The Anomaly

Victor Miesel is a 43-year-old writer who translates a wide variety of novels into French on the side. His own novels, The Mountains Will Come to Find Us and Failures That Missed Mark, were well received by critics but did not sell well. He is critical of the Paris publishing industry, believing that often the novels that sell the best are not as good as those by “modest geniuses” (20). His editor, Clémence Balmer, thinks he is a talented author who balances an improvisational style with attention to form (85). His career and his role as the writer of both The Anomaly and another novel that shares its plot with Le Tellier’s The Anomaly make Victor an obvious avatar for Le Tellier himself. As such, Le Tellier speaks through Victor on topics such as US politics and climate change.

Victor is a charming man with a deadpan wit. He looks a little bit like the early 20th-century writer Franz Kafka. He is not lonely, but he has never had a serious relationship with a woman because, he believes, he has never found someone with whom he wanted to dedicate the time and effort. This changes when he meets Anne Vasseur at a translation conference. After bad timing prevents them from starting a relationship, they get a second chance when Victor June arrives, and the novel ends with their serendipitous reunion, mutual happiness, and the promise of a successful writing career.

Something unique happens to Victor March on Air France 006; he becomes unmoored by his experience on the flight, as if he glimpsed the anomaly as it happened. Afterward, he writes The Anomaly in a desperate stupor and dies by suicide. Victor June, who is not suicidal, must reckon with the fact that Victor March killed himself and wrote a book that Victor June doesn’t like or understand, raising questions about both the effects of the anomaly and the mindset that led to Victor March’s suicide.

Lucie Bogaert is a woman in her late 20s who works as a film editor. She fell in love at a very young age and had a son, Louis, whom she dotes on excessively. Louis’s father broke Lucie’s heart, and as a result Lucie values her independence. Thus, she is wary of forming attachments with men and seeks them out only for sexual satisfaction. She is aware of her beauty’s effect on men and uses it to keep control over her relationships with them, sometimes cruelly. Despite professional success, her life is unsatisfying to her; she struggles with bouts of depression, and after Air France 006, Lucie March decides to start anew.

Lucie’s confrontation with her double reveals that she doesn’t like herself very much. She is disgusted by her own dismissive gestures and facial expressions and is forced to remember all the ways she has mistreated men in the past. Le Tellier uses Lucie’s character arc to explore how a parent would respond to having to share their child with another version of themselves, raising questions about the centrality of motherhood to identity.

André Vannier is a world-renowned French architect who is overseeing the construction of two major buildings in New York City and Mumbai. In his 60s, he is highly respected and very successful, owning multiple homes and an impressive collection of art and friends. But, despite his success, André finds himself under the power of Lucie, whom he falls in love with and follows around until she agrees to try him as a boyfriend. André March and Lucie March’s relationship is brief, but he obsesses over her and continues to contact her until his encounter with André June makes him realize how pathetic he had become.

André often serves as a way for Le Tellier to explore connections between identity, age, and the body, as André worries about his aging body in relation to Lucie’s youth and conventional beauty. André’s friends are his age, but he falls in love with much younger women. He believes his connection to these women will make him feel young, but in reality he only feels older in comparison to them (133). André June has a second chance to save his relationship with Lucie, to give Lucie the space she needs. The Air France 006 anomaly allows for the kind of redo that is impossible in intense, emotional relationships.

Femi Ahmed Kaduna is a Nigerian musical artist who goes by the name Slimboy. He had been trying to break into the industry in London, doing covers of well-known Afro-rap songs, but he has had little success. After his frightening experience on Air France 006, Slimboy March changes his approach to songwriting; he stops using auto-tune and writes a heartfelt pop song about his mother called “Yaba Girls.” The song turns Slimboy into an international pop sensation, leading to film roles, guest spots on major television shows, and duets with popstars.

Slimboy was born in a part of Nigeria known for the prevalence of identical twins among its population. He is gay and, until the events of the novel, has been afraid to be himself publicly because of the homophobic climate and laws in Nigeria. His first lover, Tom, was brutally murdered when they were teenagers; once he becomes successful, he begins speaking out against homophobia. When Slimboy March meets Slimboy June, the latter feels liberated by Slimboy March’s musical success and increasing comfort level with his sexually, and soon the two Slimboys form a musical duo.

Joanna Woods is an ambitious, no-nonsense lawyer from Houston. She is Black, the daughter of a seamstress, and she remembers the way her white friends’ parents looked down on her mother’s profession. The experience spurred her ambition, leading her to reach the pinnacle of her career.

Joanna met Aby Wasserman in 2020 on a case, and they fell in love. After fearing for her life on Air France 006, Joanna March decided to stop waiting, marry Aby, and start a family. She also took a job with a major legal firm, Denton & Lovell, despite her ethical qualms about defending a pharmaceutical company, because her sister, Ellen, needed an expensive liver transplant. Joanna June returns to find that Joanna March has been living her life without her, and she does not know where she fits. Unlike several of the other characters’ stories, Joanna’s is not about second chances. Instead, it’s about what happens when a double is introduced to a story in which everything is going well. How would another copy of the same wife challenge a happy marriage? In Le Tellier’s version, Joanna June must sacrifice her own life dreams to let the other version of herself continue on her happy path.

Sophia Kleffman is six years old and lives with her older brother, Liam, her mother, April, and her father, Clark. Sophia is a sweet, innocent girl who is smart and curious about the world. April and Clark come from blue-collar backgrounds and got married young. She was smitten with him once, until she discovered that Clark’s biggest romantic gesture, a poem he claimed he wrote, was actually plagiarized. Clark failed to find a career until he joined the army at age 22 and found his confidence; then he started to become hardened and cruel. His time in combat made him even meaner. Unlike Lucie, April stayed trapped in her unhappy marriage.

On their family vacation to Paris, Clark began forcing Sophia to take a bath with him naked while he touched her body. After the trip, whenever Clark returned home from assignment, he continued to force Sophia March to take the same baths, leading to a pattern of sexual abuse. If not for Air France 006, April would likely have remained trapped in the marriage and Sophia’s experience with abuse would have caused lifelong trauma. Clark’s abuse only becomes known when the Protocol 42 psychiatrists begin asking her questions, and later Sophia June and Sophia March talk about the secret openly. Le Tellier uses Sophia’s story arc to demonstrate how the arrival of a double can make it possible to escape a bad situation.

Captain David Markle is a pilot working for Air France; he flies Air France 006 on March 10, 2021. David is in his late 40s and nearing retirement when his brother, Paul, an oncologist, diagnoses him with terminal pancreatic cancer. His wife, Jody, is a teacher, and they have two children. David dies only a month after the diagnosis, around the same time that David June lands at McGuire Air Force Base.

The pattern of the book sets up an expectation that the anomaly will give David June a second chance to beat the cancer, but that is not what happens. The cancer is detected earlier, but still not early enough. Instead, Le Tellier uses David’s story to explore the effect of David’s death on his family, who have to go through the pain of losing him twice. David June and David March never really meet, but David June must confront his own mortality head-on—seeing his own body dying in a hospital bed. Le Tellier also uses David’s role as a pilot to illustrate the moments that the plane is copied.

Adrian Miller is a mathematician specializing in probability. After getting his PhD, he worked at MIT on a comically insignificant study of the statistics of waiting in line. While at MIT, he met Tina Wang, then a PhD student, with whom he wrote the protocols for air-traffic emergencies. Too immature for the seriousness of the task, they ate junk food and added jokes from science fiction as they wrote. In 2021, Adrian is a professor at Princeton, but he is still an awkward and nerdy academic. He could have easily left academia for a high-paying finance job, but he prefers his current position, where he has the freedom to work on what he wants to work on. He is a “dreamer” despite spending his time with numbers (108).

Le Tellier portrays Adrian as someone who is more concerned with trivial things—like whether his crush, fellow Princeton professor Meredith Harper, likes him—than the nature of reality. Meredith, a British mathematician who studies topology, also seems to be more interested in romance and witty banter than the crisis at hand. She likes Adrian, and Le Tellier writes their scenes according to the genre conventions of romantic comedy. He is shy, awkward, and intimidated by her. She is straightforward and amused. Le Tellier situates their story within the context of the movies, describing Adrian’s appearance in relation to famous actors. Tina thought he looked like Christian Slater in The Name of the Rose (a 2001 film based on the postmodern novel by Umberto Eco), and now she thinks he looks like a balding Keanu Reeves (148). Meredith thinks of him more as a run-down Ryan Gosling, and the president thinks he looks like Tom Hanks.

Adrian is also an unlikely hero typical of blockbuster disaster films: the nerd who finds himself suddenly thrust into life-or-death situations concerning the fate of the world. He has no business talking to various world leaders, or even forming special task forces (since he is just going to invite his crush). Because he is at the center of the US response to Air France 006, that response comes off as unserious.