When Michel Tournier is mentioned to someone, you often hear comments like: "Isn't that the author who could only write about human sexual perversions?", but if you examine his work more deeply, you'll see that there is a lot more to his writing than that.
"The Ogre" is his second novel and it starts by telling us the story of a French mechanic named Abel Tiffauges, living during the end of 1930's, who one day injures his right hand.
This fascinating novel is divided into six segments, from wich the first (and the longest) is the most fascinating, as it deals with this multi-dimencional character's past and present by the way of one year's worth of diaries wich he starts writing with his left hand after the previously mentioned accident. By the end of the segment this strange character of Abel Tiffauges with his peculiar habits and personality feels extremely real and deep, hence securing the feeling of reality of the whole artistically written book. Finally, the segment ends as Tiffauges stops writing after the beginning of the war between France and Germany.
The first segment is followed by three weaker segments wich, unlike the first one, are told in a traditional third-person narrating and are filled with surprisingly unlikely coincidences and forced events as they describe Tiffauges' journey through nazi-Germany, first as a French soldier, then as a prisoner of war, and finally a ranger.
Then the novel improves again as it gets to its fift segment, wich almost raises to the level of the first one. It shows us an itriquing transformation process, as, again by ridiculously not beliavable coincidences, Tiffauges ends up being an SS-officer and an instructor in a Hitler-Jugend training facility.
Step by step this first reluctant character grows more and more fascinated with anti-semitism and the complex scientific assumptions about racial differences. The segment is dark and unsettling, as the character is devided into two, when he can't separate reality with what he's been thought.
In the sixth and final segment the reader gets to witness Tiffauges' journey through chaos, as he experiences an enlightment that leads to his understanding of his own inner evil and eventually to self-destruction. This process is unevenly described, and not sufficiently explained, as it occurs suddenly and doesn't really lead anywhere.
The ending of the book is blurry, and it leaves the reader frustrated, as it leaves issues unfinished and not dealt with.
In the end "The Ogre" is a book that I recommend to anyone, even though many people will probably not like it as much as I did.
But weather you like it or not, don't leave it unfinished. Once you start it, you'll have to see it through.
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