Book Review: Voyeur by Francesca Reece

I think this a misunderstood book!

I’ve been looking at other reviews of this book on various blogs across the W.W.W and largely they are blasé about the story or in some cases pretty scathing about it. But I’m here to say that I think they're all wrong!

Hear me out, maybe I’ll convince you to read it too.

Ostensibly the book is about Leah, a 20-something graduate living in Paris, working part-time jobs that’s she’s not interested in with no real idea of what she wants to do. We also have Michael, an aging, but rather famous, author who ends up hiring Leah as a research assistant for his next book. His reasons for hiring her are pretty sketchy and we see that unfold in the novel.

We experience the story through both characters perspectives, alternated throughout the book, often jumping back, for Michael, to the 1960s. What propels us through the book is the mystery of Astrid and what happened to her in the late 1960s, although I feel just as compelling is the way in which Leah becomes entangled in the lives of Michaels family, a scenario that comes to a climax when she travels with them to the south of France to continue her work with Michael.

So why do I think this is misunderstood?

Many of the reviews I’ve seen are reviewing this, it seems, on the basis of it being either contemporary fiction or a thriller, and I do agree that the story is pretty fast paced and easy to read, features common to both of those genres, but I think this has so many levels and themes to delve into and therefore aligns itself more with literary fiction. Literary fiction often doesn’t do what we would expect from contemporary fiction or thrillers and this is no different.

There is no neat little bow to tie up the story - we do solve the mystery of Astrid which is satisfying, but no profound character arc occurs for our protagonists. They do not appear to grow or change based on the events of the novel. And equally I don’t believe that the mystery of Astrid is all that integral to what the author is trying to do here, I think it’s a vehicle for exploring the characters and the themes that arise.

This reminds me of how Leave The World Behind by Rumaan Alam was received a couple of years ago. It received relatively negative reviews, but I felt it was being pushed as a thriller rather than a literary thriller meaning that all those who love a classic thriller didn’t enjoy the open-ended nature of it (the same thing is happening with the film adaptation!). It seems a similar thing is happening here.

Admittedly I may have misunderstood what the reviewer was saying but one review said “the title ‘voyeur’, what that means is anyones guess” and this is one of my biggest question marks. The theme of voyeurism saturates this novel.

I feel the most obvious one is Leah reading and transcribing Michael’s diaries from the 1960s and having to read all the sordid details of his life and his thought processes. An act which makes her incredibly uncomfortable as his employee. But this is not the only element of voyeurism that we see, I won’t go into all of the ones I picked up on so as not to ruin any of the story for those who wish to read it, but here are a couple:

- The way in which Leah uses social media to watch what her peers from school are up to, from a distance. This is obviously a common area of social commentary but I had never thought of it in terms of voyeurism until reading this novel with the title in mind.

- The way in which Leah often switches her flow of consciousness to feeling like she is watching herself. She seems incredibly detached from her own actions and is more concerned with what her facial features are communicating. It was an interesting element to the story telling and keeps us, even as readers at a remove from the character (another thing that negative reviews pick up on, these characters are not particularly likeable!)

- The way in which Leah is fascinated with the lifestyles of the rich. This is something that the author themself has commented on in interviews - ideas of social mobility and being fascinated by the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Leah becomes wrapped up in the lives of Michael’s family but always feels on the outside, is always acutely aware of her position as outsider.

- Because the storyline involves the voyeurism of Leah reading Michael’s diaries, we are invited to think about the voyeurism of reading this story or any story. I feel that Reece builds this by providing us with a story that contains secrets, sex, drugs and scandal… details we commonly associate with voyeurism…

As I say, there are many more that I noted down but I don’t want to become a bore. By the way, don’t take a shot for every time the word voyeur or voyeurism is mentioned because you may get alcohol poisoning!

Further to this, I couldn’t help drawing parallels with The Great Gatsby. Don’t get me wrong, I am categorically not saying that this is a Great Gatsby retelling, but there is symbolism that we could draw into conversation between the two. On the one hand we have the way in which Leah is being swept up into a story that looks at social mobility, old money Vs new money, and the frivolous lifestyles that money creates. I haven’t read The Great Gatsby for many many years but another theme that kept calling to me was Jay Gatsby looking across the expanse of water to the green light, mirroring the way in which Michael looks across the expanse of time from today to the 1960s to when he had Astrid, his shining beacon.

Anyway! If any of this peaks your interest, I urge you to pick up Voyeur by Francesca Reece. It was a 5 star read for me!