37 tonni in June, Joël Dicker with his biography well represents the Millennials generation, notoriously capable of dealing with failure with flexibility, using it as a spur to success and counterattacking with lateral thinking. In his case, in fact, the sales boom came only after receiving a string of no, with several rejected manuscripts and the fear of not being able to find his way.
Joël Dicker was born in Geneva. His books, translated in 25 countries, have sold 12 million copies worldwide. Photo: Anoush Abrar
The cases of Joël Dicker
The Genevan writer (with Italian blood, since her grandmother was from Trieste) became known around the world when it was released in 2012 The truth about the Harry Quebert casea deductive thriller that became a record bestseller. Now comes the sequel of that impressive novel: The Alaska Sanders case (The Ship of Theseus). In the background of the novel we find the apparently quiet and serene villages of New England, which, like in a painting by Hopper (a painter much loved by Dicker), hide secrets and discomforts. D.to the murder of a beautiful and good girl, the kind that everyone likes, a story unravels in a ball, to be dissolved over 624 pages. They are involved in the investigation, 11 years after the discovery of the young woman’s body on the shores of a lake, Sergeant Perry Gahalowood and his writer friend Marcus Goldman. The same as – for those who have read The truth about the Harry Quebert case – had previously investigated the mysterious death of Nola Kellergan. Between continuous reversals of the scene, jumps between past and present and a meticulous psychological excavation in men and women who show the world a well-built mask to cover a black abyss.
The Alaska Sanders case by Joël Dicker, The Ship of Theseuspages 624, € 22
Gray Millennial hoodie and round John Lennon eyeglasses, here’s what the author told us via Zoom.
Why has he waited so long to write the sequel de The truth about the Harry Quebert case?
The truth is, I’ve always known I wanted to write the rest of the book, but I also felt I had to do it once it was ready. I had to let a physiological time pass and not force myself to forge ahead. In the meantime I have experimented with other books.
The choice of the United States
The Alaska Sanders case also takes place in the United States. A ploy to detach yourself from its reality?
That’s right. I have often told – and certainly not to pity – about my initial failures and the no’s that I collected. In retrospect, I realized that I needed to be less self-referential: in the first novels almost everything started from my biography. The decision to move overseas in space also represented an important turning point. And then I said to myself: what I love, as a reader (and I read a lot!), Is fiction, the invented story, the story that allows you to escape, to feel immersed in a place and in an atmosphere to the point of forget that you are in the living room. So I started writing by playing with my imagination and moving away from myself.
Is lead writer Marcus Goldman very different from you?
The answer is yes and no. When I started writing, Marcus was in many ways the same as me. Then I decided to give him another age, about 10 years older than my 26 at the time. At the time it already seemed to me a very important personal difference, you know how people over 35 to 20 years old are perceived! But above all Marcus is a writer who knows glory and success, while at the time I was anything but a recognized author. In this sense I made a great effort of imagination. But even now that sales are supposed to comfort me, I never feel like I’ve done it. Each book is an unknown and a challenge: nothing guaranteed. But it is also what gives me adrenaline and the desire to try my hand.
Joël Dicker in search of inspiration
What spark did this novel start from?
I would say from a particular sensitivity aimed at everything around me. When I know I want to write a novel, every single detail of everyday life suddenly becomes very important, from reading a newspaper to confiding in friends. Marcus admits he experienced the famous writer’s block or blank page anxiety.
Did it happen to her too?
I don’t have that much problem. What I struggle with is having, at a certain point in the work, to choose which path to follow, which intuition to go along with among the many. It is as if I am on a table with lots of tempting ideas, ready to be used and I have to make the final choice.
In the end, he chooses. And it keeps the attention for a whopping 624 pages.
Well, know that on my part there is the intention of becoming a writer of short novels (bursts out laughing, ed). I am convinced of the “less is more” rule, but then I let myself be overwhelmed by the plot, the characters, the possible implications, and I can’t pull back. It is as if I wanted to give myself with the utmost generosity to my readers, so I don’t impose a limit on myself and I end up reaching these lengths. My grandmother from Trieste comes to mind: at the table she loved to pamper me by serving many delicacies, deliberately abounding. I have the impression of doing the same. That said, I admire the ability of writers like Ernest Hemingway or John Steinbeck to condense emotions, beauty and content into just over 100 pages. I think of The old man and the sea or Men and mice and I tell myself that one day I would like to reach that result of synthesis and completeness.
When you write, do you know where it will go from the start?
Quite the contrary, I could never start from a pre-established scheme. What I do is choose in the course of writing: I let myself be guided, I explore and I am the first to be curious as to where this will lead me.
Apparently Alaska Sanders is a sweet, beautiful and sunny girl. Then disturbing secrets will emerge.
Those who knew her describe her as a girl with something special, a light, a positivity, but also an innate ability to navigate life effortlessly. Little by little a side of her that is much less clear than hers is discovered. It’s not a random choice: I often think of the Instagram cage, where all of us are implicitly and urgently asked to show only the best of our lives and our physical appearance. I believe that this mechanism is exhausting in the long run and leads to distortions. Alaska, while living well before Instagram, as she died in the late 1990s, represents this duplicity. For everyone she is the beautiful girl with a successful future already written. In fact, like all of us, she has her drama and her insecurities.
Today he also has a new profession, that of publisher with the publishing house Rosie & Wolf.
A project that wants to be a tribute to the person who believed in me from the very beginning, Bernard de Fallois. He is gone today, but with this publishing house I hope to be able to grasp his legacy, stimulating the desire to read and write. Marzia Nicolini
iO Donna © REPRODUCTION RESERVED