Customer Reviews

The Voyeur

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If the american reading public wanted to one-up the chill factor in reading, this would be a great place to start. Who "the voyeur" even is is up to debate. Is it the little girl who may have seen the murder? Or is it the salesman? At any rate a good read because it is extremely eerie and makes Stephen King's prose look very banal. If one reads it within a few days the effect is much more powerful: The book is very subliminal, and is very much like dreaming while awake. What is missing is what makes it alluring, though in truth we know who is guilty... the book is very much projected onto the reader; what role you play in the book is given an edge: You are forced to be literary critic. I have read that some critics call attention to a particulary shocking section (Stravrogin's confession) in Dostoevsky's "The Devils" which was at first censored in Russia. A murder mystery with philosophical tones just barely creeping under the surface; always a plus in any murder mystery. Such an anomalous book it will not leave your brain anytime soon.

A novel that is meant to be reread after the initial reading. The enjoyment that comes with reading and rereading it will come from solving the puzzle. The novel proposes questions that the curious will want to answer. Who is Mathias? Did he murder Jacqueline? Who is this other girl Violet? What is the difference between fact and fiction in the novel? Unlike ordinary writers of suspense or mystery stories, Robbe-Grillet does not give away the answers. Like another great writer, Vladimir Nabokov, Robbe-Grillet knows his readers will get more joy from discovering the answers for themselves.

The hints, like details begging to be noticed and solved, are sprinkled throughout the novel. Remember the billboard that reads "Monsieur X On The Double Circuit." Mathias can't make sense of it, guessing (wrongly) that it must be about some movie, a coming-attraction, a thriller. Mathias is Monsieur X; the double circuit is the island, the plot.

If others want to offer answers I will check back to read them. I'm not sure of my own conclusions yet. I have some rereading to do first.

This novel seems much longer than it actually is. The "action" is dragged out and you begin to find Mathias' obsessive plans to sell his watches tedious, but there is something oddly compelling about it that makes you read on. Lingering behind his figure eight strategies is the death of a disreputable girl and this is what keeps you on the edge of your seat, sick with worry and anxiety. Even though we are following Mathias incredibly closely in all his movements we still don't feel we know him. This is largely because we are made to understand that Mathias doesn't know anything about himself. There is a distinction made between "the salesman" and Mathias. It indicates there is an impersonal aspect to him we will never know. He is constantly being made into an impersonal and stereotypical type of person and the reader is forced to search for details that will connect him with a personal experience. His past is portrayed as an impenetrable muddy mess. "it was useless trying to stir up his memories, he didn't even know what he should be looking for." You gather that the world will in a sense always remain unknowable because of our limited personal perspective. In a sense each person's perception causes harm to what they perceive by limiting it by our own values and labels. This is the murderer and the mystery is how to disassemble our own code of perception. This novel is a fascinating exploration of these ideas and a pleasure to read.

The Voyeur (Le Voyeur) was Robbe-Grillet's second published work.

Much like The Erasers, The Voyeur deconstructs a genre story (murder mystery) into a set of descriptions and commonplaces, freeing the crime itself from any psychology or motive. Robbe-Grillet tells us a story without giving us an authoritative ending and without bothering to explain any of the back story at which the text hints.

The language and the flow of text is fascinating, even in translation. The prose flows around the plot, as we see the main character's moments and ideas over and over again-- never sure if something is being revisited or if the beat is just similar to the ones that came before.

This book is often packaged as a "typical" murder mystery, which it is not. The text is often quite demanding and I found myself scrambling to make sure that I had read things correctly. It will need re-reading before I really begin to grasp it, I believe. Luckily, this should not be a painful task.

this is as disquieting as kafka, as disorienting as beckett, as enigmatic as de chirico and antonioni. the most readable of robbe-grillet's texts, methinks.

This book is about Mathias, a traveling salesman of watches whom himself has become a time bomb. But this is an Alain Robbe-Grillet book and that means, as the title suggests, it is more about watching than watches. Robbe-Grillet's work represents what became known as the "nouveau roman," or new novel philosophy. Robbe-Grillet, in his collection of essays "For a New Novel," calls his work "art for arts sake." It's a kind of flat earth point of view that says things are things and people are people: no more or less. Metaphor, allegory and the like are pathways to frustration and intimidation that lead people over the edge into an abyss full of monsters: minotaurs that challenge humanity and the claim of being humane. Is society liable for the actions of Mathias? Are such as him inevitable? These are question Robbe-Grillet raises. He has commented that with his books the most important character is the reader. Written in 1955, "The Voyeur" is intriguing and historically important, but as art for arts sake it falls, well . . . flat.

This is a story of a strange (he collects string) and very
observant watch salesman and a murder. At first, the reader
isn't sure if the salesman witnessed the murder. It also
seems strange that if he did witness the murder, why is he
more concerned with selling his watches? As the story
develops, the facts unfold with chilling clarity

I am a high school student and I take Cinema and Literature, a college class. I was suppose to read this book, and I did. At the beginning it was going pretty slow...it was too detailed. Then around the middle it started to get good. At the end, it left me empty. I felt like everything I wanted, and was expecting to be answer was not. It is an okay book if you are able to understand what happens at the end, I didn't.

If this book doesn't disturb and confuse you enough in English, go ahead and read it in French. We did. This is by far the most confounding book we have happened upon during our college careers. The story line, or lack thereof, throws you for a loop, assuming you don't get lost in the cinematic language. We left this book feeling dumber than when we started. Bon chance!

I wandered upon this book as a college freshman and couldn't not put it down. It is not a page-turner. It makes no sense. About six years later this book appeared on a syllabus in some post-modern class. Compare and contrast to JANE ERYE. Gosh, I never realised Charlotte Bronte was such a good writer.