The Truth About The Harry Quebert Affair

There are several manuscripts in this novel, and each of them symbolizes a worldview, the personal and intimate reflection on events that shape the story. Marcus Goldman produces private notes for a new book that deals with the death of Nola Kellergan, and once his publisher leaks those notes to the newspapers, Marcus’s life is turned upside-down and his reputation in the small town of Somerset is jeopardized. The book eventually comes out as The Harry Quebert Affair, and the mistakes Marcus has made in it symbolize his lack of readiness to face himself and the truth. At the end of the novel, he produces a second book, The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair, which represents his full understanding of the world around him and his acceptance of his place in it.

Another strongly symbolic manuscript is The Origin of Evil, the book that Harry Quebert is believed to have written and which made him famous and respected. At first, this book represents Harry’s creative genius, but once the police find the original manuscript with Nola’s body, it becomes clear to Marcus that the novel is not Harry’s work. Thus, in its second stage, the manuscript becomes a symbol of dishonesty and artistic falsity, until Marcus understands the writer of the book is Luther Caleb; then, the manuscript achieves the status of an emblem that embodies Caleb’s love and his passions for life, creation, and Nola’s happiness.

Finally, there is the manuscript of The Seagulls of Somerset, the book that Harry did write in the summer of 1975 and which he deemed unworthy after Nola’s disappearance. At the end of the novel, Marcus publishes this text under Caleb’s name, and the book becomes a symbol of a wrong righted, as the world finally recognizes Caleb for the artist he truly was.

Seagulls recur both as symbols and as a leitmotif of the novel. Symbolically, they represent freedom from worldly restraint, which is something many characters fail to find: Harry and Nola in their failed attempt to make a life together; Luther Caleb in his efforts to pick up the shattered pieces of his ruined life; Jenny Quinn, pining for Harry and settling for Travis. Feeding the seagulls comes to represent keeping hope of freedom alive—Nola says, “[E]ven when the horizon is blocked by trees, you can look up in the sky and see seagulls and know that the ocean is close” (143).

As a leitmotif, seagulls appear throughout the novel. Their screeches, cries, and shrieks both mock the humans bound to the ground and remind them that the wide expanse is close by. Nola’s love for seagulls prompts Harry to write a novel entitled The Seagulls of Somerset, as he promises her, “There’ll be seagulls on every page, Nola” (271). After Nola’s disappearance, in Harry’s fantasy “clouds of seagulls sang like nightingales” (474), symbolizing Nola’s return and her unquestioned love for Harry. At the very end of the novel, as Marcus and Perry leave the beach during their last conversation, Marcus notes: “A flock of seagulls crossed the sky; we watched them for a moment” (614). Even after the story has unfolded, the seagulls remain in the sky, forever proclaiming their freedom, distant from the world of human suffering.  

In a novel that is to a large extent set in the past, and which partly recounts events that took place over 30 years ago, recollection is a strong motif. It invites the readers to compare events told in third person without mediation with those that are first-person memories. The author often includes the same events told in different ways to emphasize the discrepancies that creep in with time when it comes to personal memory.

As each character who has participated in prior events takes center stage and recalls his or her version of the past, Dicker points out the essential unreliability of memory and how we all construct stories from past events. The characters in this novel sift through what they have perceived, arrange the facts as they interpret them, and form a version of truth that they most agree with. The author offers us glimpses into events as they appear to have happened objectively and allows us to find inconsistencies and differences that fill the space between the now and a character’s recollection of it.

This technique makes the idea of memory a useful motif, because it alerts the readers to their own mind processes. It often demands that the reader go back and forth in the novel to compare the event the way it happened to the way different people remember it. In this manner, we become investigators in the search of unmediated truth, or the one version of events that comes closest to what really might have happened.