Animality - Jacques Guival

A French language thriller set in the southern states of the USA, Jacques Guival certainly works hard at setting the scene for a southern Gothic crime thriller. And not just setting the scene, but builds on it in a distinctive way and carries it through unexpected path to a truly horrific conclusion. And it's the setting up that is of course critical to where Animality ends up. Each chapter opens with a lot of background description, from FBI agent Matt Anderson trying to find his way through a featureless but muddy landscape in the middle of a deluge in chapter one, to the history and character of Charles Camden and the town's decadent high society going on a hunting party at the beginning of chapter two. 

It all seems a little overwritten but it does actually serve a purpose and the method of the murders described in those two opening chapters. Gothic certainly in its overwrought literary style, but also thoroughly cinematic in how it establishes mood and detail. There is certainly a measure of theatricality in the first murder that Matt is sent to investigate in the first chapter. Having graphically described the grotesque nature of the process for cultivating fois gras at the factory where Anderson has been called out to by his colleague Shirley, the detective finds that the proprietor MacGregor, already a fairly well fattened up individual himself, has been subjected to a similar process to that undergone by his geese. A hunting party in the second chapter similarly presents a macabre scene that takes place in another scene of barbarity between man and beast.

Some might take that as a starting point and start ramping up the tension or perhaps even more elaborate murders but Guival lets those initial cases simmer in the background, allowing the natural time of an investigation to pass, with all the frustrations over a lack of progress adding to the tension. The writing is wonderfully fluid however, ensuring that you don't lose interest, the characterisation good (aside from the unrequited love and adoring admiration Shirley has for her partner) and it doesn't need to hit conventional structural plot points to keep you engaged. It also gives the reader time to consider the method and impact of the murders and the connections between them and it shouldn't be hard to recognise a commonality. It would seem that the intention is to draw attention to the treatment of animals, how we would feel if people were treated the same way.

But then that would be what you expect and it's certainly what Matt Anderson, a vegan and animals rights activist, is inclined to suspect. It certainly appears to be the methodology behind the theatricality of the staging of the murders, and if it's designed to draw attention, it certainly achieves that. But is it not just a little bit extreme even for a militant animal rights activist? Guival continues to bring in other elements that muddy the waters with some incidents that appearing to relate to the first tow murders, but turn out not to, while recounting other goings-on that appear to have little to do with the main case, but could in fact serve to add other dimensions to the subject. It's a good technique, keeps the work never less than involving, and the writing and details provided do succeed in taking you down some unexpected paths.

Despite the careful laying out and building of an intriguing case that is undoubtedly leading to dramatic and horrific revelations, the finale does seem to overstretch far beyond anything the reader might reasonably expect. And indeed, far beyond what the FBI team of agents Matt, Shirley and their boss 'Baryton' expect to find. I found it a little unsatisfactory, but the fact that this seems to take them all by surprise and have a profound impact on them does have a ring of truth to it. It might end on a rather down note then, but whatever way you respond to that, Jacques Guival's assured writing elsewhere in Animality presents an intriguing and horrific case that takes the reader to some very dark places.

Reading notes: Animality by Jacques Guival is self-published and can be downloaded for free as a Kindle or eBook. Because of Amazon's dumb policy of not letting you download any Kindle books from Amazon.fr if your account is registered outside France, and the book being unavailable from their UK site, I downloaded a free copy onto Kobo via FNAC. Even that might not be easy unless you have an account there, so it's not as easy to get a free book as you might think. Animality however proved to be worth the effort.