The Anomaly

A Novel

By: Hervé Le Tellier, Adriana Hunter - translator

Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman

Winner of the Prix Goncourt, this dizzying literary pause-resister ingeniously blends crime, fantasy, sci-fi, and thriller as it plumbs the mysteries surrounding a Paris-New York flight.

In June 2021, a senseless event upends the lives of hundreds of men and women, all passengers on a flight from Paris to New York. Among them: Blake, a respectable family man, though he works as a contract killer; Slimboy, a Nigerian pop star tired of living a lie; Joanna, a formidable lawyer whose flaws have caught up with her; and Victor Miesel, a critically acclaimed yet commercially unsuccessful writer who suddenly becomes a cult hit.

All of them believed they had double lives. None imagined just how true that was.

A virtuoso novel where logic confronts magic, The Anomaly explores the part of ourselves that eludes us. This witty variation on the doppelgänger theme, which takes us on a journey from Lagos and Mumbai to the White House, proves to be Hervé Le Tellier’s most ambitious work yet.

©2021 Hervé Le Tellier and Adriana Hunter (P)2021 Random House Audio

too odd

confused by the ending. Premise a bit too hypothetically bizarre with characters that never totally jelled for me.

This narrator’s French accent is distracting

This is a captivating story, with a very very powerful message. My problem is with the narrator and by the end of the book I found myself having to rewind the dialogue with anyone with a French accent over and over because he was so hard to understand and his French accent is truly terrible

Fascinating Idea, Infuriating Narration

If you've read this far into the reviews, you've doubtless read the blurb and know what this book is about. Le Tellier does a great job of working through the concept from multiple angles by playing out its effects on multiple individuals, all with interesting back stories. The prose is confident and graceful, littered with the little observations and surprises that keep this from becoming just another pulpy, "high-concept" Sci-Fi novel. Some of the credit for that should go to the translator, Adriana Hunter. This is literature, in the best sense, in that in addition to weaving a good story, it tackles big, existential ideas that stick; I thought about the implications long after I finished the book.

So why did I only give it three stars? Because Dominic Hoffman's reading style rendered the book nearly impossible to listen to in any environment less direct than ear buds or headphones. Hoffman is one of those narrators who never seems to take a deep enough breath to finish a sentence without trailing off breathlessly into unintelligibility; nearly every sentence starts at a normal speaking volume and ends in a whisper. I only listen to Audio books in two contexts: via AirPods while I'm walking my dog, and over my car's audio system while I'm driving. Wearing the AirPods—in noise-cancellation mode—I was able to understand most of it, rewinding when I couldn't. In my car, however, the general ambience level associated with driving forced a choice between listening at a normal volume (but suffering the exasperation of thinking, "what did he just say?" at the end of most every line) or cranking up the volume to painful levels in order to decipher the last few words of each sentence. The ultimate blame should probably fall on Richard Brewer (the director), for allowing Hoffman to read this way. At the very least, the recording engineer or the mastering engineer (both uncredited) should've added some compression to the track in order to minimize the dynamic range of every line in the book. In any case, in the future, I'll avoid purchasing titles read by Mr. Hoffman.

The Anomaly is a good book, one that I'll probably read again, but next time, I'll use my eyes rather than my ears.

Strong start.... weak end

I was engaged and found it entertaining. It is not NON-fiction.... but I felt the ending was weak and let me down.

Great Fun--Science Fiction Meets Philosophy

The book presents readers with an "imagine if" tale that quickly appears real. What would happen if we met our genetic doubles who shared our dreams, fears, and memories?

Worth your time

Yes, at times it drags on but I thoroughly enjoyed this book and found myself thinking about it and it’s inhabitants throughout the day. The end is not garbled - how can someone Sho listened to this entire book think that? I won’t spoil it but it is pretty clear what happened. I liked the narrator and enjoyed imaging myself in this situation. With
my career and my family.

very interesting book but the narrator sucks

Generally speaking i loved the book. It's a very intriguing and thought-provoking story.

However this Audible production is really sub-par. They decided to note French-speakers by giving them a French accent when reading their dialogues. Couldnt Audible have picked a French bi-lingual to do this part for a reasonable French accent?? Instead this narrator does a very poor imitation of a French accent that sounds like a Nigerian accent or something like that. Considering half the characters in the book are French that's a very odd and poor production decision.

Last 30 seconds of audio was garbled

I do not think I missed any major cliffhanger but it was a huge bummer to get all the way through and have the last thirty seconds of audio garbled beyond recognition.

A unique thriller

I need to read this again. I got the gist but want to understand some of the characters a bit better.

An exceptional book…

So we’ll written, so we’ll read, so original… it is both both entertaining and profound.