The Truth About The Harry Quebert Affair

Chapter 18 is another one that takes place completely in the past (see also Chapters 26, 16, 14, 10, and 7). The author dedicates these pages to the development of Harry and Nola’s relationship, after her suicide attempt has made them realize they need to be together. Their relationship never becomes sexual in nature but is more a connection between a creator and his muse: “It was thanks to her, to Nola, darling Nola. Finally he was writing his great novel” (259). This is important for two reasons: The reality of their bond allows readers to feel for them without overthinking the ethical boundaries, and it allows readers to sympathize more with the older Harry because they know more about him than the sensationalist newspapers or the other characters.

Another significant element within this chapter is Harry’s sense of tension knowing that someone knows about his feelings for Nola. This creates dramatic irony, in which readers understand more about a situation than the character does. The author describes him as “panic-stricken,” “Afraid of being seen,” and “battling nausea” (262). This all helps us understand how much of a struggle it is for Harry to accept his feelings for a 15-year-old girl, a struggle that in turn makes his decision to stop resisting her and live (and wait) for her all the more poignant and meaningful: “I waited for her, convinced she would come back to me one day. And when that day came, I wanted her to be proud of me. I spent thirty-three years preparing for her return” (405).

In Chapter 17, Dicker offers another backshadowing sequence in Harry’s meeting with Stern, who invites him to live in his house for free: “I would like to support your writing. […] You told me the place inspired you, so why leave? […] I would be very proud to have contributed to the creation of a great novel” (277). At this point in the novel, the readers are not aware that Stern’s motivation is not as clear-cut as he makes it seem. It is only later in the book, once we learn that Stern makes the offer thanks to Nola’s agreeing to pose for Caleb, that we can properly assess Stern’s motivation. The author continuously twists the narrative in on itself to reveal truths about things we have taken for granted. This relativization of the concept of truth is one of the core devices in the novel, and it serves a dual function: It deconstructs the genre of crime fiction by reversing the progression of the narrative from crime to solution, and at the same time, it confirms the potency of the genre by supplying it with new twists. It is also one of the reasons the titles of the novels Marcus writes (and the novel we read) always include the word “truth.”

The structure of Chapter 16 includes another innovation: The author lists events chronologically by individual days, including the dates. As a result, the week described assumes greater significance in the reader’s perception, and the dates nearing Nola’s disappearance and death create additional tension. The list represents an inverted parallel to the countdown of the chapter numbers: The progression of dates leads to the murders, and the regression of chapter numbers leads to the revelation of the murderer, which is another way to bring the deaths and the denouement close together. The title of the chapter (which is deliberately the same as the title of the book Harry has stolen from Caleb) reflects in hindsight Travis’s actions (the beating up of Caleb) as precursors to the acts of murder to follow. Luther Caleb is slowly becoming one of the central figures in the story, and the title echoes the triple injury that has been caused him: his original misfortune that left him disfigured, the beatings by Travis and Pratt that will kill him, and the theft of his manuscript by Harry, which will rob him of his deserved reputation.

In Chapter 15, Dicker reminds us again of the cutthroat world of high-stakes publishing, while also providing an added obstacle to Marcus’s road to gaining integrity: By accepting two million dollars to write the book on the murder, Marcus effectively places himself at Barnaski’s mercy. This becomes even more evident by the end of the chapter when the opening pages of his book disappear. This chapter also includes an important example of foreshadowing. Marcus’s agent, Douglas, offers advice on how to proceed with the book that portrays real people: “You need concrete proof if you’re going to accuse people […] Find a reliable witness who will tell you that the mother was an evil bitch and that she beat the living daylights out of the girl—and if you can’t, then stick to ‘unhappy and mistreated girl’” (323). We will understand later, when Marcus’s book comes out, that he has failed to heed the advice, and thus he has not learned a very simple fact: that Nola’s mother was not alive at the time of her daughter’s death. This error—which the author also foreshadows in Chapter 19, when Marcus makes a list of questions he needs to follow up, and then fails to do so—will almost cost him his reputation and will forever ruin his relationship with the inhabitants of Somerset.