The Anomaly

A Novel

By: Hervé Le Tellier, Adriana Hunter - translator

Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman

Length: 10 hrs and 36 mins

Publisher's summary

Winner of the Prix Goncourt, this dizzying literary pause-resister ingeniously blends crime, fantasy, sci-fi, and thriller as it plumbs the mysteries surrounding a Paris-New York flight.

In June 2021, a senseless event upends the lives of hundreds of men and women, all passengers on a flight from Paris to New York. Among them: Blake, a respectable family man, though he works as a contract killer; Slimboy, a Nigerian pop star tired of living a lie; Joanna, a formidable lawyer whose flaws have caught up with her; and Victor Miesel, a critically acclaimed yet commercially unsuccessful writer who suddenly becomes a cult hit.

All of them believed they had double lives. None imagined just how true that was.

A virtuoso novel where logic confronts magic, The Anomaly explores the part of ourselves that eludes us. This witty variation on the doppelgänger theme, which takes us on a journey from Lagos and Mumbai to the White House, proves to be Hervé Le Tellier’s most ambitious work yet.

©2021 Hervé Le Tellier and Adriana Hunter (P)2021 Random House Audio

Fantastique!

No spoiler alert! Fantastic! An Audible review requires (for no discernible reason) at least 15 words so I am writing this extra non-meaningful sentence.

Strange but Compelling

I am glad I was persistent and got through to the end. Surprise ending! Glad I was listening and not reading, I might have given up.

Questions with no resolution

When the audiobook ended I thought the story must have only been half way through. That’s how few storylines are left unresolved. Was great up to that point because i though it would go somewhere…

Great novel, but none ideal for audio format

Very intriguing work that weaves together elements of philosophy, classic literary works, and more modern situational stories and thrillers. My main critique is less about the book and more about the audio format, and that is it’s not well suited for casual reading and thus is difficult as audio book. The story has many characters who - especially in the first half - seem completely unrelated and are difficult to keep track of if not 100% focused on the book. Otherwise it’s a strange, very French and lovely read

Worth your time

Yes, at times it drags on but I thoroughly enjoyed this book and found myself thinking about it and it’s inhabitants throughout the day. The end is not garbled - how can someone Sho listened to this entire book think that? I won’t spoil it but it is pretty clear what happened. I liked the narrator and enjoyed imaging myself in this situation. With
my career and my family.

Last 30 seconds of audio was garbled

I do not think I missed any major cliffhanger but it was a huge bummer to get all the way through and have the last thirty seconds of audio garbled beyond recognition.

A unique thriller

I need to read this again. I got the gist but want to understand some of the characters a bit better.

An exceptional book…

So we’ll written, so we’ll read, so original… it is both both entertaining and profound.

Enjoyable

It was well written, though some plot points felt a bit strained. Dialogue was solid though

very interesting book but the narrator sucks

Generally speaking i loved the book. It's a very intriguing and thought-provoking story.

However this Audible production is really sub-par. They decided to note French-speakers by giving them a French accent when reading their dialogues. Couldnt Audible have picked a French bi-lingual to do this part for a reasonable French accent?? Instead this narrator does a very poor imitation of a French accent that sounds like a Nigerian accent or something like that. Considering half the characters in the book are French that's a very odd and poor production decision.