58 pages • 1 hour read
Hervé Le Tellier, Transl. Adriana HunterThe Anomaly
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 3, Chapters 23-29Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3: “Song of Oblivion”
Part 3, Chapter 23 Summary: “Encounter of a Second Kind”
Part III of The Anomaly covers the events that take place after June 26, 2001. On June 27, Blake March wakes up bound and gagged in his own apartment. Blake June has injected him with a sedative and covered the apartment in transparent plastic. (Blake March thinks about the television program Dexter.) Now Blake June tells his duplicate that neither of them knows what is going on, but “there can’t be two of us” (255). First, he interrogates Blake March for the new bank account numbers and other access codes. Then he kills his double as painlessly as possible and gets rid of the body.
The next day, the French president learns about the duplicated Chinese airplane. Minutes later, he goes on live television to make a joint announcement—simultaneously with leaders in the United States, Germany, and Russia—informing the public about Air France 006. A scientist introduces the simulation hypothesis, and Blake’s wife, Flora, turns to him and says, “That’s nuts” (262). To conclude his announcement, the president quotes Albert Camus’s comments after the Hiroshima bombing, including the sentiment that “Humanity is perhaps being offered its last chance” (262).
Part 3, Chapter 24 Summary: “A Man Watches a Woman”
On June 28, Jamy Pudlowski explains the situation to André Vannier March. She shows André a live video of his counterpart in the hangar sitting with Lucie, and André watches as his younger self frets over Lucie while Lucie ignores him. Instead of worrying about how complicated his life will become now, he thinks about how pathetic he is in Lucie’s presence.
A commercial attaché from the French consulate greets André March and lets him know that France is sending agents including his friend in counterintelligence, Mr. Mélois. André jokes about whether he is a singular or plural entity and whether he is the original or the copy. Then the two Andrés meet each other in person. It is a strange experience for both, because their features are not inverted (like in a mirror) and their voices are higher than either expects. When André June learns that Lucie left André March, he resolves to “be twice the man” (273), and André March gives his younger self some advice on how he might not scare her off this time. Because France is offering new identities to duplicates, André March hatches a plan to change his name and retire while André June keeps working. They will have to wait and see how France handles their retirement money and which one of them will be more amenable to their shared friends.
Part 3, Chapter 25 Summary: “Sophia’s World”
Sophia March and Sophia June meet in a child’s playroom. FBI agents brought Betty the frog for them to play with, and the two girls challenge each other to remember things from their own lives. At one point, Sophia June asks her counterpart whether their father made her swear not to tell anyone, too, and Sophia March has a tantrum about keeping the “secret” (281). The secret is that, in Paris, twice while their mother took Liam sightseeing, Sophia’s father, Clark, forced Sophia to bathe naked with him while he touched her. Then, when he returned from Iraq in May, Clark continued to force Sophia March to get naked in bathtubs with him.
Part 3, Chapter 26 Summary: “Slimboys”
Slimboy March is upset because an MI6 agent rerouted him from his duet with Elton John to a government building in London. There, he is surprised to meet Slimboy June, and the two men eye each other silently for a time while eating. Finally, they confirm each other’s identity by pointing to a scar on their wrist and mentioning their late lover, Tom. Then Slimboy June congratulates his other self on his success with “Yaba Girls” while Slimboy March boasts about all his duets with famous singers in the last three months and his upcoming film role. He also triumphantly reveals how open he has become about his sexuality. There is no competitiveness between them. In fact, Slimboy June shares the song he wrote while waiting in the hangar, and they start singing it together, both giddy about their newfound camaraderie. They decide to pretend to be identical twins and form a group called “SlimMen” (290), since they come from a part of Nigeria where identical twins are common. The MI6 agent makes this plan possible as Elton John pulls up outside the building.
Part 3, Chapter 27 Summary: “Same Player Dies Again”
David March is dying at Mount Sinai Hospital. His brother, Paul, has been summoned by the US government and, after being debriefed about the situation, examines David June’s medical records. David June arrives at the hospital; after seeing his dying counterpart, Paul takes his new brother for a walk and explains the cancer diagnosis to him all over again. They caught it earlier this time, but his prognosis is not much better.
Later, the agents arrange for David to meet his wife, Jody, who has a hard time accepting David June after having to watch David March slowly die over three months. She is angry all over again when she learns that David’s cancer will still be fatal—that she will have to grieve his passing twice. While they talk, the other David Markle passes away.
Part 3, Chapter 28 Summary: “Woods vs. Wasserman”
Joanna Woods (Joanna June) meets her double at Aby Wasserman’s studio, which is now also the home of Joanna Wasserman (Joanna March). They got married after the turbulence of Air France 006 convinced Joanna March to seize the day and marry Aby as soon as possible. Joanna March is also pregnant with Aby’s baby. Both Joanna March and Joanna June begin to cry, unsure how to handle the situation, while Aby struggles to know which Joanna to comfort. He stares at the tattoo of an oasis on his wrist, a tribute to his father’s Auschwitz number 51540, which looked like the word OASIS upside down.
Joanna June asks questions about their lives, subconsciously using the pronoun “we.” They both think about the legal precedents to the situation, of which there are none. Joanna June asks about Ellen, their ill sister, and learns that Joanna March took the morally questionable job with Denton & Lovell to pay for Ellen’s treatment. Joanna June is emotionally affected by the news, and Aby comforts her, which upsets Joanna March. To this Aby responds, frustrated, that he only loves one woman. Then he breaks down and cries.
Part 3, Chapter 29 Summary: “One Child, Two Mothers”
On June 29, the two Lucie Bogaerts confront each other in France, and the meeting quickly becomes confrontational. They fight over their singular son, their apartment, their clothes, and the film projects they are working on. Lucie June dislikes how her double looks when she is angry. Confronted by the realization that this other person knows all her secrets, Lucie June becomes suddenly ashamed of the way she has treated men in the past.
The FBI psychologists realize that they need a divorce specialist to handle the sharing and splitting up of assets and the question of Louis’s custody. They tell the two Lucies that Louis has handled the news of having two mothers very well. Louis has a preference between the two versions of his mother—he prefers Lucie June—because he has enjoyed having evenings off from his mother, Lucie March, who can be smothering when she is unattached romantically. He also misses André. But Louis also has a sense of humor about the situation. He and the psychologist decide to throw dice each day to determine which version of his mother to spend time with, a trick to avoid placing the burden of decision on him.
Part 3, Chapters 23-29 Analysis
The Anomaly follows the March passengers in Part I, the June passengers in Part II, and their entanglement in Part III. It is a braided structure, in which separate story threads collide in Part II and then twist together. Unavoidably, the passenger stories become double narratives (or, to use Slimboy’s story as an example, duets). The Anomaly is essentially a collection of short stories about “doubles,” tied together by a Hollywood science-fiction plot in which traditional hero characters like Adrian Miller and Jamy Pudlowski respond to the disaster of Air France 006 on a national scale.
Le Tellier focuses on eight passengers whose stories each coincide with a typical situation in life often told in novels: David’s is a story of someone dying from disease; Joanna’s is the story of falling in love and starting a family; Lucie’s and André’s stories are about the separation of a family; Slimboy’s is about coming out and being true to own’s identity; Sophia’s is about escaping domestic abuse; Victor’s is about suicide and second chances; and Blake’s is about getting away with murder. The Anomaly then experiments with what happens to these eight stories when their central characters are duplicated. In this way the novel intentionally subverts a set of familiar literary tropes by throwing them together and introducing an element of chaos.
While Le Tellier plays thematically with the concept of the doppelgänger or double throughout the novel, Part III directly engages with the idea of “meeting one’s double.” Part of novel’s chaos element is the uncertainty of each person’s reaction to meeting their other self. It is one of the novel’s games: How would a professional killer, who does only what is most practical, respond to the existence of a copy of him in the world? He would kill him to protect his secret, to not have to share, and simply because “there can’t be two of us” (255). But what about more ordinary people? Lucie and Joanna must compete with their doubles over singular loved ones. Lucie and André, forced to confront things about themselves that they do not like, react in disgust and shame. Sophia and Slimboy have opposite reactions to meeting someone else who shares their secret: Sophia in a panic and Slimboy with joy. David and Victor each must confront their own deaths; one involuntary and unavoidable, and one voluntary and unrecognizable.
Le Tellier also plays with the uncanniness of the double. In the scenes that depict a character meeting their counterpart, first there is a sense of weirdness. The time difference can be seen in a pregnant belly or a pair of jeans that is more worn. Recognition is delayed because seeing oneself not inverted by a mirror or hearing one’s voice from elsewhere is alien, like watching or hearing a recording. Le Tellier focuses on the little things, such as language; Joanna cannot help but use the pronoun “we” to talk about their shared life, and André wonders whether someone using the pronoun “you” is using it in the singular or plural. André also jokes about now being “twice the man” (273). But there are also the big things; André wonders whether he is the original or the copy, Joanna wonders which of her is the object of Aby’s love, and all of them grapple with the concept of change—becoming a new version of themselves.
It is obvious from the first chapter with Sophia that Clark is abusing her, but Le Tellier does not confirm this as true until Sophia March and Sophia June discuss their “secret.” Aside from hints about the bathtub, Sophia is mostly defined by her concern for Betty the frog (who is really a toad) and her passion for amphibians. Because Sophia associates negative experiences with being in the bathtub, her interest in amphibiousness is related to her desire to divide her life experience between being in water and being out of water. Sophia worries about Betty because Betty might symbolize this amphibious version of herself—and, as in Sophia’s first chapter—her capacity to survive extreme lack of water.
The theme of arbitrariness continues throughout the novel. Le Tellier references a famous poem by Stéphane Mallarmé, “A Throw of the Dice Will Never Abolish Chance,” when Louis suggests using dice to decide which Lucie to spend time with. Louis is inspired by Dungeons & Dragons, a form of storytelling where the success and failure of actions is determined by dice rolls. Using dice to determine real-life decisions both takes away the characters’ free will and reflects Le Tellier’s project to depict his characters’ lives as simulations—in which computer programs assign number values to people and events. The reduction of important life decisions into number values is also represented by Aby Wasserman’s tattoo of an oasis, an adaptation of his father’s Auschwitz designation, 51540.
