I know this author is well-liked in France, but I couldn’t wrap my mind around this novel. It isn’t science fiction but it has elements in it from science fiction, and from history, and from reality. Now, this combination could prove to be a success, maybe from a different pen, but this one’s credibility became far out for me, especially the plot twist at the end.

In the beginning the story started out all right, with the main character Julia, her boyfriend, her best friend, and her impasse with her father. Later, however, the father came back from the dead in some kind of an android form, yet, looking exactly like Julia’s father to fool everyone and talk, walk, reason, and feel emotions like a real person. This was a bit too much for me, only because just about everything else in the story was real and explainable. Still, I kept on reading, not expecting the concoction that came after.

In the story, Julia Walsh is about to marry Adam, but couple of days before her wedding, she receives word that her estranged father Anthony Walsh has died and the funeral is set to be on her wedding day. With the wedding postponed, she attends the funeral instead. Soon afterward, a large crate is delivered to her apartment and from in it emerges the replica of her dead father android who is battery operated. The rest of the story concentrates on the father and daughter arguing out, seeing more deeply into and getting to know each other. This Anthony Walsh tells his daughter that he was a shareholder in a high-tech company and his memory banks are installed in his android form; however, as a machine, his lifespan is limited to six days.

While doing that, the two delve into Julia’s past via a trip to Germany where Julia’s true love was and where she had met and fell in love with a German journalist from East Germany by the name of Thomas just around when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989.

As to the characters, The way the main character handles her boyfriend, her long-ago lover, and her father didn’t endear her to me. Frankly Julia’s only working and believable relationship is probably with her best friend, a gay man by the name of Stanley. Even from him, she kept things and even lied to him. I didn’t like the father either, in real or android form. I thought both father and daughter were selfish, brash, and arrogant. Also, what I never understood was how did this father who neglected and misunderstood the daughter to such a degree could know that Adam was not the love of her life, but he had to maneuver her to finding Thomas again.

While I read this novel, as Julia thought Thomas was killed in Afghanistan, I wondered if he would end up being an undead android like the father since the father was pulling all the ropes to steer Julia away from poor Adam, but it seems, Julia’s information was faulty, and Thomas ended up alive but with a name change. Funny, I thought, one important character in this protagonist’s life ended up becoming an android and the other important one went through a name change.

More than anything, at its beginning, the novel promised to its readers to focus on the relationship through soul-searching and those things the father and daughter were meant to come to terms with. The book, in my opinion, hasn’t lived up to that promise. Still, at the end, there were many things left unsaid.

Stanley's character.

the plot construction, the twist at the end, the characterization in general.

that maybe I don't understand the way the French think, although I truly appreciate other French authors.

is Marc Levy, a French author, popular in France. His other books in English or translated to English are: If Only It Were True, Seven Days for an Eternity, Finding You, P.S. from Paris, The First Day

Read at your own risk. The relationship between people making amends and patching up misunderstandings is a great theme, which could be handled and expressed so much more convincingly.

I may have misunderstood this writer but I felt as if only a junior high-school writer could come up with such a plot, not to insult the better writers of Junior-High-School age.

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Created Jun 20, 2019 at 4:32pm • Submit your own review...