What do you think?
Rate this book
The Quartet
Who is Just? What is pursuing him? What has this to do with the nature of music - and terrible revelations about a German company in France, and its links with the machimery of the Nazi death camps? The novel which has taken Paris by storm, The Quartet has the structure of a thriller, following a company psychologist's investigation of his director, Matthias Just, in the aftermath of the Second World War. In clear, beautiful prose, it tells of the collapse of Just, his dissolution of the company's string quartet, and the revelation of papers in his desk at home containing instructions for the construction of faultless vehicles for the extermination of humans - upon which musical notations are overlaid. What does this tell us about the nature of humanity - and what value can art ever have again?
117 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2000
2 people are currently reading
2 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 27, 2022
It felt unfinished, but maybe i just didn't get it.
July 19, 2025
The blurb on the cover said something about this being the sequel to 'The Reader', but apart from the reference to Nazi cruelty in the Shoah, I can't see any clear relationship between the two books. Lesson: don't trust those cover blurbs, they are only meant to pump up sales.
I thought the book began very well with the intrigue of the strained relationship between two business executives and the attempt by one of them to manipulate a psychologist into helping him get the upper hand. The twists and turns do keep the attention of the reader, but the last twenty pages were a disappointment. It seemed almost incoherent, and the fixation on the letter from 1942 made it go flat for me. The book is a puzzle and like other readers, I did not manage to fit all the pieces together. It's lacking something, but I'm not sure what that is. I read it in English translation and then found the original French, but I would have to force myself to read it again in the original French. To his credit, François Emmanuel has penned a long reflection on his journey and struggle in writing this book, you can find it on his website (in French). The letter from 1942 obviously affected him deeply, and he felt this was stuff for a good book, but the end result is less than stellar.
I thought the book began very well with the intrigue of the strained relationship between two business executives and the attempt by one of them to manipulate a psychologist into helping him get the upper hand. The twists and turns do keep the attention of the reader, but the last twenty pages were a disappointment. It seemed almost incoherent, and the fixation on the letter from 1942 made it go flat for me. The book is a puzzle and like other readers, I did not manage to fit all the pieces together. It's lacking something, but I'm not sure what that is. I read it in English translation and then found the original French, but I would have to force myself to read it again in the original French. To his credit, François Emmanuel has penned a long reflection on his journey and struggle in writing this book, you can find it on his website (in French). The letter from 1942 obviously affected him deeply, and he felt this was stuff for a good book, but the end result is less than stellar.
June 30, 2016
I wish I could give this four stars, but the character responsible for the big reveal isn't fleshed out and has little motivation for his actions, which poses too much of a problem. However, the premise is stunning, and the actual Nazi letter of 1942, translated and presented in the book, is worth the price of admission.
As usual, I came to the book through a film adaptation. The somewhat obscure Heartbeat Detector (Nicolas Klotz, 2007) is based on this obscure little book. Presented differently (it's primarily corporate culture, men in fitted black suits), the reveal is far more of a shock. The movie was striking enough for me to pursue the book (I believe I gave it 7 stars on the imdb), even though it suffered the same character flaw. The film left me with a lingering question of whether or not the analogy, which I won't reveal here, worked for me, and that, too, made me want to read this. I was surprised by how long it stayed on my mind.
At 150 pages, The Quartet is quick and easy. It reads like detective fiction with two parts madness. The protagonist is a psychologist (the author is a psychiatrist), and it creates good and smart suspense as to who is mad and why. Don't rush around the globe to find it (there was one copy at Amazon for one penny, which was the only place I found it—it wasn't in any library in my county), but if you come across it, don't skip over it either.
As usual, I came to the book through a film adaptation. The somewhat obscure Heartbeat Detector (Nicolas Klotz, 2007) is based on this obscure little book. Presented differently (it's primarily corporate culture, men in fitted black suits), the reveal is far more of a shock. The movie was striking enough for me to pursue the book (I believe I gave it 7 stars on the imdb), even though it suffered the same character flaw. The film left me with a lingering question of whether or not the analogy, which I won't reveal here, worked for me, and that, too, made me want to read this. I was surprised by how long it stayed on my mind.
At 150 pages, The Quartet is quick and easy. It reads like detective fiction with two parts madness. The protagonist is a psychologist (the author is a psychiatrist), and it creates good and smart suspense as to who is mad and why. Don't rush around the globe to find it (there was one copy at Amazon for one penny, which was the only place I found it—it wasn't in any library in my county), but if you come across it, don't skip over it either.
April 12, 2012
This is a disturbing book that is and isn't about the holocaust. Emmanuel cleverly uses the callousness of big business to add to the tension and to give the feeling that some things just never really go away. Because of its size it is a very sparse book but characters are depicted quite ingeniously and the feeling of being trapped and manipulated is very convincing. I just felt that towards the end I didn't put the puzzle together as well as Simon did.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews