the paris apartment -- 100% review
Saturday, April 15th, 2023 18:05![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mutterwingwhirr
alright. i finished the book late last night and... i'm not really certain how to format my thoughts. so much happens. the plot unfolds. of course there's a fucking sex dungeon. let's just go through what all happens and get to the review part of the review.
in brief: everyone in this apartment complex is related. in the penthouse resides the patriarch, jacques meunier and his wife sophie. on the fourth floor, mimi, the last born daughter, and her roommate camille. the third floor apartment was vacant for some time, and was later occupied by first ben, and then jess. on the second floor we have the younger son, nick-- an old schoolmate's of ben. and on the first floor we have antoine and his soon-to-be-ex-wife.
when ben arrives, he wins everyone over (except antoine) with his charm and social graces. almost without thought, he's ingratiated into the monthly family dinners hosted in the penthouse. jacques especially appreciates ben, which makes nick and antoine intensely jealous and angry. they've never received such wholehearted support from their father for anything in their lives. they decide ben has to leave-- he's meddling too much in the delicate balance of their familial lives. suspects one and two are thus established.
meanwhile, mimi develops an intense, obsessive crush on ben-- one she believes is requited as he charms her over again and again. her obsession with him becomes ritualistic and unhinged. but she is mostly harmless, aside from using the servants passageways to spy on ben, keeping her obsession to herself, biding her time for "the perfect moment" to requite their love. but she's also the only person in possession of the murder weapon. suspect three.
and even meanerwhile (if that is a phrase), ben initiates an affair with sophie, who is angry at jacques' frequent absences and frigid indifference. the affair is an outlet for sophie to vent her frustration in her marriage, and ben is only too happy to oblige her.
all the while, nick watches ben longingly, identifying him as "his first love" and the man that broke his heart. there's no way that nick can allow himself to love men, and so he initiated the distance that followed their graduation from school. despite this, when ben shoots him an email, nick invites ben to take up residence in the third floor almost without a second thought. he hopes, but does not dare to hope. so far, nick has the most motive to kill-- either because ben tips the scales somehow with his father, or because he finds out that ben is sleeping with his mother.
jess, in the meantime, investigates into jacques with ben's editor, theo. not that she knows what that means, exactly, but theo's strung together a couple of leads. there's an exclusive nightclub that jacques meunier owns, and when they get inside, it's like. the vibes of going to the opera but instead of singing like. wagner or some shit, they just start stripping for the audience. definitely weird shit. there's a handful of VIPs that leave between acts of the performance, disappearing down a staircase that leads somewhere underground. total sex dungeon vibes. they're ejected from the club before they see what happens down there. but irina follows them and tells them what we already know. the women that perform are enticing patrons. they go downstairs to reserve women and pay inordinate sums for the wine and food they consume during the session. some real "it's not prostitution if you don't pay the women" activity. this part really disappointed me. like was it not enough to make the characters interesting and compelling enough to be moved to murder on their own? you had to invent a sex dungeon subplot? come on, lucy.
anyway. irina also shares that although a lot of the girls who work there don't have anywhere better to go, they do also spread rumors of girls who worked there and got out into better lives. like this one rumor about a girl that got pregnant, had the kid inside the club because she had no where else to go, and then married a fancy rich guy.
this is where the story starts pulling together. ben has investigated from the inside, speaking to the apartment's concierge and getting sophie to spill the beans. sophie isn't french by birth-- she's pulled together an elaborate mask to disguise her eastern european accent. and it's clear after a while that she used to be employed by the club. no real elaboration on why jacques selected her as a bride when his first wife died (oh yeah, the reason the third floor was vacant was because the wife used to live there), but it spurred resentment in antoine, who perceived it as an attempt to replace his real mom. some reeeaaall tepid stepchild behavior, i gotta say. the man is like 37. like. get over it.
and then the most crucial part of all this. mimi. mimi, who was born inside the club, born from the concierge's daughter, who died in labor. born and entrusted to sophie, unable to bear children; followed and cared for at a distance by the concierge, her maternal grandmother. and it suddenly makes sense that, with ben doing his investigative journaling, an article blowing wide the scandal that is the sex dungeon club would also mean the ruination of the family and the secrets that allow mimi and sophie to function as upperclass women of money. and how desperately they have worked thus far to maintain that illusion. suspects three and four.
so how does everything shake out? are you certain you want to know the end of the story? this is your last chance before everything is revealed.
mimi flies off the handle, is how. from her window, she has a perfect view of ben's window. i guess this building is U shaped or something? she watches as jacques, who's learned of ben's research into the sex club, confronts ben. that's the conversation ben has at the very beginning of the book-- the last conversation ben has before he's whisked out of the narrative. at seeing her father, whom she hates and fears, assault ben, whom she loves and worships, mimi flies into a rage. she grabs her canvas ripping knife and rushes onto the scene. jacques never sees her coming. sophie arrives on the scene, as well as the concierge. the concierge takes mimi to the showers and cleans her of the blood. sophie handles the body, enshrouding it in the window curtains to obscure the body's identity. i'm not exactly sure where she stashes ben's unconscious form in all the rush, but when nick and antoine arrive on the scene, they find just the one body. they're told it's ben. they bury him in the courtyard just hours before jess arrives. and thus, we know why everyone has been cagey about ben's whereabouts.
sophie stashes ben in the attics, keeping him barely alive while she tries to decide what to do with him. she impersonates her husband, texting their sons as jacques to keep them in line, knowing they do not regard her with any authority without jacques. jess finds ben and, in a sudden stroke of genius negotiation, works out a deal with sophie. not only to jess and ben get out of there alive, but they also get to accomplish their goals. ben's article gets published. the girls at the club are given money and means to get out of paris. and then the plot sort of wraps up final details.
honestly, i'm not sure how i feel about this novel. i feel like it was written more for the sex and intrigue than it was written to be, like, a satisfying mystery novel. there are moments where the rigid adherence to first person narration does less for the tone and pacing than third person narration would accomplish. the secret, last-minute swap around makes it.... too clean, too trite of a resolution. suddenly the one who's dead this whole time was a man that no one could stand to be around anyway? then what was the point of making it seem like it was ben the whole time? ben, whom everyone looked at with rose-tinted lenses. half the time jacques isn't even MENTIONED, let alone admired. the snippets we do get of him are disjointed, ugly vignettes of what power and money do for a man who's determined to rule with an iron fist. there's no love lost on that man's death; there was no love gained on his integration in the story. were it not for how the story is written to incorporate him at the very end, it would make no difference if he were absent throughout. no, rather, he IS absent throughout and the characters make significant effort to assure the reader that yes, this is normal. jacques is frequently absent, and the loneliness the other characters feel when he is absent is part of their everyday lives. so now he's dead. so what?
i wish the story had been more contained inside the house. there were so many different reasons that each resident should wish for ben's demise that any number of them trying, in their turns, to destroy him would have made for a more compelling ending. i truly don't feel like ben and jess should have been rewarded for how invasively they entered this family's life and how disruptively they transgressed in those spaces. and i honestly would have been fine without the entire investigation into the club. like yeah, the club was a sinister, dire place and i guess it deserved to be shut down for what it was doing to the girls that worked there. but it was intended, positionally, to contribute to jacques' overall character. and he was simply so untouched by the narrative-- hell, the destruction of his club didn't even affect him because he was already dead!-- that he entered and exited without really leaving a mark.
i don't know. i wish the servants' staircase and the dumbwaiter had been more incorporated into the plot. i wish it had been some kind of complicated "it was mimi's weapon wielded in sophie's hand after nick riled antoine up so much antoine baited sophie into acting" trajectory, where everyone was as involved as there was love lost between them and ben. it would have been... neat. tidy. not whatever the hell the rest of this book was.
anyway. i think my rating of the book overall is a 5 out of 11 now. there are so many other things that could have happened with the plot devices that had been established. and what we got instead was a sex dungeon.
in brief: everyone in this apartment complex is related. in the penthouse resides the patriarch, jacques meunier and his wife sophie. on the fourth floor, mimi, the last born daughter, and her roommate camille. the third floor apartment was vacant for some time, and was later occupied by first ben, and then jess. on the second floor we have the younger son, nick-- an old schoolmate's of ben. and on the first floor we have antoine and his soon-to-be-ex-wife.
when ben arrives, he wins everyone over (except antoine) with his charm and social graces. almost without thought, he's ingratiated into the monthly family dinners hosted in the penthouse. jacques especially appreciates ben, which makes nick and antoine intensely jealous and angry. they've never received such wholehearted support from their father for anything in their lives. they decide ben has to leave-- he's meddling too much in the delicate balance of their familial lives. suspects one and two are thus established.
meanwhile, mimi develops an intense, obsessive crush on ben-- one she believes is requited as he charms her over again and again. her obsession with him becomes ritualistic and unhinged. but she is mostly harmless, aside from using the servants passageways to spy on ben, keeping her obsession to herself, biding her time for "the perfect moment" to requite their love. but she's also the only person in possession of the murder weapon. suspect three.
and even meanerwhile (if that is a phrase), ben initiates an affair with sophie, who is angry at jacques' frequent absences and frigid indifference. the affair is an outlet for sophie to vent her frustration in her marriage, and ben is only too happy to oblige her.
all the while, nick watches ben longingly, identifying him as "his first love" and the man that broke his heart. there's no way that nick can allow himself to love men, and so he initiated the distance that followed their graduation from school. despite this, when ben shoots him an email, nick invites ben to take up residence in the third floor almost without a second thought. he hopes, but does not dare to hope. so far, nick has the most motive to kill-- either because ben tips the scales somehow with his father, or because he finds out that ben is sleeping with his mother.
jess, in the meantime, investigates into jacques with ben's editor, theo. not that she knows what that means, exactly, but theo's strung together a couple of leads. there's an exclusive nightclub that jacques meunier owns, and when they get inside, it's like. the vibes of going to the opera but instead of singing like. wagner or some shit, they just start stripping for the audience. definitely weird shit. there's a handful of VIPs that leave between acts of the performance, disappearing down a staircase that leads somewhere underground. total sex dungeon vibes. they're ejected from the club before they see what happens down there. but irina follows them and tells them what we already know. the women that perform are enticing patrons. they go downstairs to reserve women and pay inordinate sums for the wine and food they consume during the session. some real "it's not prostitution if you don't pay the women" activity. this part really disappointed me. like was it not enough to make the characters interesting and compelling enough to be moved to murder on their own? you had to invent a sex dungeon subplot? come on, lucy.
anyway. irina also shares that although a lot of the girls who work there don't have anywhere better to go, they do also spread rumors of girls who worked there and got out into better lives. like this one rumor about a girl that got pregnant, had the kid inside the club because she had no where else to go, and then married a fancy rich guy.
this is where the story starts pulling together. ben has investigated from the inside, speaking to the apartment's concierge and getting sophie to spill the beans. sophie isn't french by birth-- she's pulled together an elaborate mask to disguise her eastern european accent. and it's clear after a while that she used to be employed by the club. no real elaboration on why jacques selected her as a bride when his first wife died (oh yeah, the reason the third floor was vacant was because the wife used to live there), but it spurred resentment in antoine, who perceived it as an attempt to replace his real mom. some reeeaaall tepid stepchild behavior, i gotta say. the man is like 37. like. get over it.
and then the most crucial part of all this. mimi. mimi, who was born inside the club, born from the concierge's daughter, who died in labor. born and entrusted to sophie, unable to bear children; followed and cared for at a distance by the concierge, her maternal grandmother. and it suddenly makes sense that, with ben doing his investigative journaling, an article blowing wide the scandal that is the sex dungeon club would also mean the ruination of the family and the secrets that allow mimi and sophie to function as upperclass women of money. and how desperately they have worked thus far to maintain that illusion. suspects three and four.
so how does everything shake out? are you certain you want to know the end of the story? this is your last chance before everything is revealed.
mimi flies off the handle, is how. from her window, she has a perfect view of ben's window. i guess this building is U shaped or something? she watches as jacques, who's learned of ben's research into the sex club, confronts ben. that's the conversation ben has at the very beginning of the book-- the last conversation ben has before he's whisked out of the narrative. at seeing her father, whom she hates and fears, assault ben, whom she loves and worships, mimi flies into a rage. she grabs her canvas ripping knife and rushes onto the scene. jacques never sees her coming. sophie arrives on the scene, as well as the concierge. the concierge takes mimi to the showers and cleans her of the blood. sophie handles the body, enshrouding it in the window curtains to obscure the body's identity. i'm not exactly sure where she stashes ben's unconscious form in all the rush, but when nick and antoine arrive on the scene, they find just the one body. they're told it's ben. they bury him in the courtyard just hours before jess arrives. and thus, we know why everyone has been cagey about ben's whereabouts.
sophie stashes ben in the attics, keeping him barely alive while she tries to decide what to do with him. she impersonates her husband, texting their sons as jacques to keep them in line, knowing they do not regard her with any authority without jacques. jess finds ben and, in a sudden stroke of genius negotiation, works out a deal with sophie. not only to jess and ben get out of there alive, but they also get to accomplish their goals. ben's article gets published. the girls at the club are given money and means to get out of paris. and then the plot sort of wraps up final details.
honestly, i'm not sure how i feel about this novel. i feel like it was written more for the sex and intrigue than it was written to be, like, a satisfying mystery novel. there are moments where the rigid adherence to first person narration does less for the tone and pacing than third person narration would accomplish. the secret, last-minute swap around makes it.... too clean, too trite of a resolution. suddenly the one who's dead this whole time was a man that no one could stand to be around anyway? then what was the point of making it seem like it was ben the whole time? ben, whom everyone looked at with rose-tinted lenses. half the time jacques isn't even MENTIONED, let alone admired. the snippets we do get of him are disjointed, ugly vignettes of what power and money do for a man who's determined to rule with an iron fist. there's no love lost on that man's death; there was no love gained on his integration in the story. were it not for how the story is written to incorporate him at the very end, it would make no difference if he were absent throughout. no, rather, he IS absent throughout and the characters make significant effort to assure the reader that yes, this is normal. jacques is frequently absent, and the loneliness the other characters feel when he is absent is part of their everyday lives. so now he's dead. so what?
i wish the story had been more contained inside the house. there were so many different reasons that each resident should wish for ben's demise that any number of them trying, in their turns, to destroy him would have made for a more compelling ending. i truly don't feel like ben and jess should have been rewarded for how invasively they entered this family's life and how disruptively they transgressed in those spaces. and i honestly would have been fine without the entire investigation into the club. like yeah, the club was a sinister, dire place and i guess it deserved to be shut down for what it was doing to the girls that worked there. but it was intended, positionally, to contribute to jacques' overall character. and he was simply so untouched by the narrative-- hell, the destruction of his club didn't even affect him because he was already dead!-- that he entered and exited without really leaving a mark.
i don't know. i wish the servants' staircase and the dumbwaiter had been more incorporated into the plot. i wish it had been some kind of complicated "it was mimi's weapon wielded in sophie's hand after nick riled antoine up so much antoine baited sophie into acting" trajectory, where everyone was as involved as there was love lost between them and ben. it would have been... neat. tidy. not whatever the hell the rest of this book was.
anyway. i think my rating of the book overall is a 5 out of 11 now. there are so many other things that could have happened with the plot devices that had been established. and what we got instead was a sex dungeon.
