This novel is situated in Saint-Louis in France. It is is structured in two parts. The first part is the plot about how the death of Bertrand Barthelme during a car crash affects the lives of the two main protagonists. The first protagonist is Georges Gorski, a senior officer in the St Louis police force who is investigating the crash. The second is Raymond Barthelme, the son of Bertrand Barthelme.
The second part of the structure of the novel is that it is not narrated by the author Graeme Macrae Burnet. This is where the mystery and confusion of the novel starts. The book's Foreword reveals that this story comes from the two manuscripts of a writer called Raymond Brunet, sent following the author's instruction by his solicitor, to the publishers Editions Gaspard-Moreau in 2014 after the death of Marie Brunet, Raymond Brunet's mother. This manuscripts were meant for the attention of the editor George Pires, but he had previously died. Brunet had died in 1992 after committing suicide underneath a train, and the manuscripts were only sent by the solicitor after the death of Marie Brunet.
Because of the death of the editor Pires, a trainee who subsequently received the manuscripts had put them to one side, not realising that they linked up with a previously published novel of Brunet called The Disappearance of Adele Bedeau. The link was recognised later by another editor at the publishers, who then published a second novel from the manuscripts as The Accident on the A35. Graeme Burnet uses this as a clever structural device to add mystery and intrigue to what otherwise would be a straightforward police mystery novel. The reader sees the novel as being a smaller thing within a larger publishing world. Nothing was mentioned as to the fate of the second manuscript.
Now the whole novel is seen as a real life description linked in to the memory of Raymond Brunet who is narrating his own experiences through the character of Raymond Barthelme. As the reader we are considering the macrocosm of Graeme Macrae Burnet, the overall author, manipulating the characters of Raymond Brunet, the sub author, and the smaller characters of George Gorski and Raymond Brunet. I find this an extremely intelligent device to add depth and emotion to the novel. Notice the spelling of the real author Burnet and the spelling of the fictitious author Brunet. When I first glanced at my copy of the book I thought that there had been a typographical error at the editing stage, until it was pointed out by my husband that there was a spelling differentiation and that the similarity was intentional. Here the reality and the fiction is blurred.
Macrae Burnet adds to the mystery in the Afterword , writing as himself and discussing Brunet as a real living author, the possibility that the characters were real people, and the publisher of Editions Gaspard-Moreau as a real existing company, evoking a situation where the history behind the novel could really exist. The parameters of fiction and reality become blurred. It becomes great intellectual fun. Macrea Burnet displays his skills as an imaginative author, inventing and skilfully manipulating the tools available to him. He used this method of retrospection with his novel His Bloody Project, short listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2016. This novel exposes the plot as a series of documents read after the events of the novel took place . This method was also used by Margaret Attwood in The Handmaid's Tale where the plot was revealed by a series of tapes where the experiences of the protagonist were recorded and listed to in retrospect. It was also used by Jack London in The Iron Heel where the events of the novel were exposed by documents read after the events of the novel took place.
At first glance it appears that the plot of The Accident on the A35 was to be a police murder mystery, but it doesn't turn out like that. It deals with the every day lives and routines of the characters. There are many references to meal times and the food eaten, the types and frequency of alcohol drunk, the bars visited and what went on in them and descriptions of the inhabitants. There is much reference to the relationships between those inhabitants, the cynicism and manipulation that takes place, the emptiness and blankness of humanity. This blankness is reflected at the end by a less than satisfactory ending that does not conclude properly the questions raised during the exposition of the plot. I was particularly struck by Macrae Burnet's use of double negatives that I noticed happening with frequency. In an ideal world I was going to retrospectively identify and count them all, but I can't be bothered. You can have the fun of looking for them yourself.
In conclusion I was impressed by Graeme Macrea Burnet's skills as a writer and reading this novel has reinforced the high opinion I formed of him when reading His Bloody Project; he has intrigued and inspired me to read The Disappearance of Adele Bedeau.
Then there is the question of the second unpublished manuscript. No doubt Macrae Burnet will be teasing us as to the outcome of this at a later date with a new novel.
