'The Game of Silence': a review of the novel about when everyone is talking

In literature, there is often a disdain for genres considered commercial or popular that has never existed in film, not even among pedantic snobs and sophisticated specialists. There are quite a few critics, academics, and journalists who specialize in literature, however, who adopt a somewhat condescending attitude whenever they read a detective novel, an adventure novel, a horror novel, or one with supernatural or thriller elements. As if Dumas and Stevenson weren't creators of incredible characters and worlds, as if Raymond Chandler's prose weren't among the best in 20th-century English, as if the terrifying Shirley Jackson and the visionary Stanislaw Lem weren't first-rate writers—in style and ideas. I mention these names, and I could mention so many others. These condescending readers are unaware that writing a genre novel is incredibly difficult.

I was thinking about this while reading The game of silence, of Gil Pratsobrerroca (Vic, 1997), which was published a few months ago and has become a true phenomenon: it has already sold over 10,000 copies and its eighth edition has just been released.

A promising cocktail

Pratsobrerroca, a screenwriter, has aimed to create a fast-paced, entertaining, and visually stunning novel, blending elements of a police thriller (the disappearance of a seven-year-old girl, a subplot involving drug trafficking) with a touch of horror (psychopathy, atmosphere, atmosphere, atmosphere, atmosphere, and sentimental melodrama (infidelity, questionable paternity). The combination is promising, especially for those of us who enjoy genre-blending and, for example, like Gillian Flynn novels and HBO and Netflix series in this vein. Task either Untamed

The result, however, falls short of expectations. The impression is that, rather than a finished novel, The game of silence It's one of the first drafts of a screenplay. The characters are flat, and their behavior is driven by motivations whose reasons are explained to us, but which we neither psychologically nor emotionally understand. Furthermore, the relationships between them—between the main couple, between the couple in question and their daughter, between the parents and the girl, and the entire galaxy of secondary characters surrounding them—are presented abruptly and hastily, not built up or developed. The prose, for its part, merely conveys, sometimes resorting to clichés, what is pure narrative information: cardboard sets (gentrified Barcelona, ​​a small Pyrenean village), soulless situations, and shallow events.

I would say that one of Pratsobrerroca's models has been The Harry Quebert AffairJoel Dicker's novel: the fragmented structure, the time jumps, the countdown rhythm... The problem is that Dicker's novel possessed a masterful narrative style—a carefully measured build-up of intrigue, information subtly planted and unexpectedly retrieved, plot twists that left you breathless, and shocking moments that hit you right in the face. All of this is so outlandish that it gives the impression of an inconsistent and implausible construct. And a word of caution: verisimilitude doesn't consist of what we read seeming believable because it appears believable according to our own understanding of reality, but rather because the author manages to make it believable through expressive prose and characters that move us. It's clear that Gil Pratsobrerroca has a daring imagination, but here, and despite his success, he has yet to demonstrate his full potential.