The Anomaly by Herve Le Tellier

Translated by Adriana Hunter (Penguin, $37)

When a genre-crossing sci-fi/ thriller sells a million copies, you have to take notice. When it also wins the Prix Goncourt for its experimental, literary writing, expectations are set very high.

But Herve Le Tellier’s The Anomaly, now translated into English, is, sad to say, a disappointment. This is a novel of two genres and, put together, they curdle.

Le Tellier has been writing plays, poems, short stories and experimental fiction for 30 years, but this generic range has not helped him conquer sci-fi, and the book often reads like a low-budget Hollywood script.

The central event hinges on an aircraft that, with all its passengers, doubles and travels back in time. This is not an easy concept to grasp – I had to sketch a timeline to keep track – but the basic events are that in March 2021 an aircraft flies from Paris to JFK and encounters severe turbulence. Three months later traffic control is shocked to receive a call from the same pilot in the same aircraft, with the same passengers – they have just gone through extreme turbulence and need assistance.

Le Tellier is skilful in making them come to life in only a few pages. But intruding into all these lives – and the story – are FBI agents, knocking on their doors to inform them that another version of themselves has just landed in New Jersey.

The book’s questionable metaphysics might be forgivable if it didn’t revert to blockbuster devices. Enter the scientists, explaining the situation to an open-mouthed president in Hollywood scientese: ‘‘That’s what’s called an Einstein-Rosen bridge, a Lorentz wormhole with negative mass.’’