Delphine de Vigan. (2017). Based on a True Story. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Delphine de Vigan. 2017. Based On a True Story. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Delphine de Vigan, Based On a True Story. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017.

Delphine de Vigan. Based On a True Story. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017.

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Based on a True Story

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Based on a True Story

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1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Vigan, Delphine de
   • bioText: Delphine de Vigan is French and lives in Paris. She has published several novels for adults. No and Me was awarded the Prix des Libraires 2008 (The Booksellers' Prize) in France.
   • name: Delphine de Vigan
2. • role: Translator
   • fileAs: Miller, George
   • bioText: George Miller is a regular translator for Le Monde diplomatique's English-language edition. He is also the translator of Conversations with my Gardener by Henri Cueco and Inside Al-Qaeda by Mohammed Sifaoui.
   • name: George Miller

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Bloomsbury USA

publishDate

2017-05-09T00:00:00-04:00

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title

Based on a True Story

fullDescription

The international sensation that sold half a million copies in France and the subject of a new film by Roman Polanski: a chilling story about a friendship gone terrifyingly toxic.

Winner of Le Prix Renaudot 2015
Winner of Le Prix Goncourt des Lycéens 2015

Overwhelmed by the huge success of her latest novel, exhausted and suffering from a crippling inability to write, Delphine meets L., who embodies everything Delphine has always secretly admired; she is a glittering image of feminine sophistication and spontaneity and she has an uncanny knack of always saying the right thing. Unusually intuitive, L. senses Delphine's vulnerability and slowly but deliberately carves herself a niche in the writer's life. However, as L. makes herself indispensable to Delphine, the intensity of this unexpected friendship manifests itself in increasingly sinister ways. As their lives become more and more entwined, L. threatens Delphine's identity, both as a writer and as an individual.
This sophisticated psychological thriller skillfully blurs the line between fact and fiction, reality and artifice. Delphine de Vigan has crafted a terrifying, insidious, metafictional thriller; a haunting vision of seduction and betrayal; a book which in its hungering for truth implicates the reader, too-even as it holds us in its thrall.

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: The New York Times Book Review
   • content: The horrors of authorship . . . provide especially good material for psychological thrillers . . . [and] a twisted, witchy relationship that's closer to identity theft than friendship . . . The final coup de grâce . . . will leave you with questions about the nature of reality and sanity."
2. • premium: False
   • source: The Guardian
   • content: If Simone de Beauvoir had written Single White Female with nods to Marguerite Duras, the result might be something like this latest Gallic grip-lit sensation.
3. • premium: False
   • source: NPR, "Our Guide to 2017's Great Reads"
   • content: A powerful novel of suspense that may or may not be based on truth . . . A creepy tale of female friendship gone wrong; vampirism of the emotional kind.
4. • premium: False
   • source: The New York Times, "10 French Novels to Read Now"
   • content: With her children off to college and her documentary filmmaking lover abroad, a novelist meets an impeccably elegant ghostwriter who deftly takes over her life and saps, succubus-like, her will to write and, nearly, to live. By the end of the book, the lines between reality, fiction and madness are blurred to the point where it isn't clear if they can be redrawn.
5. • premium: False
   • source: The Daily Telegraph
   • content: The next Gone Girl.
6. • premium: False
   • source: Sunday Times
   • content: A superior identity-theft thriller on the same spectrum as The Talented Mr Ripley, or Single White Female . . . De Vigan has produced a concept thriller with a lavish dash of theorising about the status of fiction and reality that flatters us readers as we realise, finally, this is all made up and the novel's ultimate point—neatly and cleverly made—is that fiction is the way we come to understand the truth of reality.
7. • premium: False
   • source: The Observer
   • content: A wonderful literary trompe l'oeil, a novel about identity and writing, reality and imagination. It's dark, smart, compelling and extremely French.
8. • premium: False
   • source: The Daily Mail
   • content: A subtly told story of an obsessive female friendship that steadily consumes both of the women. There is an added riddle, however. The novelist in the thriller is also called Delphine. So is this a hyper-realist story based in truth or is it a work of pure fiction? We can't be sure. This is that rare beast—a fine thriller and a potential literary sensation. Patricia Highsmith would have been proud. Don't miss.
9. • premium: False
   • source: The Independent
   • content: All writing is constructed on shifting sands, but I've never read a book that makes the complex relationship between reality and fiction both as visible, and at the same time so opaque, as here. I was captivated. Combining the allure of Gone Girl with the sophistication of literary fiction, Based on a True Story is a creepy but unapologetically clever psychological thriller that also aces the Bechdel test.
10. • premium: False
    • source: Publishers Weekly
    • content: The insidious nature of a complex mind game masquerading as friendship is chilling to watch unfold.
11. • premium: False
    • source: Kirkus Reviews
    • content: Based on a True Story is both a clever, gripping psychodrama about an obsessive, toxic friendship and a literary exploration of the blurred lines between reality and fiction.
12. • premium: False
    • source: Library Journal
    • content: A smart, elegant thriller . . . A fine portrait of predation as real as anything in the jungle; scary and persuasive.
13. • premium: False
    • source: Boston Globe
    • content: When a writer befriends a ghostwriter, the scene is set for a tension-filled tale about a tangled, stifling relationship that gleefully channels both Stephen King's 'Misery' and 1992's 'Single White Female.'
14. • premium: False
    • source: The Spectator
    • content: Ever since Gone Girl there have been many attempts at thrillers involving unreliable narrators, but I believe this is the very best of them . . . Utterly brilliant.
15. • premium: False
    • source: The Cleveland Plain Dealer, "Beach Reads: Scorching Summer Mysteries for 2017"
    • content: Not your ordinary book. A darkly playful post-modern read . . . What begins as a seemingly straight-forward tale of a tainted friendship which set the author off course evolves in a fun-house mirror reflecting alternating truths and fictions while questioning the very nature of madness and reality. It's a book even Nabokov could enjoy. Grade: A.
16. • premium: False
    • source: The Missourian
    • content: Days after I finished this book I found myself haunted by the characters, and I read it a second time looking for clues I might have missed. I
17. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      March 27, 2017
      Delphine, the narrator of this unsettling metafictional tale of obsession and interchangeable identities from de Vigan (Nothing Holds Back the Night), reverts back to her shy, schoolgirl persona after the success of her latest autobiographical novel leaves her feeling overwhelmed. Then she meets the chic, confident L., with whom she immediately strikes up an easy rapport. The friendship develops smoothly, with the two women getting drinks around Paris and learning more about each other. Except L. seems more eager to know everything there is to know about Delphine—all about her two grown children, her relationship with her boyfriend—than share much about herself. Writing is at the center of the relationship: Delphine’s inability to put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, and L.’s insistence that there’s a book Delphine must write. Almost without realizing it, Delphine cedes control to L., with dire consequences. While readers might pick up on L.’s unsavory nature faster than Delphine, the insidious nature of a complex mind game masquerading as friendship is chilling to watch unfold.

18. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      April 1, 2017
      

      As the very title suggests, this latest work from Prix Goncourt finalist de Vigan (Underground Time) is metafiction, or memoir as fiction, but it's also a smart, elegant thriller that generates its chills from the very ordinariness of events as they start unfolding. A novelist named Delphine, fragile and anxious after the unexpectedly overwhelming success of a new novel, attends a party and becomes enchanted with a women named L., who flirtatiously tells Delphine that she's beautiful when she dances. L. seems perfectly attuned to Delphine and counterbalances her unease with feminine sophistication. Later, after receiving a particularly angry letter from a reader, Delphine gets a call from L., welcome if puzzling; where did she get Delphine's number? L. explains that away and slides smoothly into Delphine's life, eventually taking over. In the end, Delphine is caught in a web of her own making. VERDICT A fine portrait of predation as real as anything in the jungle; scary and persuasive for most readers.

      Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

19. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      May 1, 2017
      Writer Delphine finds herself unprepared for the tremendous popularity of her latest book. It's brought the unwavering support of her fans, along with the ire of others, particularly the anonymous author of unsettling letters. At a party one evening, a weary Delphine meets L., a fellow writer, and the two immediately connect. Soon Delphine and L. are seeing each other constantly, and Delphine is quick to shrug off some of L.'s idiosyncrasiesshe never visits when Delphine's children are present, for instance, and she seems to always be in the right place at the right time. Soon Delphine is under pressure to begin her next book, and her anxiety becomes paralyzing. L. takes it upon herself to help Delphine and becomes more and more involved with both her life and her writing. Before long, L.'s influencewhich spans yearscauses Delphine to question her innermost thoughts, abilities, and realities. Award-winning and best-selling de Vigan (Nothing Holds Back the Night, 2014) crafts a haunting, provoking tale that grows in intensity as the truth Delphine seeks becomes harder to find.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

popularity

267

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shortDescription

The international sensation that sold half a million copies in France and the subject of a new film by Roman Polanski: a chilling story about a friendship gone terrifyingly toxic.

Winner of Le Prix Renaudot 2015
Winner of Le Prix Goncourt des Lycéens 2015

Overwhelmed by the huge success of her latest novel, exhausted and suffering from a crippling inability to write, Delphine meets L., who embodies everything Delphine has always secretly admired; she is a glittering image of feminine sophistication and spontaneity and she has an uncanny knack of always saying the right thing. Unusually intuitive, L. senses Delphine's vulnerability and slowly but deliberately carves herself a niche in the writer's life. However, as L. makes herself indispensable to Delphine, the intensity of this unexpected friendship manifests itself in increasingly sinister ways. As their lives become more and more entwined, L. threatens Delphine's identity,...

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