[Critique Livre] The Island, Jérôme Loubry

Features

• Titre : The Island
• Auteur : Jerome Loubry
• Editor : Calmann-Lévy
• Collection : Noir
• Release date in bookstores : August 28, 2024
• Digital format available : Oui
• Name of pages : 400
• Prix : 21,90 euros
• Acheter : Click here
• Note : 8/10 par 1 critique

★★★★★

★★★★★

Can you die twice? That’s the question posed by Jerome Loubry with his new novel The Islandpublished at the end of this summer by Calmann-Lévy. Now recognized in the world of thrillers with titles such as The Dogs of Detroit2018 Silver Free Pen Prize, or The Shelterswinner of the 2019 Cognac Prize, the French writer takes us this time to the island of Porquerolles, where a mysterious crime has just occurred. A few years earlier, a young woman, Diane, ended her life there, plunging her brother Paul and her friends Sabrina, Lucas and Cassandre into despair. How can we explain then that the new victim looks exactly like Diane?

Island Friendship

The Island is a novel that knows how to take its time. Time to depict an island atmosphere, withdrawal, habits, but also time to follow a group of young people, to the rhythm of their long summer evenings. The four Parisian friends meet every year in a family mansion, in Porquerolles, for an enchanted interlude made of drunken evenings, long discussions by the water. They have dreams in their eyes, all envisioning a great career in cinema. Through two temporalities and a clever play of past-present, Jérôme Loubry depicts the daily life of these bohemian characters, between 2019 and 2024. and builds a puzzle of clues towards a rather convincing outcome.

This is a real postcard from Porquerolles that the author sends us, making the island a character in its own right in his story. Capricious, changeable, this isolated land lives at its own pace, and its inhabitants venerate it as much as they fear its anger. They live according to its moods, doing everything to preserve their treasure. Jérôme Loubry does not skimp on detailed descriptions and offers his reader a tourist escapade coupled with a mysterious story. His writing is worked, often poetic, never boring.

An elegant and mysterious feather

With The islandJérôme Loubry once again demonstrates the quality of his pen. The construction of the novel is worked, with a good mastery of temporal back and forth, and the immersive descriptions skillfully follow the incisive dialogues, which relaunch the action and make the reading fluid. The author chooses a fairly slow, calm rhythm, to densify his atmosphere, without neglecting the suspense necessary for the story.

The novel begins in a very intriguing way, and then offers a seductive mystery, on the edge of fantasy. By occasionally glancing towards gothic and horror literature, Jérôme Loubry creates an enigmatic atmosphere, and plays with the personification of the manor and Porquerolles. The story lingers at length on the characters and their introspection, with a fairly convincing psychological finesse.

Between music and cinema

In this new novel, music plays a prominent role. The characters, and in particular Diane and Cassandre, are all great fans of it, and regularly buy vinyl records from their record store friend that they listen to on the powerful speakers in the manor. Each chapter header is introduced by the “rewind” or “pause” symbol of the audio players, a clever reference to the story’s time travel and the passion of the protagonists. However, these elements are not just a whim of the author, but constitute a determining plot point. Jérôme Loubry also offers a list of songs to listen to at the end of the novel, which will be an excellent suggestion for readers who like to read with music.

Finally, another art form plays a decisive role in the story, and that is cinema. Paul, Sabrina, Lucas and Cassandre want to make a career as a director or actor, and we see them filming themselves, writing scripts and talking about the future. Some passages, in italics in the novel, are actually excerpts from scripts and are skillfully superimposed on reality. The author’s pen, immersive and sensory, also takes on a cinematographic aspect, and plunges the reader into a palpable and visual universe, especially when he describes the violence of a storm or the states of mind of his tormented characters.

The Island is therefore an intriguing and seductive novel, offering a worked atmosphere and enigmatic characters. If it does not rely on formidable suspense, its intelligent construction and its poetic and elegant pen will make it a very pleasant read, coupled with an invitation to travel to the mysterious island of Porquerolles.