39. Unknown

by Didier Van Caulwelaert

The French have a long literary tradition. I might even tack on the adjective "glorious." I went through a period where I was reading all sorts of french lit in translation. My french is unfortunately not good enough to read them untranslated. It was still good stuff. Dense, but good.

I started to notice that modern french lit often has a particular "frenchness." I figured out that Unknown was french lit by reading the first chapter. The copy I have is a reprint to coincide with the release of the movie adaptation and the translator's credit is not obvious. However, one chapter in and I went looking for it.

Unknown is about a guy, Martin Harris, who wakes up after being in a coma for three days. When he gets home, he finds a stranger living with his wife, taking over his job and calling himself by Martin's name. No one believes except for the cabbie who took Martin to the hospital originally. It is unclear whether it's a hallucination or an insane hoax. That sort of unclear reality seems to be a common element in french literature and is what clued me in.

This was a fun read but started to drag a bit in the middle.  The end came as a bit of a surprise and seemed at least somewhat jarring.  While it was a perfectly reasonable explanation of events, I didn't feel like it was even a possibility until we were suddenly there in the last 10 pages.