semiotic square rationale which I described in my review of If on a Winter's Night a Traveler and which I found in that same volume of Oulipo writings I mentioned above (my spell checker keeps changing Oulipo to pulp:-) Anyway, one of the quotes out of Victor's 'Anomalie' could be straight out of Calvino's rationale:
Aucun auteur n'écrit le livre du lecteur, aucun lecteur ne lit le livre de l'auteur. Le point final, à la limite, peut leur être commun.
And remember that according to Calvino, the male reader in his elaborate construction wins over the female reader towards the end—as happens in the Victor thread of Le Tellier's book.
What did you think happened in the very end, by the way?
![Fionnuala](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1368182051p1/5498525.jpg)
It kind of was for me too, Katia. I would have like all the parts that were happening in the US, and supposedly through English, to have been written in English. How odd is that!
![Théo d'Or](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1595517509p1/98232817.jpg)
qui surpasse toujours la connaissance, l'intelligence, et même le génie, c'est l'incompréhension. "
How would you " translate " that, in the context of the book, Fionnuala ?
![Fionnuala](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1368182051p1/5498525.jpg)
qui surpasse toujours la connaissance, l'intelligence, et même le génie, c'est l'incompréhension. "
How would you " translate " that, in the context of the book..."
Le Tellier's quotation sets up the dilemma the reader of this book faces quite neatly, Théodore. The phenomenon at the centre of the narrative can't be explained, neither by science nor by religion. But it is a fascinating phenomenon to contemplate all the same...
![Ilse](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1686327155p1/22848274.jpg)
![Ilse](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1686327155p1/22848274.jpg)
I read it a few years ago because my son had to read it for school, I am still traumatized by the experience :)
![Fionnuala](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1368182051p1/5498525.jpg)
Victor is a very interesting character for sure, Ilse. I think that going into the book knowing he is the key character would have helped me get hooked earlier—and I'm certain you'd relate to him. But there is a lot of time and words spent on the turbulent flight and the landing difficulties and American security procedures, etc, and the narrative doesn't return to Victor until much later. I'm glad I read it—especially because of the Oulipo connection as I've read a bit of Oulipo stuff in the past. But that's just me and puzzles—can't resist them even if I have to struggle to understand them:-)
![Théo d'Or](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1595517509p1/98232817.jpg)
Maybe that's what puts him here, in Paris, among the favorite authors. From what I've seen, " Parce que je t'aime " is written in the same troubling line as " L'Instant Présent ". He has a special penchant for shaping a new SF look.
![Fionnuala](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1368182051p1/5498525.jpg)
Looking back on La plus secrète mémoire, I'm reminded that it is also a huge puzzle of a book, and there are narratives within narratives so that sometimes it's hard to see your way through it. And there's a good dose of 'incomprehension' at the heart of it as well...
![Katia N](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1370960553p1/7381993.jpg)
Thanks for a great comment, K..."
I need to re-read your review of "The traveller" Fionnuala. Thank you for reminding me! I would go there straightaway. But the quote you posted has reminded me Bartes as well. The idea of us reading Victor's novel is fine, but so many writers made it better. And, I hope actually Victor's novel was a bit less commercial based upon the quotes included into our book:-)
What happened in the very end? If I remember correctly, everything went on the loop. So potentially it would be the third set of these people, etc, etc. But the Americans decided to stop it from happening by destroying the plane this time. Obviously it would be in vain if we are all living in a simulation:-) That was a philosophical thought experiment he was trying to consider, I think. What is someone out there has created a program and all of us are just the code? So if we do something which destroy the internal coherence of the program we are part of, it might be a time to either reboot or introduce a faulty copy so to speak:-) There is chap Nick Bostrom. And he produced something called "Bostrom simulation argument". Tellier plays with that idea. I think the message is we'd better not to be to vain how we are dealing with our planet and fellow human beings. But it was not very convincing for me. Though I am happy that one Victor survived:-)
![Katia N](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1370960553p1/7381993.jpg)
![Violeta](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1713198636p1/114049471.jpg)
![Vesna](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1721930940p1/59785585.jpg)
![Fionnuala](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1368182051p1/5498525.jpg)
It sounds as if the Russian version of the ending is not quite the same—but it matters little since neither are clear! And it doesn't match too well with Miesel's statement: 'No writer writes the reader's book, no reader reads the writer's book. The final point might, at most, be common to both.'
Unless the writer had reached a state of incomprehension with his own text by then:-)
![Fionnuala](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1368182051p1/5498525.jpg)
Okay, these Legos have completely defeated me."
Double the g in the word Lego and you get 'I read' in Italian!
Ok, enough with the duplications:-)
![Fionnuala](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1368182051p1/5498525.jpg)
I only began to be really fascinated by the puzzle when I started writing the review, Violeta. Books open up for me while I'm writing about them— though this one resisted more than most!
![Fionnuala](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1368182051p1/5498525.jpg)
You're right of course, Vesna! As soon as Goncharov was mentioned, I fished out my copy of Oblomov which I'd been planning to read for ages and before I knew it I was mired in Oblomovka—and the pages of the neglected L'Anomalie grew dusty meantime;-)
![Jola](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1621600729p1/4785895.jpg)
![Fionnuala](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1368182051p1/5498525.jpg)
Thanks for your great comment, Jola—and it's extra great because you've read the book. I understand your preference for the first half of Le Tellier's story—it worked better for me too, though I had to read it a second time to see that, but I drew the line at reading the second half a second time—so we are in agreement on that too.
I really only began to appreciate the book, in so far as I did, when I began to sort the elements of it in my head in order to write about them. That exercise often surprises me in what it can throw up!
![Jola](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1621600729p1/4785895.jpg)
![Susana](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1711191346p1/1205030.jpg)
Some of the links you mention are only apparent in the original French, it seems. But even for those (like me) who have not yet read Calvino, that link is made obvious - Victor talks about of naming his book "If on a winter night two-hundred and forty-three passengers..." or at least using it as the first sentence.
On your comment that the part that takes place in the US should be written in English, you're right! There are some lines which would only work in French (or another latin language)...
The sand-timer is a nice catch and I had also missed the hint of the back-to-life frog episode. Maybe I was numb with the heat wave... I really need to install air-conditioner! :)
![Fionnuala](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1368182051p1/5498525.jpg)
I wondered too about the child abuse episode—I couldn't quite see how it slotted in to any of the others. Some of them did slot together like Lego after all. The assassin character visible in Victor's story, also the film lighting person connecting to Victor via a memory he had. There were other connections too I think. Maybe it was the toad coming back to life that was the link there but why bother with the father/daughter thing then?
Victor's episodes were the ones I related to best as well—he was the foundation block of the whole construction in a sense. But yes, not nearly as complex and successful a book as Calvino's.
![Fionnuala](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1368182051p1/5498525.jpg)
Some of the links you mention are only apparent in the original French, it seems..."
Maybe so, Susanna—and I'm glad you agree that the conversations taking place in the US might have worked better/felt more authentic in English. Isn't it odd?
Particularly glad to get your opinion about it all in any case since you've also read the book.
![David](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1571421692p1/3143117.jpg)
I do love Calvino as well!
![David](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1571421692p1/3143117.jpg)