Three Days and a Life by Pierre Lemaitre

About Three Days ad a Life

Antoine is twelve years old. His parents are divorced and he lives with his mother in Beauval, a small, backwater town surrounded by forests, where everyone knows everyone's business, and nothing much ever happens. But in the last days of 1999, a series of events unfolds, culminating in the shocking vanishing without trace of a young child. The adults of the town are at a loss to explain the disappearance, but for Antoine, it all begins with the violent death of his neighbour's dog. From that one brutal act, his fate and the fate of his neighbour's six year old son are bound forever.

In the years following Rémi's disappearance, Antoine wrestles with the role his actions played. As a seemingly inescapable net begins to tighten, breaking free from the suffocating environs of Beauval becomes a gnawing obsession. But how far does he have to run, and how long will it take before his past catches up with him again?

My review of Three Days and a Life

Oh this book, I still can't get this book out of my head. It is one of those books that stays with you long after you have read the final page. It's taken me a while to sum up my thoughts, so that I can try and write my review. Three Days and a Life is incredibly hard to review in terms of plot, so I am not going to talk about the plot, instead I'll focus upon the way in which the book has been written and the beautiful imagery conjured up in the small French village of Beauval. I'll also add that I completely fell in love with this book.

Three Days and a Life is written from the third person point of view and is very easy to follow. The novel begins in 1999, just before Christmas when little Rémi disappears from the village, shortly after the violent death of his family's dog. We follow the inhabitants of the town, including Anotne and his mother, Madame Courtin, as they begin to search for the little boy. Alter several days, the time then shifts to 2015, and once again we follow Antoine. The narrative flows beautifully, and the author creates a sense of tension and urgency to his writing, with an unsettling undercurrent. I couldn't put the book down.



The remote village of Beauval is skilfully brought to life on the page, as well as its inhabitants. I could clearly picture the row of houses, the smell of the woods and the way that life must have been like for the people living there.  

Understanding Beauval, is pivotal to understanding the complexity of the characters and the reasons in which they act. It is a close community, deeply affected by the disappearance of little Remi, and the village is never quite the same. I think that the reason that this book touched me so deeply, is that it is about how a little boy disappears, and the effect upon his family and the wider community. The beginning of the book I found very difficult to read, as some of the details are quite disturbing.

Pierre Lemaitre is a gifted storyteller of cutting edge thrillers that are also thought provoking. I cared aboiut these characters, even though I never liked Antoine. The fact trhat I didn't like him simply didn't matter, I still found him hugely readable and complex. This is a gripping tale of morality, of growing up and of dealing with the chances and decsions that you make in life. It left me breathless. My thoughts kept drifting back to this novel, days after I had finished reradong it. It is a disturbing read, but a compelling one that challenges our moral compass.

Highly recommended.

With thanks to the publisher,MacLehose Press, and Bookbridgr for a paperback proof copy.

Three Days and a Life is published by MacLehose Press on 13 July 2017 and is available to preorder on Amazon here.



Fear by Dirk Kurbjuweit #bookreview

About Fear

YOU'D DIE FOR YOUR FAMILY.

BUT WOULD YOU KILL FOR THEM?

Family is everything.

So what if yours was being terrorised by a neighbour – a man who doesn’t listen to reason, whose actions become more erratic and sinister with each passing day? And those you thought would help – the police, your lawyer – can’t help you.

You become afraid to leave your family at home alone. But there’s nothing more you can do to protect them.

Is there?

'FEAR shifts our moral codes. It makes us sympathetic to violent revenge, accessories to murder. Do we want the victim to survive? No, we don't' - HERMAN KOCH, bestselling author of THE DINNER

My review of Fear

Wow! Where do I start with this book review? I absolutely loved Fear for its originality, creeping sense of unease and that knowledge that everything that happened was completely believable, and could happen to any one of us. This really is a compelling and challenging psychological thriller.

Fear is the first novel by Dirk Kurbjuweit to be translated from his native German, but is the author's seventh novel. He writes with cutting clarity, having based the novel om real life vents, those of being stalked. This somehow makes the events of the novel even more chilling.

Dieter Tiberius is the stalker. He lives in the basement flat. A man of a different social class to the rest of the building, and to the Tiefenthaler family: Randolph and his wife, who have two small children. He is described as being different from the very beginning of the story. He looks different and he acts differently, he is an outsider. From the way that his character is displayed on the page, we should be fearful of him. Does he deserve the violent revenge that is bestowed upon him? This is where the novel is very clever, in that my moral compass shifted as I read through the pages.

We learn at the beginning of the story that Hermann Tiefenthaler, father to Randolph, is in prison for manslaughter. The victim is Dieter Tiberius, but the true nature io the crime, and exactly what happened are not revealed until the very end of the story. We read Randolph's thoughts about what has happened, his relationship with his father, past and present and how he perceives his relationship to be with his wife. This is very much a slow burning and dark read about revenge and the need to protect your family at all costs. To completely understand the  motives of the Tiefenthaler family, we need to understand them, their character, and this is what the author does beautifully, through the telling of stories, encounters and how life was for Randolph growing up in a household that was full of guns.

Fear tackles some serious issues. Those of gun ownership, child abuse, social inequality and social class. How we are raised and the social class we are elevated to, all have equal importance in this novel. For me though, the heart of this novel came down to the fact that because the police would bot protect Randolph and his family from the torrent of psychological abuse that they were receiving, they felt they had to take matters into their own hands. The law is powerless to protect them from psychological abuse. This is in itself an interesting concept, that of a psychological attack, the written word, one spoken word against another. Whose version of events do we really believe?

Fear is a challenging read. Do we believe Randolph? Do we empathise with the victim? The real question is, how far would you go to protect your family? It will leave you reeling. My thoughts kept coming back to this book, days after reading it. This book is not published until January next year and it already has a huge following on social media. This book is going to be huge, and for very good reasons.

With thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an Advanced Reader Copy.

Fear is published January 25th 2018 by Orion Publishing Group. You can pre order the book on Amazon here.

About the author

Dirk Kurbjuweit is deputy editor-in-chief at Der Spiegel, where he has worked since 1999, and divides his time between Berlin and Hamburg. He has received numerous awards for his writing, including the Egon Erwin Kisch Prize for journalism, and is the author of seven critically acclaimed novels, many of which, including Fear, have been adapted for film, television and radio in Germany. Fear is the first of his works to be translated into English.