Joel dicker is a writer with the powers of a surgeon. I say this because he is one of the few capable of dissecting a book and presenting it as it is, resulting from such an anatomical intervention a fractional but meaningful reading. He has shown it in his latest works: The truth about the Harry Quebert case and EThe Baltimore Book (here you can find the reviews). Reading someone like that is always fresh and disturbing, because good old Dicker uses that ability to tell us magnetic stories full of mysteries.
So embarking on this story of El Tigre, is an approach to the first writer before the great bestseller. A work outlined at 19 years old is presented as a challenge to discover if the gift is already glimpsed at such a tender age ...
And yes, how could it be otherwise, this first book already serves to see the writer of hectic rhythm but great depth stand out, the author who raises the doubt and leads you completely stubborn to discover the truth.
If anything, to mark the natural difference with his later bestsellers, it can be said that this little work has a more marked existentialist point. You have to put yourself in the shoes of a budding writer, with that extensive inner world that seeks reflections between childhood and maturity, and that on many occasions collides with a reality determined to leave behind that free spirit of youth.
But do not be fooled, the theme is very similar to everything known about Dicker, if perhaps with a more exotic point, since the plot takes place in 1903, in Saint Petersburg. Perhaps Joël Dicker thought he was (in that first book where every writer leaves his soul) Ivan Levovitch himself in search of the evil tiger that terrorizes the inhabitants of his city. What happened next in the real world we already know, Ivan, or his alter ego Joel, hunted the tiger, dressed in his skin and gloated before the world for his continuous successes. 🙂
Bromillas aside, in El Tigre we find a new thriller (rather it would be an old thriller written 10 years ago by an unknown boy), a labyrinth of sensations that are concatenated from a singular turning point (in this case the fear of the tiger ).
A fierce Dicker at times, always intense, a story written by a boy who decides to update the debts and credits of thought and soul, and who does so thanks to his favorite previous readings. Except… it's not just any guy. Imagine Mozart sitting at a piano for the first time ... well, something like that.
You can buy the book Tiger, Jöel Dicker's first short novel, here: