Pull a fiction of a real fact is a perilous business. Dugain proposes a hybrid work. Not exactly a fiction, not quite real, not quite a thriller, not quite a painting of the American 60's, not quite a psychological study. But all at once. Written in the first person, the novel is a dive into the depths of a sick brain, his impulses, his inner journey, her grueling family history. The author presents almost clinically that man of superior intelligence, but unable any empathy. Everyone reacts differently to this narrative of madness; narrative that the intelligence not to fall into the sordid. The story is all the stronger, magnified by its construction worthy of a thriller. It's exciting and chilling at the same time, I could not free myself from discomfort with the idea that much of the story is true (it is not a biography, what True? what is fictionalized?). But the story is not that it is also a beautiful evocation of American society mired in the Vietnam War, the disenchantment of youth in search of another company that offered to him. In the end, a strong and challenging work.
