Things are really not going well in the life of Leonardo, a teenager who suffers from intellectual retardation and who is relentlessly bullied at school. He has only one hope, to find his older brother in Glen Affric, Scotland.
Posted at 4:00 p.m.
But here, with the wire of the pages, the situation does not improve. Leonardo never stops sinking into human misery, like each of the other members of his family. There is a lot of love between them, but the atmosphere remains heavy, desperate.
Glen Afric is a psychological thriller that depicts this descent into hell while seeking, implicitly, to solve a double murder committed 16 years ago. But the suspense here is mainly to know if things will eventually improve or if it will be miserable until the end.
French author Karine Giebel doesn’t do half measures. When it’s bad, it’s bad. We can admire this desire to show human cruelty without complacency. One can appreciate this grating painting of a petty village milieu. We can like this portrait of characters who somehow resist despair by helping each other. We can also consider that in times of pandemic, we need something that is a little less demoralizing.
Glen Afric
Karine Giebel
Plon Editions
768 pages