Tuesday's books - Lauriane Pipoz
Fiona Cummins' The Collector is the curator of a very special museum of human bones. This onerous and meticulous task has been handed down to him by his father and grandfather; a family affair, in short. The character searches for rarity among London's inhabitants, and kidnaps little Jackey, a child suffering from fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva, a disease that deforms his skeleton, and little Clara, missing three fingers on each hand. What follows is a breathless investigation, carried out in a gloomy atmosphere by an inspector as promising as she is complex.
Trained as a journalist, Fiona Cummins' first novel is thriller perfectly mastered. The pages of this book (509 of them!) turn by themselves, aided by short chapters that follow one another at a steady pace. Each division offers the point of view of one of the characters, and this is one of the particularities of this book: the reader sometimes finds himself in the tortured mind of the Collector, sometimes engulfed by the anguish of the parents. Using free indirect discourse, the author does not hesitate to make flashbacks to give depth to his characters. And so, as the pages turn, the ordinary, cowardly guy slowly becomes a hero, and the reader finds himself empathizing with a serial killer trapped in his family history.
«His father had thought it would be very instructive to have him witness the preparation of a skeleton for display. He was keen to show him the opening of a cadaver, the Y incision and the removal of organ groups: cardiothoracic, gastrointestinal and urogenital. He was ten years old.»
As you can see, all the protagonists in this story have their own carefully crafted and, above all, convincing backstories. This virtual absence of stereotypes - although some stubborn ones are nonetheless detectable without being too disturbing, such as the inspector haunted by the shadow of her father, a demanding and dissatisfied cop - is there to support a very well-crafted plot. Some may criticize the investigation for stalling a little, but this slight slowness in the unfolding of events is more than compensated for by the rhythm of the many chapters. The latter allow for regular changes of point of view and a balance between the progress of the investigation and the psychology of the characters, providing action-hungry readers with all the more intense suspense.
The number of characters, however, gives us too many opportunities to get lost among the many names and stories in the first hundred or so pages. What's more, the free indirect discourse is not always easy to read when inserted in certain places, such as dialogues. However, these minor hiccups in the reading experience pale into insignificance beside Cummins' fine writing - and obviously well-executed translation. Not to mention the humor that regularly creeps into his pages, most often in the form of dark humor.
«Besides, he's never caught BSE or CJD or who knows what, and he's approaching forty. If this metaphorical cow dung were to fall on him, it would have already crashed into his crappy life. And if worse came to worst, he wouldn't even notice the transition to vegetable. A potato would have more fun than he would.»
Finally, it's worth noting that the author has no shortage of self-mockery: as a freelance journalist, she doesn't hesitate to criticize her profession, describing journalists who rely on sensationalism and will do anything to «sell».
«Come on, Fitzroy, this is huge! A potential serial killer who deposits rabbit skeletons in the place of his victims. And a rabbit kidney in your car as a warning. My editor is out of his mind. He's decided to make the front page. So, if you want me to kill the story, I'm going to need something juicy.»
It is therefore a thriller which doesn't just rely on «gore»: although it obviously contains all the morbid ingredients to please fans of this genre, of which we are a part, it allows us to follow a truly thrilling plot in the company of characters shown in their human weakness. So we're delighted not to have to classify our activity as a «guilty pleasure».
«After cleaning and greasing his tools, he releases the beetles, washes the operating room floor, climbs the basement stairs to his father's house and locks the door behind him. He'll be back in a few hours, when the beetles have finished their macabre undressing, stripping the flesh from the fragile bones.»
Fiona Cummins
The Collector
Slatkine & Compagnie
2018
509 pages
Write to the author: lauriane.pipoz@leregardlibre.com
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1 comment
I read it as soon as it came out, liked it but wasn't totally enthralled either. A month later, I didn't have much left. One thing's for sure: I won't be reading the second in this series. I'll read the author again, whose writing I liked, but with a different story and different characters.