Cassie Bérard’s narrative ambitions cannot be read from the thickness of her books. The balancea dystopian novel rehashing the idea of the penal colony, was less than 300 pages long. Leavewhere she notably mixes the codes of horror and detective novels, in fact 130 and dust.
Behind this not at all intriguing title lies a story that is even more intriguing. Clémence, a police officer based in Mystic, on the borders of Montérégie and the Eastern Townships, takes a few days off work to go to Maine. There she hopes to find Jacob, her writer lover and admirer of Stephen King, and at the same time bring him her latest manuscript relating a crime that an entire community has kept secret.
Cassie Bédard, however, does not orchestrate a proper investigation. His writing instead adopts a tone that is a little detached from reality and combines voices with contours that are not always graspable, which gives the impression of having one’s nose in two stories at the same time. And that’s the case. The downside of this specific style is its relative coldness, although it is evocative.
However, if the story ends up delivering some keys to the subject of the drama that remained hidden for a long time and other questions initially unanswered (why does Jacob no longer give his news?), it never completely gets rid of its opacity. In this sense, it is the other side of suspense. Which might make it appealing to readers interested in narrative mechanics, but less so to those just looking for a good story.
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The Wick
132 pages