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A review by mo_mentan
The Enigma of Room 622 by Joël Dicker
4.0
*3.5
i just read about threehundred pages in one sitting, that is more than i've read in a physical book in probably way over a year.
i picked this up at a supermarket in corsica, which for some reason only had it in the foreign language shelf. that was probably a good thing, it would have taken forever, the cover would have put me in a completely different and for aure much less intrigued mood (french covers are usually hidious) and i don't know why, but stories in french often feel more artificial and pretentious to me. i just don't seem to get into the spirit of this language when it is written down.
i did enjoy how intricatly the plot was woven. i always knew exactly in what timeline the scenes took place, which is something not all such books accomplish. the mystery was mostly interesting and unravelled nicely, although sometimes too slow.
it was, however, utterly unbelievable. levs mount from rags to riches alone is questionable, even though he is obviously incredibly talented. but the whole thing with the masks is just impossible - masks that weren't even made for him specifically. there are things that could have made this more believable: if tarnagol always wore dark glasses to hide the seam around the eyes and if macaire has bad eyesight or something. also if lev had the bloody masks fitted.
what annoyed me most tho were the gender relations. the women in this novel are all very superficial characters. we are told that anastasia is smart and special, but never really shown. her mother and her sister are misogynist and anti-slavic stereotypes, for the most part (they are called irina ans olga, for god's sake). they do get some depth towards the end, but for the mother to be this evil, i feel there should have been more backstory.
cristina, also, has no depth nor a private life. sloan/scarlett is quite the manic pixie dream girl. and those are about all women with speaking parts except arma, who does two things only, which are both very much deemed feminine: love and cook. she has no ambition, no dreams of her own other than for macaire to fall in love with her.
the whole banking thing felt gross to me, as well as the way extreme wealth was normalised and got sympathy as though banking and money laundering didn't have an impact on the world, as though all that money wasn't stolen from others. that there aren't many women there, though, is probably very accurate.
in the end, there were too amny twists and turns with lev and anastasiq and i am not sure i think they should have ended up together. the murderer didn't feel quite right, either, there should have been one more hint earlier, but it was all right.
what i really enjoyed was the way fact and fiction was mixed up, the layers of fictionalisation we unpack. and some of the characters were interesting, macaire and lev, especially.
i was very glad the whole secret service thing was a hoax, that would have been totally unbelievable.
the setting was also cool, i always like it when stories play out in places that i know (and are done right, don't give me another security guard in james bond speaking high german with an english accent). also, the parts about bernard felt genuine and loving, i enjoyed that.
all in all, interesting construction, some interesting characters, totally bonkers (which i wouldn't really mind) but definitely too many hints of this spevial flavour of french male chivalry. did you know this author's first novel, which is even mentioned in the book, is about a writer who defends a mentor of his who is suspected to have killed his 15 year old love interest? yeah, weird. sounds a lot like. ferdinand-von-schirach-like oh so important critique of the dangerous me too movement destroying the abendland (i haven't read that book of his, i must say i project here, maybe its fine).
i just read about threehundred pages in one sitting, that is more than i've read in a physical book in probably way over a year.
i picked this up at a supermarket in corsica, which for some reason only had it in the foreign language shelf. that was probably a good thing, it would have taken forever, the cover would have put me in a completely different and for aure much less intrigued mood (french covers are usually hidious) and i don't know why, but stories in french often feel more artificial and pretentious to me. i just don't seem to get into the spirit of this language when it is written down.
i did enjoy how intricatly the plot was woven. i always knew exactly in what timeline the scenes took place, which is something not all such books accomplish. the mystery was mostly interesting and unravelled nicely, although sometimes too slow.
it was, however, utterly unbelievable. levs mount from rags to riches alone is questionable, even though he is obviously incredibly talented. but the whole thing with the masks is just impossible - masks that weren't even made for him specifically. there are things that could have made this more believable: if tarnagol always wore dark glasses to hide the seam around the eyes and if macaire has bad eyesight or something. also if lev had the bloody masks fitted.
what annoyed me most tho were the gender relations. the women in this novel are all very superficial characters. we are told that anastasia is smart and special, but never really shown. her mother and her sister are misogynist and anti-slavic stereotypes, for the most part (they are called irina ans olga, for god's sake). they do get some depth towards the end, but for the mother to be this evil, i feel there should have been more backstory.
cristina, also, has no depth nor a private life. sloan/scarlett is quite the manic pixie dream girl. and those are about all women with speaking parts except arma, who does two things only, which are both very much deemed feminine: love and cook. she has no ambition, no dreams of her own other than for macaire to fall in love with her.
the whole banking thing felt gross to me, as well as the way extreme wealth was normalised and got sympathy as though banking and money laundering didn't have an impact on the world, as though all that money wasn't stolen from others. that there aren't many women there, though, is probably very accurate.
in the end, there were too amny twists and turns with lev and anastasiq and i am not sure i think they should have ended up together. the murderer didn't feel quite right, either, there should have been one more hint earlier, but it was all right.
what i really enjoyed was the way fact and fiction was mixed up, the layers of fictionalisation we unpack. and some of the characters were interesting, macaire and lev, especially.
i was very glad the whole secret service thing was a hoax, that would have been totally unbelievable.
the setting was also cool, i always like it when stories play out in places that i know (and are done right, don't give me another security guard in james bond speaking high german with an english accent). also, the parts about bernard felt genuine and loving, i enjoyed that.
all in all, interesting construction, some interesting characters, totally bonkers (which i wouldn't really mind) but definitely too many hints of this spevial flavour of french male chivalry. did you know this author's first novel, which is even mentioned in the book, is about a writer who defends a mentor of his who is suspected to have killed his 15 year old love interest? yeah, weird. sounds a lot like. ferdinand-von-schirach-like oh so important critique of the dangerous me too movement destroying the abendland (i haven't read that book of his, i must say i project here, maybe its fine).