mutterwingwhirr (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mutterwingwhirr) wrote2023-04-14 03:00 am
mutterwingwhirr) wrote2023-04-14 03:00 am
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the paris apartment -- 49% review
well then. this 13 hour novel is definitely a strange one for sure. it reminds me a lot of everything i never told you by celeste ng (god, what a beautiful novel) but without a lot of the emotional gut punches that that book is all about. for all that this book is written in a roving first person, delving first into one character's thoughts and then another, it's written to be strangely on-the-nose. "i felt an absurd prick of jealousy" is certainly a thing someone can say in retrospect, but it feels strange to hear a narrator say it in response to an action that has just occurred. a weird combination of first person, past tense, and... what to call it? an excess of self-awareness? every character in the book is so quick to acknowledge their flaws in a way that feels surreal and out of place.
even so, the novel does a really fantastic job of making you feel ill-at-ease. i'm waiting to see the big TWIST, where all the pieces fall into place. there was a pretty hefty one just a few chapters ago, but there's still a lot missing when it comes to the Mystery.
so then. on the night that his sister is due to arrive in paris, ben [last name] is attacked and presumably killed in his rented paris apartment. he is confronted with someone inside his home while he's leaving a voice message to jess, instructing her how to find his apartment, leaving some part of his message incomplete. jess arrives and, finding ben unresponsive, manages to break into the apartment in a couple of different ways. right from the get-go, this book makes you feel the wrongness of the events. we the audience know, although unfortunately jess does not, that ben ends up on the receiving end of some sort of altercation. so for a full 24 hours, she has no idea of even that much-- though both she and we are in the dark as to the perpetrator, the actual event, and what becomes of ben. but she notices things. ben's cat has blood on his paws and under his chin. the room smells sanitized-- no, bleached. ben is not here, but has not taken his wallet or keys. no phone. we are given all the signs; jess observes them but tries to tamp down her discomfort, still believing ben could just be out for the night.
and then we meet the residents of the other apartments in this building, over the course of the next few chapters. and it's... strange. there's jess on one side, inquiring after her brother's last whereabouts, and then there's the residents on the other side, jolted by jess' questioning to reminisce about their first meetings with ben. and it's weird that the only thing most of them want to do is think about how charming this boy is, and not at all about how it might be strange that he agreed to meet his sister and buzz her into his apartment and then disappeared without a trace. but i mean. i've read agatha christie novels. i think i get what's going on. learning there's a secret stairway that connects all the apartments? well that's certainly convenient for the killer, if a bit strange to reveal it so early. learning about the dumbwaiter? sure is a convenient place to stash a murder weapon. learning the residents are all related? yeah, yeah, sure. they can all be in on it, i suppose. although... there's something not quite right about that. if mimi was in on it, being family, why would she be so alarmed to find something in the dumbwaiter? these pieces just... don't fit together quite yet. we're missing something vital.
but that's just it, with this novel. you think you know just enough to point the finger at the perpetrator, but you don't have quite enough evidence. you keep switching your target, as jess' unease with her surroundings and gut instinct to distrust everyone in her vicinity, brings in more and more inconclusive information. and jess doesn't know why she feels uneasy with everyone. but i think i do. i have to know for sure, though. i want to be able to figure it out with clarity-- not just everyone involved, but how it happened, what happened after, where ben ended up. because, despite learning plenty about the other residents of the apartment and their various impressions of ben over the months he spends living among them, we don't get the crucial information we need to make the pronouncement.
it's a strange way to build a relationship between the reader and jess. at many points, we know more than she does because she's hopping in at the conclusion of ben's story, when we were privy to the climax. and yet, on the points that she's pursuing, neither she nor we gain headway. and so we are made allies in our ignorance. jess is not a likeable character-- she snoops around more than she ought to and excuses it from past experience; she's restless and on edge and medicates her anxieties and tells herself she knows how stupid it is to get into danger right as she charges on in; and she chooses to trust people that it feels incredibly risky to trust at all. but even if i don't agree with her methods, she's certainly doing a great deal more than i am at learning secrets, even if she doesn't get flashbacks to her brother's perspective to fill in the gaps like i do. not the sort of thing i think i would do to write a mystery, but definitely effective.
though, on saying all of that, i realize that jess is remarkably holmes-esque in her knack for poking around where she's definitely not wanted. she just doesn't have a watson to smooth out her abrasiveness. i wonder how much that's intentional, the resemblance.
tl;dr i'm still on the fence about this book, but if the ending pulls through, it'll be a solid novel. here's hoping. for now, i'll go with 5 bears out of 9.
even so, the novel does a really fantastic job of making you feel ill-at-ease. i'm waiting to see the big TWIST, where all the pieces fall into place. there was a pretty hefty one just a few chapters ago, but there's still a lot missing when it comes to the Mystery.
so then. on the night that his sister is due to arrive in paris, ben [last name] is attacked and presumably killed in his rented paris apartment. he is confronted with someone inside his home while he's leaving a voice message to jess, instructing her how to find his apartment, leaving some part of his message incomplete. jess arrives and, finding ben unresponsive, manages to break into the apartment in a couple of different ways. right from the get-go, this book makes you feel the wrongness of the events. we the audience know, although unfortunately jess does not, that ben ends up on the receiving end of some sort of altercation. so for a full 24 hours, she has no idea of even that much-- though both she and we are in the dark as to the perpetrator, the actual event, and what becomes of ben. but she notices things. ben's cat has blood on his paws and under his chin. the room smells sanitized-- no, bleached. ben is not here, but has not taken his wallet or keys. no phone. we are given all the signs; jess observes them but tries to tamp down her discomfort, still believing ben could just be out for the night.
and then we meet the residents of the other apartments in this building, over the course of the next few chapters. and it's... strange. there's jess on one side, inquiring after her brother's last whereabouts, and then there's the residents on the other side, jolted by jess' questioning to reminisce about their first meetings with ben. and it's weird that the only thing most of them want to do is think about how charming this boy is, and not at all about how it might be strange that he agreed to meet his sister and buzz her into his apartment and then disappeared without a trace. but i mean. i've read agatha christie novels. i think i get what's going on. learning there's a secret stairway that connects all the apartments? well that's certainly convenient for the killer, if a bit strange to reveal it so early. learning about the dumbwaiter? sure is a convenient place to stash a murder weapon. learning the residents are all related? yeah, yeah, sure. they can all be in on it, i suppose. although... there's something not quite right about that. if mimi was in on it, being family, why would she be so alarmed to find something in the dumbwaiter? these pieces just... don't fit together quite yet. we're missing something vital.
but that's just it, with this novel. you think you know just enough to point the finger at the perpetrator, but you don't have quite enough evidence. you keep switching your target, as jess' unease with her surroundings and gut instinct to distrust everyone in her vicinity, brings in more and more inconclusive information. and jess doesn't know why she feels uneasy with everyone. but i think i do. i have to know for sure, though. i want to be able to figure it out with clarity-- not just everyone involved, but how it happened, what happened after, where ben ended up. because, despite learning plenty about the other residents of the apartment and their various impressions of ben over the months he spends living among them, we don't get the crucial information we need to make the pronouncement.
it's a strange way to build a relationship between the reader and jess. at many points, we know more than she does because she's hopping in at the conclusion of ben's story, when we were privy to the climax. and yet, on the points that she's pursuing, neither she nor we gain headway. and so we are made allies in our ignorance. jess is not a likeable character-- she snoops around more than she ought to and excuses it from past experience; she's restless and on edge and medicates her anxieties and tells herself she knows how stupid it is to get into danger right as she charges on in; and she chooses to trust people that it feels incredibly risky to trust at all. but even if i don't agree with her methods, she's certainly doing a great deal more than i am at learning secrets, even if she doesn't get flashbacks to her brother's perspective to fill in the gaps like i do. not the sort of thing i think i would do to write a mystery, but definitely effective.
though, on saying all of that, i realize that jess is remarkably holmes-esque in her knack for poking around where she's definitely not wanted. she just doesn't have a watson to smooth out her abrasiveness. i wonder how much that's intentional, the resemblance.
tl;dr i'm still on the fence about this book, but if the ending pulls through, it'll be a solid novel. here's hoping. for now, i'll go with 5 bears out of 9.