Jean-Pierre Naugrette

A meta-literary fantasy, following Le crime étrange de Mr Hyde (1998) and Les hommes de cire (2002). Hyde is the first-person narrator of three of the chapters and we learn that Sherlock Holmes went to school with the future Dr Jekyll. Other allusions and imitations come from Wilde, Hitchcock, and Borges within the framework of a detective story constantly undermined by fantasy and metatextual playfulness. Houses are fantastic labyrinths that not only contain symmetrical structures but are doubled by elaborate doll’s houses (which one of the characters collects); similarly, the characters (as in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde) are frequently doubled by others yet also equivalents of each other.… (more)

A narrative symphonie fantastique sharing affinities with Calvino, Borges and the graphic work of Escher, which borrows and elaborates themes and phrases from numerous sources including Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde. The labyrinth-like text (including a superb chapter inside an imaginary labyrinth) is divided into eight unnumbered but titled chapters with five or six narrators (there is a reason for this uncertainty). We find not only Utterson, Jekyll and Hyde but also (as in Naugrette’s earlier work Le crime étrange de Mr Hyde – a volume which is found in the bookcase of Jekyll’s former cabinet in the present work) Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, and here also (aboard ship) Billy Bones, and (in the Indian chapters) Secundra Dass (from Ballantrae) and Mr. Murthwaite (from The Moonstone). The setting moves from London (Ch. 1-3), to aboard ship (Ch. 4-5), India (Ch. 6-7), and back to London (Ch. 8). Of Jekyll and Hyde, it is the formal characteristics above all (self-reference, patterns of repetition and mirroring, juxtapositions, play of text and paratext etc.) that are implicitly commented on. At the same time the narrative is skilfully pursued and keeps the close attention of the reader right up to the ingenious and multiple turns and twists of its astounding end.… (more)