Based on a True Story/ Delphine de Vigan
The other day I was listening to the book programme A Good Read when the presenter Harriet Gilbert took an audible intake of breathe as she was aghast when a contributor confessed he did not feel like finishing one of the recommended novels. It raises the issue not uncommon in book clubs of the etiquette of reading and finishing someone else’s recommendation. Some feel, like Harriet Gilbert, that every member/contributor to the group is obliged to finish a novel so that proper comment can be made. Others have a protocol that, provided you offer a valid reason, you do not have to complete. There is a third group who do not want to join a book club at all as they do not want reading matter imposed on them. I was once a guest at a club where a Saul Bellow novel was recommended. Saul Bellow is a difficult but worthwhile read and I did note how many either could not get on with him or did not even try.
This also raises the bigger issue of whether anyone should persevere with a book they are not enjoying. I have met this issue with the last two books I have read, both by French writers, namely Cheri by Colette and Based on a True Story by Delphine de Vigan.
The first is the story of an affaire between a younger good-looking rich idler and beau and an older courtesan. I found it rather superficial but admire Colette as a writer and for being far less prim than lady English novelists like Jane Austen. I was pleased to make it to the end but it was not always an easy journey.
I came across Based on a True Story in the crime section of the Literary Review. Then on the arts programme Front Row it was recommended for summer reading. I never know quite what is meant by summer reading and once had to suggest some for Gordon Brown through a mutual friend. Not knowing Gordon Brown I found this a difficult exercise. I read once of a Tory MP wife’s complaint the only time she got sex with her husband is on their summer hols so maybe reading too is only enjoyed on vacation. It also seems something pacy is required like Gone Girl.
As it happens Based on a True story is not unlike Gone Girl with an unreliable narrator and uneasy psychological feel. Sufficiently interested I downloaded it on my kindle and started to read it as it happens on my summer holiday.
The story is of an unhappy authoress suffering from writer’s block who meets at a party a lady called L, befriends her and develops a relationship of intimacy. So far and halfway into the novel there are references to feelings of lesbian desire but no physical coupling. The writer begins to receive malevolent letters anonymously and nasty references on her Facebook page. She does not suspect for some time it may be L.
It’s a cross between All about Eve with assumption of identity and the film Play Misty for Me where a character is not all she seems. It is made the more interesting as L is writer too of ghost-written biographies of the famous. So why my lack of enthusiasm?
The unreliable narrator is a familiar figure but a boring one less so. This is for me the problem namely that Delphine is so self-obsessed with imparting every detail and emotion of her life that she is a bore. Worse she is so self -absorbed that she fails to recognise that it’s blindingly obvious that L is the perpetrator of the unpleasantry. She seems to think that as she sinks into the mire of depression with her block that L is a beneficial influence, a loyal friend and confidante.
About half way through I really felt it time to abandon ship. To prepare for this article I googled Delphine de Vigan to discover that she is a lauded prize-winning writer whose candid reflections on her family had attracted rancour from them. Her life mirrored that in the book, she has boyfriend called Francois and two children. I then read 2 reviews one of which suggested that the writer is maybe playing games, that it is not a true story and what is fiction anyway, an issue raised between Delphine the fiction writer and the ghostwriter L. Both reviews commented it was a slow burner. I decided to press on hoping that perhaps Delphine had made the whole thing up and was a delusional fantasist. Perhaps in a week or so’s time there will be further glowing review here but somehow I doubt it.
