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More or less what you would expect from a end of times novel...

According to other sites most people didn't like this one very much. I, on the contrary loved it. The tone reminds one of Chandler's novels, although this one is taking place in NY around 2005. Also reminded me a lot of the movie Chinatown without the cynicism. The intrigue goes nowhere, we're talking long walks in various NY neighborhoods and meeting all kinds of interesting characteers, reminding me so much of the 2 years I worked there and did more or less the same. Incredible town, where you stop at any jazz joint and hear people jamming, for a handful of listeners the best music I've ever heard.

Literary thriller which is interested more in demonstrating a (often boring) mastery of English than anything else.
For example:"The fug of evening heat, deoxy genated by too much conversation, was now crackling above the chocolate and the olive oil parfaits." This emphasis on language makes it tediously heavy with the intrigue starting well, getting lost in the middle to make a comeback for the last section.

L'intrigue principale devrait, et nous raconte, les événements qui ont conduit à l'assinat de Heydrich en 1942.

Laurent Binet inclut les détails importants mais c'est dommage de voir qu'il inclut également ses propres commentaires sur ce qu'il devrait inclure et ne pas inclure pour finalement inclure ou exclure, peu importe ce qu'il en a dit auparavant.

Je suppose que ses réflexions personnelles, toujours présentes, sont censées alléger quelque peu le ton du roman, mais dans mon cas, elles n'ont réussi qu'à rendre très irritante une histoire qui autrement m'aurait beaucoup intéressé.

This is a 110 pages book of metaphors, long metaphors, short ones, tortured ones and blistered ones.

Disappointing, I've been to Africa in the 60s and it's a beautiful but sometimes really hard world that is certainly worth much more than obscure metaphors.

For those interested in gaining a more insightful vision I highly recommend Romain Gary's Les racines du ciel.

Reading the blurb on the cover, one has the impression that this is going to be a revenge thriller or at least some kind of thriller. But not at all, this is a novel. For the first half of the book, one is intrigued, wondering where this is going to lead to. Then one becomes clear that this is not a revenge book, it's something else. Interesting nevertheless...

One has the feeling that this was, for the author, an assignment. Long stretches of text which seem obviously to be written to fill space, to reach the number of pages required by the teacher.

Not really my type.

the premise of the story should make for interesting reading, but in my opinion the author uses such a casual and plain writing style that it quickly becomes somewhat boring. He catches up a bit on the ending that is quicker paced but a bit too late for me.

Rien de transcendant mais bien écrit avec une intrigue qui se défend bien.  Tous les clichés du genre y sont, y compris la finale pendant l'orage mais on pardonne volontiers à l'auteure car elle nous a fait passer un bon moment.

Very good book. It manages to make a good thriller out of an interesting discussion about our present ecological conundrum. We follow 2 female lead characters (good job to portray 2 women in very believable center roles) and get in the process a very good insight of their detailed reflection journey.

The author renders the traditional thriller with a very original twist in this novel where the story unfolds be reading one's way though a series of transcriptions of audio files. She plays with the fact that it is a machine transcription where words can easily get misspellt, for instance "mustard" instead of "must have", and all this while the dictator of the files getting transcribed is hunting for something by unraveling a code.

You can already see the complications, transcription mistakes, code to decipher based only on said transcription.

A pleasure to read!

Written by a doctor, this book takes you to Addis Ababa in the early 60's and ends up there as well, not without a long stay in America.

The story certainly brings us out of the usual European or North Ameican settings. Very touching, although the story is claimed to be fictional, being written by a famous doctor, you cannot help but think that there might be quite a few autobiographic elements included. As many books written by technical experts, this one tends to lean heavely on sentimental lyricism but given the nature of the intrigue you easily forgive the author for it.

Pas mal, le décor est grandiose, pour ne pas dire grandiloquent, mais vraiment on a souvent du mal à ne pas s'endormir...