Based on a True Story

Delphine de Vignan, translated by George Miller

Bloomsbury

Otago Daily Times, July 1st 2017

“I challenge all of us – you, me, anyone – to disentangle true from false…it could be a literary project to write a whole book that presents itself as a true story, a book inspired by so-called real events, but in which everything, or nearly everything, is invented.”

This single, provocative statement from the central character of Based on a True Story goes to the heart of this brilliant psychological thriller; an exploration of the limits of reality and fiction and the relationship between author and reader that reads like a cross between All about Eve and Gone Girl.

After the surprise success of her sixth book, an autobiographical work that has drawn heartfelt responses from readers around the world, Delphine is emotionally raw from and struggling to return to writing. Then she meets L., a former classmate and celebrity ghostwriter, who soon becomes her closest friend and confidante.

Always there when needed, L. supports her entirely and unconditionally; the only thing on which they disagree on is the direction her next book should take. Delphine is considering a return to fiction but L. insists that this would be a betrayal of her readers’ expectations of authenticity and urges her to instead mine further into her traumatic past.

L.’s withering criticism of her attempts at a new novel, combined with a series of letters accusing her of profiteering at her family’s expense, plunges Delphine into a paralysing depression and L. leaps in to the breach, taking over the management of all aspects of her life and isolating her from the outside world so she can concentrate on finding the book that is ‘hiding within her’.  But it is not until she realises that her very life may be in danger that Delphine starts to question L.’s motives, and her attempt to turn the tables leads to a confrontation in which it is no longer clear who is using whom, nor who will emerge victorious.

De Vigan’s deft handling of the plot and the use of a first-person, retrospective voice in which both narrator and audience can clearly see the danger well in advance is the stuff of theatre – and a masterful piece of misdirection – that is utterly compelling, and it is little surprise Roman Polansky is currently adapting it for film.

What really makes Based on a True Story linger in the mind, however, is the way in which the reader is rendered complicit in the voyeuristic search for the ‘reality’ in the fiction that L. insists we really want.

Despite the explicit warnings scattered throughout the story, I could not resist trying to equate the Delphine in the novel with Delphine the author. I found myself googling her Wikipedia profile in an attempt to discover other parallels, and my only consolation for failing her challenge so spectacularly is that there are six other de Vigan novels just waiting for me to find them.

This is a book that demands intense discussion and analysis, and I fully intend to force it on everybody I know just for the delight of raving about it.

https://www.odt.co.nz/entertainment/books/work-truth-and-fiction