Based on a True Story

By Delphine de Vigan and George Miller

'A wonderful literary trompe l'oeil: a book about friendship, writing and the boundary between reality and fantasy ... Dark, smart, strange, compelling' Harriet Lane, bestselling author of Her

Overwhelmed by the huge success of her latest novel, exhausted and suffering from a crippling inability to write, Delphine meets L.

L. embodies everything Delphine admires; sophisticated and unusually intuitive, she slowly but deliberately carves herself a niche in the writer's life. However, as she makes herself indispensable to Delphine, the intensity of this unexpected friendship manifests itself in increasingly sinister ways. And as their lives become further entwined, L. begins to threaten Delphine's identity and her safety.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Apr 6, 2017
• ISBN: 9781408878835

Delphine de Vigan

Delphine de Vigan (Boulogne-Billancourt, 1966) vive en París. En Anagrama ha publicado, desde 2012: Días sin hambre: «Maneja la materia autobiográfica con una contención que remite a Marguerite Duras» (Marta Sanz); No y yo: «Maestría y ternura... Una novela atípica» (Juanjo M. Jambrina, Jot Down); Las horas subterráneas: «Sensible, inquietante y un poco triste. Triste y soberbia» (François Busnel, L’Express); Nada se opone a la noche, que la consagró internacionalmente, ha vendido en Francia más de ochocientos mil ejemplares, ha sido publicada por una veintena de editoriales extranjeras y ha recibido el Premio de Novela Fnac, el Premio de Novela de las Televisiones Francesas, el Premio Renaudot de los Institutos de Francia, el Gran Premio de la Heroína Madame Figaro y el Gran Premio de las Lectoras de Elle: «Este magnífico testimonio la confirma como una escritora contemporánea de referencia. Imprescindible» (Sònia Hernández, La Vanguardia); «Con sobriedad y precisión, sin sentimentalismo (pero no sin sentimiento), Delphine de Vigan firma una inteligente, magnífica e implacable novela» (Elvira Navarro); Basada en hechos reales, galardonada con el Premio Renaudot y el Goncourt de los Estudiantes, y llevada al cine por Roman Polanski: «Hace alarde de maestría expresiva para disolver los límites de lo que es verdad y lo que es mentira... Apasiona» (Robert Saladrigas, La Vanguardia); Las lealtades: «Perturbadora» (Javier Aparicio Maydeu, El País); «Cuestiona a una sociedad que mira hacia otro lado, ante las violencias soterradas» (Lourdes Ventura, El Mundo); y Las gratitudes: «Pequeño prodigio con el que la autora francesa reflexiona sobre la vejez, la soledad y la importancia de las palabras» (David Morán, ABC).

Reviews for Based on a True Story

[veeshee-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This is one of those cases where the novel and reader just weren't compatible. I thought that the story had definite promise and the premise was very intriguing. However, it was a very slow buildup and I quickly lost attention. By the time the story got good, I realized that I wasn't very invested in it and didn't really care too much about the outcome. I will say that I quite enjoyed the writing style of the author; it flowed very nicely and you can tell the author took the time to carefully choose her words. I think that this novel would be best suited for someone looking for a slow, deep character-based book rather than something thrilling.

I received this novel as an advanced copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[drmaf-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The first 150 pages of this book are a real drag, a weak story about self-indulgent and self-absorbed people that you can't possibly care about. From there on in, however, it does improve, although never reaching great heights. The author Delphine suffers a massive case of writing block and starts challenging everything she believed in. She then meets L., the woman she has always wanted to be, sophisticated, cool and beautiful. Gradually , however, L. moves from being a supportive friend to obsessive controller of Delphine's life. Things really take a downward turn when Delphine secretly tries to cure her writer's block by planning to write a book about L.'s life based on the fragments L has told her. When L. discovers this, the situation become Misery-like. The shock revelation at the end however will come as no surprise. Not a great read by any means, but if you can get through the first third of the book, it is worth continuing. It drags itself above being self-indulgent tripe by quality terse writing and cultivating a genuine interest in seeing where its going. Worthwhile in the final analysis.

[jasonpettus · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)In a way it's easy to describe to American audiences the plot of celebrated French author Delphine de Vigan's new book, Based On A True Story; it's essentially an intellectual version of the old B-pic thriller Single White Female, in which a public artist meets and gets along with one of her fans, the fan turns obsessive, and the fan eventually attempts to take over the artist's life, moving into her house and gaining access to her email and eventually even showing up to public events dressed and acting like her. But this gets a lot more complicated and metafictional when it comes to de Vigan's book; for the artist being stalked is her herself, the whole thing written as a true memoir even though it clearly is not, the project inspired by the fact that the last novel de Vigan published, 2011's Rien ne s'oppose ? la nuit (Nothing Holds Back the Night), was a semi-autobiographical novel about coping with her real-life mother's bipolar disorder, which made her a mainstream celebrity in France but also garnered her passionate hatred among certain circles for "exploiting" the real-life mental illness of another person for her own personal gain.What True Story is, then, is a meditation on where exactly the slippery line lays between real-life events and made-up details when it comes to the act of a novelist writing a fictional novel, the same subject famously explored in John Irving's The World According to Garp; but instead of doing this the usual dry academic way of writers her type, here she presents it as a supermarket pulp, clearly taking a cue off Paul Auster by weaving herself into this story of fandom gone wrong, even while cleverly presenting the details in a way so that it might turn out that the mysterious "L." is in fact a figment of de Vigan's stressed, overly exhausted, nearly burnt-out imagination. (None of de Vigan's friends ever meet L; she always rents pre-furnished apartments so to leave no trace of herself after leaving; the fake emails she sends out to de Vigan's friends are always in de Vigan's name; the details she tells de Vigan about her personal life turn out to have all been culled from the books in de Vigan's library, etc.)It's a very clever and thought-provoking book, not just an astute examination of the creative process but also a commentary on the times we currently live in, when reality TV and edgy documentaries are all the rage, and more and more of those reality-fans are complaining about "why should they care" about a "bunch of stuff that never happened" when it comes to contemporary fiction. De Vigan clearly has some complicated issues regarding the public reaction to her last book, and also clearly struggled with the question of what to write next, of how one could ever return to fiction after having suffered such a maelstrom of public reaction from a book based mostly on real-life events. This is one of the smartest and most entertaining ways she could've addressed these issues, and should satisfy even her harshest critics that she can still write compelling and dramatic stories even when not relying on the crutch of real life, even while proving that there's still a vital and necessary place in our society for stories about a "bunch of stuff that never happened," that fiction at its best is as moving and teaches as much about the world as any snotty serialized documentary. It comes strongly recommended today for these reasons, and will likely also be making CCLaP's "best of the year" list come this December.Out of 10: 9.6

[wassilissa · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Die Schriftstellerin Delphine de Vigan leidet unter einer Schreibblockade. Da kommt es sehr gelegen, das sie eine neue Freudin, im Buch nur L. genannt, kennen lernt, die immer mehr von ihrem Leben übernimmt: Das Buch ist sehr authentisch geschrieben und wird erst nach und nach richtiggehend unheimlich.Ich fand es ziemlich gut. Ist es jetzt eine wahre Geschichte? Diese Frage bleibt offen....Einen Aspekt, der im Buch ausführlich besprochen wird, ist das Verhältnis von Fiktion und Realität in Büchern. L. ist eine Verfechterin des realistischen Schreibens. Sie verdammt Delphine geradezu, als jene etwas Fiktives schreiben möchte. Ich selbst habe eine gewisse Abneingung gegen die Bücher, in denen Schriftsteller ständig nur ihr eigenes Leben verarbeiten. Meiner Meinung nach ist das Geschichtenerzählen (also die Fiktion) die Kunst. Aber wahrscheinlich ist es irgendwie beides - und das zeigt dieses Buch.