Joël Dicker (Geneva, 1985) returns. The author of the worldwide success The Truth About the Harry Quebert Case publishes a new thriller: A Wild Animal (Alfaguara/La Campana). A robbery in a large jewelry store in Geneva, two marriages in which nothing is what it seems, a past that always lurks and is continually rewritten and many unleashed passions, notably lust and envy, make up a story with continuous time jumps that It talks about the impossibility of changing people’s nature and about recognizing oneself.
In the previous novel I talked about learning to forgive ourselves for being who we are. He now emphasizes that we cannot stop being who we are.
And I mean that in a positive way. We are as we are and we are what we are. We live in a world where we have the impression that others want us to be different. Or we have the feeling that we have to be different from others to please them. We are never muscular enough, handsome enough, we don’t do things well enough. And in the end we forget to like ourselves, to love ourselves a little. One has to accept oneself as one is, remembering that life is short. And I don’t mean that in a distressing or sad way. It is a reality that is often forgotten. We only have one life, it is short and we have to ask ourselves if we have lived it as such, if we really take care of ourselves.
Even if we are a panther, like its protagonist.
The wild animal in the novel’s title is our instinct. And it is probably the greatest strength we have and the greatest gift that life gives us. That radar, that guide like the one that turtles have in the sea: they are born on a beach, they come out of their eggs and go to the sea. They swim for a long time and after 20 years their instinct returns them to the initial beach, to lay their eggs where they were born. We have that same instinct. What do we do with it? At birth we have it to the maximum, but then as we grow it becomes damaged, we confront the parents, the teachers, who tell the child ‘are you sure this is a good idea’, ‘do this and don’t do that’ . We damage instinct and most people do not use it, they ask others what they should do. It’s okay to ask, but then you say to yourself ‘I knew I had to do it’, because you haven’t followed your instinct.
If the ancient oracle of Delphi said ‘know thyself’, here it would be ‘recognize’ thyself’?
It would be a good summary. Recognize and accept yourself. They are characters who once they have understood this then have difficulties, they must assume what they are in front of others. And they are afraid of what they say and being less loved.
All the characters in his novel have double or triple lives. Does it seem to you that we are all like that to some degree?
We all have multiple lives. This is how we move forward, how we evolve, what puts us in front of decisions, what builds us. And that without necessarily having important secrets, without falling into lies, without another friend. But we always have a double life because evolution wants that. We have built something and we question ourselves about what we have done together, and when we are alone we realize that we want to do other things, to change… And it is normal.
In fact, their partners are in crisis. Is the couple a particular mystery today?
Yes, the idea of ??a double life is not just being with another, I believe it is everything that one lives and does not share with one’s partner, concerns, concerns, desires that one believes will not be understood. The difficulty for couples when two people get together and spend time together is that when you get married at 35 and reach 45, you have evolved in that second life with your projects and desires according to your rhythm. And your partner according to his. And how do you build a couple in the midst of all that where each one moves forward on their own, and is it healthy for it to be that way? You have to build something that goes together but with two pieces always evolving and it is difficult for them to fit together later.
Almost all of his characters seem concerned with appearances. Did she want to explore it?
Yes, because we are in a world where it seems that there is never enough, we always have to be more, need more, others are always better. They are social networks, where everyone always shows themselves with an extraordinary disposition and always being very fit. In them you have the impression that the lives of others are always better. It is a world that is built on awakening desire in the other. Post a photo in which everything is going very well and we are with someone very important under palm trees… Look what I do that you don’t do, what I have that you don’t have, therefore I am superior to you. We want to arouse envy. Today we take photos just to awaken a reaction in the other.
As in your novel, do you think it is still very important for many men to earn more than women?
In Switzerland, such a democratic country, women earn 10% less, they pay you for 12 months, they pay them until November for being a woman. Here the man he refers to has always been recognized, he has had light, and when he joins his partner for the first time he is overshadowed by his wife, who is more intelligent, recognized, she is the one who is seen, he is under the shadow of the. He lives it very badly. And while he makes a better living than her, he projects her truth into the money, but it is her ghost.
In his novel it is not always clear whether money is the driving force of everything or is at the service of the passions we have.
Money is the great complex of society. We have chosen to live in capitalist economies, very practical, and money defines us, it is our engine, it builds us in the economy in which we live. This is how we have come to be in a world of social networks, Instagram and Facebook, which in the first place are economic models and are becoming one of the biggest disasters of our century, with people filled with fake news and who are informed in Instagram and not in the newspapers and does not verify the sources. But the concept of Instagram is a monetary concept and the consumer forgets it. It is free because it brings a lot of money to other people, because we are used to create income for others. It is very destabilizing.
With the narration of the novel being so fragmented at different times, did you want to achieve a cinematic effect?
No. They tell me a lot that my novels are very cinematic and that you see the movie right away. It amuses me, because in a world where we only talk about series, only one of my seven novels has become one. Every time a studio is interested, they drop it because it is very complicated, there is a lot of temporality, many characters, many comings and goings in time. A wild animal starts directly with three actions. It is clear in the book but to make an opening scene in the cinema is complex. And they are 15 years apart. Should the actors change?
I think that my novels are not so cinematic and above all that readers are storytellers themselves. That’s why we like to read, because we imagine the places, the characters, and that is literature. Then the construction of temporality in my novels is done as I write them, I do not write in a linear way and then I deconstruct it, but I write as what the reader receives, the comings and goings in time I write one after the other .
