Friday, January 15, 2016

The Case of Lisandra P. by Helene Gremillon



I received an ARC of this book from the publisher in exchange for a review. This did not effect my opinions of the book or the review itself.

I wanted to like this book so much more than I actually did.

It has a really intriguing premise. The wife of a psychoanalyst is found dead, having fallen (or been pushed) from the window of the home they shared. A patient of the husband takes it upon herself to solve the mystery and free who she believes to be an innocent man.

Where this book went astray for me was, first and foremost, in the formatting. This is an ARC copy, but nonetheless there were so many errors in the formatting it constantly took me out of the story.

Paragraphs would suddenly be broken up by the end of a sentence that began in a different paragraph.

The story itself would be written in pages long paragraphs, no indentations, no line breaks, frequently with no identification of who was speaking when, or where in time or space the characters were.

The title and the author's name would randomly appear in the middle of a page nowhere near the front of the book.

I think, at least in my opinion, the author did not know exactly what they were trying to accomplish with this book. Page after page would be filled with philosophical repetitive ramblings on topics such as sex, love, and gender, which would eventually lead my attention to wander. There was subplot after subplot that, with the formatting, ended up being confusing and sometimes tedious.

What the author did right, for me as a reader at least, were the two twists at the end. I was so happy to see the book returning not only to its promised mystery format, but providing me with a surprise that brought me right back into the story. I also felt the author did a good job weaving the heartbreaking history of Argentina's "disappeared" into the story.

Would I recommend this book? Sadly, no. The ending unfortunately could not make up for everything else.


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