The Anomaly
A Novel
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4.0 • 390 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A New York Times bestseller and a "Best Thriller of the Year"
Winner of the Goncourt Prize and now an international phenomenon, this dizzying, whip-smart novel blends crime, fantasy, sci-fi, and thriller as it plumbs the mysteries surrounding a Paris-New York flight.
Who would we be if we had made different choices? Told that secret, left that relationship, written that book? We all wonder—the passengers of Air France 006 will find out.
In their own way, they were all living double lives when they boarded the plane:
Blake, a respectable family man who works as a contract killer.
Slimboy, a Nigerian pop star who uses his womanizing image to hide that he’s gay.
Joanna, a Black American lawyer pressured to play the good old boys’ game to succeed with her Big Pharma client.
Victor Miesel, a critically acclaimed yet largely obscure writer suddenly on the precipice of global fame.
About to start their descent to JFK, they hit a shockingly violent patch of turbulence, emerging on the other side to a reality both perfectly familiar and utterly strange. As it charts the fallout of this logic-defying event, The Anomaly takes us on a journey from Lagos and Mumbai to the White House and a top-secret hangar.
In Hervé Le Tellier’s most ambitious work yet, high literature follows the lead of a bingeable Netflix series, drawing on the best of genre fiction from “chick lit” to mystery, while also playfully critiquing their hallmarks. An ingenious, timely variation on the doppelgänger theme, it taps into the parts of ourselves that elude us most.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Hervé Le Tellier’s mind-bending thriller gave us serious goose bumps. After transatlantic Air France Flight 006 touches down in New York, an extraordinary phenomenon occurs, something that seems to upset the very fabric of time and space. (And something we won’t spoil for you here!) The Anomaly—winner of the prestigious 2020 Goncourt Prize in France—feels like something out of the hit TV series Black Mirror, as its diverse cast of fascinating characters, including a suicidal writer, a slick hit man, and a closeted rap singer, are all forced to reckon with a seismic shift in reality. The characters’ heady discussions about science and religion aren’t just integral to the plot, they’re fascinating to ponder…by yourself or with others. (The book club meetings would be epic!) If you’re interested in being shocked, spellbound, and endlessly intrigued, this is the book for you.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This Prix Goncourt winner from Le Tellier (All Happy Families), an extraordinary mix of existential thriller and speculative fiction, introduces several characters, starting with a French hit man named Blake, all of whom take Air France Flight 006 from Paris to New York on March 10, 2021. The plane hits some highly unusual turbulence as it nears its destination, but lands safely. Later, one passenger, author Victor Miesel, writes a novel titled The Anomaly, then dies by suicide. Other passengers' lives continue onward in their own way. Then FBI agents seek out each of the passengers on the flight. All are gathered under Protocol 42, developed by two mathematicians to make sense of unforeseen and unimagined air traffic events that go far beyond extraterrestrial interference or controls overridden by an artificial intelligence. The reality-defying incident creates a crisis, which a Trump-like American president fumbles his way through. Questions of philosophy, mathematics, and astrophysics bend this novel far from the typical mold, and Le Tellier's characters must confront the deepest questions of existence. This thought-provoking literary work deserves a wide readership.
Customer Reviews
Good book
Very enjoyable book. Reminded me of the old Sci-Fi story “A Subway Named Mobius” that I read as a kid.
The anomaly
Parts of this book were gripping. Then it seemed to fall apart. A combination of faddish philosophy, trendy movie lines and nonsensical dialogue doomed it half way through.
too disjointed and dry for me
I recognize this is a “good” book in the sense that it is enormously clever. It takes too much effort though, to hold in mind the many disparate, disjointed, confusing stories - stories that show no sign of making sense until the middle of the book, by which time I couldn’t remember who was who and got tired of having to go back and look it up. This was made all the more annoying by the fact that I really didn’t care about any of the characters anyway - none were developed enough or had enough charisma to be important to me.
If you like complicated puzzles and memory games, you’ll love this. If you need emotional involvement with the characters … don’t bother. I was kind of glad when it was over.