“Lives only have meaning if we can fulfil these three destinies: to love, to be loved, and know how to forgive”

I had been captivated by Swiss writer Joel Dicker’s first book, the runaway critically and reader acclaimed The Truth About The Harry Quebert Affair – both a murder mystery/investigation and a book about writing, writer’s block and matters literary. So I was delighted to be offered his second as an ARC, here translated from the original French by Alison Anderson.

The Baltimore Boys stands as both prequel and sequel to ‘Harry Quebert’. The central character Marcus Goldman (the writer of Harry Quebert) looks back to the original genesis of his writing inspiration – his childhood, and his friendship with his cousin Hillel, and a less privileged boy, Woody – the Baltimore Boys, and in present time, he has already published ‘Quebert’ and, once again, is finding the process of writing hard.

“Why do I write? Because books are stronger than life. They are the finest revenge we can take on life. They are the witnesses from the impregnable wall of our mind, the unassailable fortress of our memory”

In fact, he has taken himself away from the distractions of the city (New York) to a quiet, suburban house in Florida, where his neighbours are affluent and retired, and nothing happens. He is in search of tranquillity to help the creative juices flow.

A chance encounter with a stray dog causes Marcus’ boyhood, as a third member of the Baltimore Boys gang, to come flooding back to him, as the dog’s owner is a significant figure from his past.

Marcus was the only son of the ‘Montclair Goldmans’ . His father Nathan was the less successful Goldman Brother. The star brother, and the one whom Marcus hero-worshipped, along with his beautiful wife Anita, was Saul. Saul and Anita were wealthy, golden, successful and admired. They and their only son Hillel were the Baltimore Goldman’s.

However, as we discover, at the start of the book – the Golden Baltimores somehow became mired in tragedy. Jumping back and forth in time-frames from 1989 to the present day, Marcus is writing his past, his present, and, perhaps his future. This book, The Baltimore Boys, will be a celebration of the people he loved whose lives were less blessed than he thought, and will also be a way to come to terms with accepting loss, and broken illusions.

I loved ‘Quebert’ though at times I found it a little over tricksy. Baltimore Boys, despite all the jumping back and forth in time, seems a much more traditional progression – Goldman lets us know what he intends to reveal to us, before we ever get there – the books very first sentence, its prologue, tells us that in 2004 his boyhood friend, his adopted cousin Woody is about to start a 5 year prison sentence the next day. We are then immediately taken to Part One, which begins in 1989, The Book of Lost Youth.

I found The Baltimore Boys intensely moving. Marcus, for all his acclaimed fame, has a kind of bruised, attractive diffidence, and a much greater warmth and integrity than he believes he has. This is both a love story, a loss story, and a celebration of the importance of friendship, and of family, those difficult, sometimes impossible ties between siblings and close kin.

And it is full of delicious observations. The back and forth time frames also pinpoint subtle and not so subtle changes in society

“There was a time when astronauts and scientists were the stars. Nowadays our stars are people who do nothing and spend their time taking selfies or pictures of their dinner”

Above all, Joel Dicker knows how to tell an old story, the rite of passage from child to sadder, wiser man, freshly and engagingly

The Baltimore Boys will be published in English on May 18th It has already been a popular success in the original French, published in 2015, and in Spanish translation.

Having enjoyed Joel Dicker's first book, I was really looking forward to this, and I was not disappointed. Although written in quite a simplistic style, the plot roles along at a pace that kept me gripped. It is a lengthy book, and I was quite sad to finish it as you really get to know the characters. There are a few twists towards the end that I didn't see coming. Thoroughly recommended. I hope Mr Dicker is writing his next book right now!

I very much enjoyed this dramatic family saga, a portrait of an American family over 3 generations, who somehow manage to have more than their fair share of rivalries, jealousies, recriminations, regrets, deceit and betrayal. What a wonderful soap opera it would make; a cliff-hanger at the end of every episode; lots of stock characters – beautiful singer, hunky football player who becomes the protector of the bullied weedy boy; wealth and embezzlement; a good few deaths; domestic violence; adultery – it’s got it all. The revelations come thick and slow, nicely spread out, so there’s plenty of time for speculation, and just when you think you know who the good guy is it turns out that maybe he isn’t. What’s not to like? Well….how about a good smattering of clichés, wooden dialogue, flat writing, superficial characterisation. But let’s not be too picky – it’s still a rattling good yarn and a page-turner. And if pressed I can turn off my critical faculties for a while and just have a good time. And with this one I did indeed have a very good time.

I'm hesitant to compare anything to 'A Little Life', a book I loved with all my heart, but 'The Baltimore Boys' definitely evoked similar feelings. I finished it on my lunch break this afternoon, and had a little cry into my sandwich. I didn't want to say goodbye to these characters. I'm tempted to re-read the whole thing again, just so I can have a little more time with them.

I had high hopes for this book and that may have been my problem. After tearing through 'The truth about the Harry Quebert affair' in 3 days I was expecting to do the same with this but it just didn't grip me at all. I really wanted to like it but I couldn't. The characters were all fairly unlikable and I found the portrayal of the Baltimore boys as children really unconvincing and Hillel in particular was unbearable. I was keen to find out what the 'tragedy' was going to be and kept reading for this purpose. When I got to the tragedy though it was slightly ridiculous - two men killing themselves because one couldn't bear the thought of going to prison and the other because he didn't want to be separated from the man who a few years earlier he had been so jealous of he ruined his chances of a successful football career. Ugh! I was really disappointed, not all of it was bad, it just felt like the author was trying unsuccessfully to recreate the uncertainty and suspense of his earlier book but didn't have a good enough idea to pull it off.

'In books, people who are no longer with us can meet again, and embrace'

This is a long (over-long, really) book about family, brotherhood, love, lies, loyalty, rivalry and secrets: as seems to have become irritatingly de rigeur we have a fragmented narrative where Marcus skips between 'now' and various moments in the past. We know from the first page that his cousin Woody is going to prison and that a tragedy follows but the events are withheld until the end (the narrator speaking only of 'The Tragedy' - cute or frustrating?).

There's so much smart writing here that it's annoying when Dicker gets it wrong: the first section, for example, is far too drawn-out for what it needs to do. We 'get' the points he's making sooner than he seems to think, whether his narrator is conjuring up, Proust-style, his childhood with his cousins, or faffing around in the present with a next-door neighbour and re-meeting his one-time love.

That said, the characters are attractive and once the boys move into adolescence and early manhood things pick up. There are lots of misunderstandings that don't get cleared up till the end, but also some lovely portraits of male friendship and love, rivalry and brotherhood. The end manages to be both moving and also melodramatic: I 'bought' it when caught up in the book but when the covers are closed it seems unconvincing and a bit over-heated.

So a book overall which I liked rather than loved.

To be posted on Amazon and Goodreads

I found this to be a very average read. An easy distraction on a long journey but not something I would otherwise enjoy. Sorry!

I adored Harry Quebert. And I really enjoyed this too, but something, just something didn't make it the book that HQ was.

I think it was in the translation and there were some niggles with that which really interrupted my flow of this book. The over-use of the word "tragedy" which just felt out of place when used so often.... and the unnecessary signposting of the doom to come.

For me Joel Dickers story telling though is a delight and in re reading my review for HQ the same words can still apply which are taken from HQ...."a good book..... Is judged not by its last words but by the cumulative effect of all the words that have preceded them. About half a second after finishing your book, after reading the very last word, the reader should be overwhelmed by a particular feeling. For a moment he should think only of what he has just read; he should look at the jacket and smile a little sadly because he is already missing all the characters. A good book, Marcus, is a book you are sorry has ended"

I am really sorry to have come to the end of this, because I really loved the characters and their story. But I am not left with quite the same book hangover as last time.....

Utterly utterly BRILLIANT!!!!!
I was rabid to read this as soon as I heard that it had been translated and boy was I lucky that NetGalley gave me the opportunity to have an ARC copy.
I LOVED every single second of this book and was devastated for it to end!
Wonderfully written, spectacularly translated, I was engrossed from the first page. I loved Harry Quebert so I had high hopes for this and I was not disappointed.
Feeling quite at a loss now and not sure what to read next, just know that O would have loved to have hung out with the Goldman Gang!

This has all the ingredients for the type of coming-of-age family saga I usually enjoy - middle-aged man looking back on people and events that shaped him, the privilege of wealth and talent undermined by jealousy and betrayal, and his emergence from tragedy into a new life, full of hope for his future. Somehow, though, nothing about it engaged me. Not the characters, nor the settings, and especially not the writing (or perhaps the translation) which I found clunky and uninspiring. I confess I struggled to finish this book and would have been happy with 100 fewer pages. Perhaps I would have enjoyed it more had I read the author’s earlier novel featuring some of the same characters, The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair. A disappointment for me but I am grateful to Quercus/MacLehose Press and NetGalley for allowing me the opportunity to read it and give my honest opinion.

I loved Joel Dicker's first novel The Truth About The Harry Quebert Affair so I was excited to see that he had a sequel coming out. Marcus Goldman, the author from the previous book, is still the main protagonist and he tells the story of his life growing up with his cousins Hillel and Woody in Baltimore.
The book has many layers and timelines but this gives it an incredible depth. We learn much about Marcus's childhood, his teenage years and young adulthood and in the background we have tragedies that are not revealed until far into the novel. There is also a romance with Alexandra which lasts for many years and through all the time periods.
We watch the three cousins grow from young children into adults and as they grow up we learn so much about them.
The characters are well drawn and their motivations so interesting. Much is left unsaid so that numerous misunderstandings and jealousies occur within Marcus's family, the Baltimore cousins and his own Montclair side. Marcus tells the story so there is something of the unreliable narrator about the events which are all seen through his eyes.
This is a novel about love and redemption which is so intricately plotted that I sometimes had to reread a section to work out what time frame we were in. The narrative slips effortlessly between three different periods where the. Baltimore boys have to cope with many things happening to them.
This was a long book but so enjoyable that I read it very quickly. In a way it was a mystery in that the reader wanted to know what had happened to Marcus and his family. How come his uncle ended up broke and alone? Where were the cousins in 2011. After hearing so much about their intertwined lives they had vanished from the pages of the book in this time period.
In my opinion a wonderful read, both literary and compelling. It can be read as a stand alone novel but if you enjoy it I suggerst you read the earlier book too as it is equally brilliant in a different way.
I must also add that that it is a translation from French but it is so well done that it is impossible to tell.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for my advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

This was a good read, a type of family saga. It was well written and kept referring to the tragedy throughout. However the tragedy was not fully revealed until close to the end.. Would make a good film