So, the Hannibal nouveau has arrived. No doubt my reviewing colleagues are already sharpening their word processors and the response to Hannibal Rising will be as mixed as the barrage of praise and vilification that greeted Thomas Harris' third instalment in the Lecter saga Hannibal (which by the way I enjoyed in a perverse way, aware of its obvious flaws but entranced by its operatic and baroque over the top elements).
I'm already more than halfway through the new book, and it certainly approaches the character of Hannibal from a different angle, opening up fascinating new perspectives on his innate evil and featuring a varied cast of characters in all shades of black and grey. But I must confess it's hard work, and more than half a dozen times so far, I've almost thrown my first edition against the wall. And this, for all the wrong reasons - or possibly all the right ones ...
A lengthy sequence at the heart of the book takes places in France, you see. And though Harris has visibly done his research when it comes to flora, antique paintings, weapons and other intricate elements of his plot, he regularly gets the French language and setting wrong. Something which just infuriates me. And he is not the first British or American writer to do so. Aren't the copy editors doing their job properly? Hasn't the author got experts on French and France available?
Fifteen years or so ago, when I was still an acquiring editor in publishing, I was offered a very promising manuscript, a first thriller by a Canadian author. I liked the book and felt the author had much talent. But a key sequence of the book was a frantic car chase in which the protagonist was chased along the Boulevard Sebastopol in Paris, from the Grands Boulevards to the Seine. Only one small problem: the Boulevard Sebastopol is one way and traffic runs in the opposite direction. It just spoiled the book for me.
More recently, John Twelve Hawks' The Traveller had the Rue de Seine connecting with the Boulevard St Michel, when it actually does so only with the Boulevard St Germain, and in a show of would be sophistication he has an extra enter a Parisian café and ask for a drink in French (translated quite literally from a dictionary "Drink, Monsieur, can have I?") Ouch!
My wife, who is Russian, is always complaining when villains in movies pretend to speak Russian, but the actors are visibly either Yanks or more likely Polish or Serbs, and are betrayed by their accent. Surely writers and filmmakers should learn to get it right. And it's just not languages: remember Kevin Costner in Robin Hood reaching the white cliffs of Dover and beginning his journey on foot all the way to Sherwood Forest, and reaching it by night...
Maybe that's why Hannibal got so mad. It can be confusing when male characters respond "Je suis désolée" as if they were female; or when trains depart from the Gare de l'Este, with an extra e (could train stations have a specific gender, maybe?). And, by the way, a Japanese woman in French would be called une Japonaise, not a Japponaise, with an extra p!
Trivial maybe, but it ruins my reading pleasure in a big way. Is it just moi?
