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Updated Monday, April 8, 2024-21:33

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There are two characters in

A Wild Animal

, by Joël Dicker

(Alfaguara) who are reminiscent of Anna Karina and Belmondo in

Crazy Pierrot

because they are two gangster-lovers who tour France in a convertible and because they are

two charming unconscious people who act like little animals devoted to their nature

. There is another character who obviously resembles Highsmith's Tom Ripley, because he is a careerist who seems to have everything but who, deep down, lives terrified of the possibility of being discovered in his comedy. There is a scene that represents a party in which everyone is rich, handsome and elegant except for a normal couple who crashes and who feels that a crack is opening in their life. At that point, readers think that

sounds like Gatsby

, right?

And all these references come in handy to explain that Dicker always seems like the same novelist who delivers

thrillers

about rich people who keep a secret, novels that are read at the rate of 100 pages per sitting and that, in short, could be explained as a version of Stephen King without ghosts. But it is not: something moves and becomes more complex on the Swiss author's map with each passing book. "My look has become less carefree," Dicker tells EL MUNDO.

What is

a wild animal

? Two stories that intersect over 450 pages: on the one hand, there is the plot of a gang of bank and jewelry store robbers who form a couple from Geneva and

her tutor in the trade, a crime bohemian whom everyone calls Fiera.

. They fall in and out of love with each other and plan one last hit. In parallel, there is another story that stars the neighbors of that married couple of robbers, a middle-class couple dazzled by the light of the designer house that is 200 meters from their townhouse. It just so happens that this middle-class husband is a police officer and that will cause the two stories to become entangled.

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Shall we talk about the places of that double plot? «This book is different from the previous ones because there are few characters and few places.

“Four or five places and five characters

,” says Dicker. «Two of them live in a beautiful glass house in a very chic neighborhood on the outskirts of Geneva. Their neighbors are in a house that is strange in that environment, in a place that does not fit into that paradise," says Dicker. «

Its two settings are in conflict and express the tension of social classes

that is in the novel. This is a book about the social class struggle in which idealized images are what move the characters. The class struggle is the fascinated gaze towards the other who always seems more than us.

"

A wild animal

also speaks of Guinevere," Dicker continues. «Geneva is a particular city. The world thinks that it is one of the capitals of the world, comparable to London and Paris. But the reality is that it has 300,000 inhabitants. "That green, almost rural suburb of large designer houses... It's actually 15 minutes from the center of Geneva." There is a moment in which Dicker's reader will discover that

the original sin of his characters is in the old privileges of Swiss banking

, as if that were a great collective guilt that haunts his country. «We have already gone through that storm as a society. The banks adapted to the rules of the international authorities and, when the process was over, people continued looking to

Switzerland as a financial refuge

for its stability. It seems to me that the image of Switzerland has even been reinforced,” says Dicker, and it is not known whether he says this with joy or sarcasm.

And the evil? The bad guys in this novel have gestures of nobility and tend towards romanticism. «The novel, it is my opinion,

is not made for us to judge

. Well, maybe it's me, I'm not a fan of judging people, but it's because I feel that making judgments goes against people's understanding and I always want to understand. We all have moments in life when we are willing to do evil. It doesn't have to be robbing a jewelry store, it could be the desire to have an adventure outside of the couple... I'm not interested in saying what the good response is to situations like this, I'm interested in finding out what each person's response is, understanding their reasons. ».

“When I create a character,” Dicker continues, “a priority is that they be worth loving, whatever their circumstance.

Even if they are people who do not fit our values

, because in that challenge is the way to find something new about ourselves.

Last question: why don't you get your stories a little dirty?

Why don't you free them from Porsches and visits to Cartier, why don't you free them from that air of luxury Netflix production

that sometimes hides a little of its complexity? «I don't think everything is so luxurious in my books. Maybe it's the readers who do that setting work in their heads. If anything, luxury helps me introduce something that squeaks.