This book is tiring to read. I've been trying to read this over and over as the plot sounds interesting but to no avail.

I had a difficult time reading this book. Characters were confusing and the story was choppy and somewhat confusing as a result.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the ARC of this title. This isn't a simple or cosy crime. The language is gorgeous but, after a while, exhausting, considering the content. I felt maybe it could be a translation issue. I didn't enjoy it and toward the end skim-read as a result. Some others may enjoy it though.

I did not even finish this book.
I was excited to read it because I love the game of Clue and was hoping for an Agatha Christie type mystery.
It was very heavy and I think some of the translation from French to English was lost.
I did not like any of the characters.

I was intrigued by the premise of the book in which psychiatric patients act out a life-size game of Clue. Every time that I picked this up to read it, I subconsciously expected something very different than what it is. Instead of a clever mystery, it is a social commentary originally written in French and translated to English. It is very difficult to relate the game of Clue to the plot and to even determine if there is a murder to be solved. The writing is beautiful, dense, and thought-provoking. I like it for that aspect but my expectations of a mystery kept getting in the way of my enjoyment of the book. I did not finish it for now but I think someday I might be in the mood for the writing, but not under the time pressure of a review.

Thanks to NetGalley, University of Nebraska Press, and the author Chloe Delaume for an electronic review copy.

Oh what a clever little read. I think there were some kinks that needed to be worked out like pace and structure but it was a solid attempt and an engaging story.

Translated from the original French, Not a Clue is a life size game of Clue involving six psychiatric patients. Each character takes on the persona of one of the Clue pieces, is placed in one of the rooms on the board, and has possession of one weapon. Each are accused of killing Dr. Black.

As a fan of the game Clue, I was thrilled for the chance to review a copy of Not a Clue, which is set to be released December 1, 2018. I was expecting something fun and a little bizarre since the suspects are psychiatric patients. However, what I got was a dizzying compilation of six characters with various psychiatric problems, an interfering author who repeatedly states she is unwilling to interfere, an omniscient narrator who doesn't actually do a good job of it, and Dr. Black who apparently speaks to us from beyond death.

On one hand, I was a bit in awe of this book. It's unique and pushes boundaries. Back in college, I read House of Leaves, an experimental horror book by Mark Z. Danielewski. I was intrigued and delighted by the experimental quality of the writing and layout, but honestly have very little recollection of what the heck it was about. I was equally delighted by the writing in Not a Clue. Even though it was a little difficult to get into with the incredible dearth of punctuation, I was nevertheless interested in how this book was written. Psychological definitions and explanations were woven throughout. Even though it made the book feel a little choppy, I still appreciated it as a former psychology student, especially since it made complete sense when it was injected. The character sketches were amusing and somewhat thought-provoking and sometimes it was difficult to tell what was real and what was fictional in each person's life.

On the other hand, this book also grated on my nerves. As the story went along, I was a little dismayed when I reached the halfway point and had only met two of the suspects. They were both well-thought out and very well developed, which made me wonder if this book was maybe incomplete or if the remaining four suspects were only going to be glossed over. In the end, I was disappointed at the treatment the last four characters received, confused by the officers that were occasionally interjected, annoyed with the omniscient narrator who didn't seem well-liked, and started to wonder if the author either ran out of steam while writing and that's why only the first two suspects were well-developed or if the novel was meant to go that way. After finishing the book, I'm still not sure.

I was much more invested in the first half of the book and just wanted the second half to pass as quickly as possible. I very much enjoyed how the first two characters were fleshed out, but the pattern was the same for all six of them. It became tiring and repetitive and, by the last one, I had little interest in getting to know them, not that they were very well developed, anyways. But with all the changing characters and the annoying omniscient narrator, I just wanted the book to end.

The idea for the book was interesting and was what drew me to it. The game of Clue and six psychiatric patients? Yes and yes. I was expecting a wild and bizarre ride. What I got was mostly just bizarre. I appreciated what the author was trying to do and greatly enjoyed her boundary pushing, but I was quite tired of it by the end and am still left wondering how the game actually played into the story. I get that the suspects, rooms, and weapons were involved and the characters more or less correlated with the game's characters, but the game in the story never felt anything more than flimsy and I probably would have enjoyed it without the overlay of the game.

In the end, I have my doubts as to whether or not Dr. Black was actually killed. Actually, I still have no idea who Dr. Black is/was and why he might have been killed. Then again, the why has never really been a part of the game. And I really didn't care that he might have been killed. I also, in my disgruntled moments, think the author's character is the one who was killed. Gee, if I were one of the six patients and had to make do with how my story was told, I might be willing to off her myself.

Not a Clue isn't a terrible book. It was intriguing and definitely different. It's well worth a look, but be prepared for a strange ride that may or may not leave you feeling fulfilled.


Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for a review.

Post Date: 11/30/18
Blog: https://thelilycafe.wordpress.com/
Link to post: https://thelilycafe.wordpress.com/2018/11/30/book-review-not-a-clue-by-chloe-delaume/

I received Not a Clue as an ARC from Netgalley. I was unable to get interested in this book so I never finished reading it.

Thank you NetGalley and University of Nebraska Press for this ARC.

Being a big fan of the board game and the movie (Tim Curry is the bees knees) I was beside myself when I learned I had been approved for this revamp of the idea. A fictional remake using six psychiatric patients to play out the game sounded amazing!

Sadly this book frustrated me to no end. The very thing I loved about the intro chapter was what I came to loathe in the remaining pages. The first chapter has so much mystery and confusion that I was excited to read the rest. The remainder of the book didn't really become more cohesive, but rather more confusing the further in I got.

I expected with six psychiatric patients that they would all be a bit unreliable as characters and had prepped myself for this. What I did not expect was beautiful writing that made no sense and became tedious to finish. I think the potential of what this could have been made it more disappointing in the end.

Things that were troublesome to me:
- the memories and character perspectives had murky transitions that didn't always inform you who was narrating at the time making it difficult to stay focused or comprehend what was happening.

- there is no clear story here. The game is used in the smallest of references in the book and doesn't really connect at all.

- there were weird narrations throughout that seemed they could have been left out altogether without impacting the book. (I'm looking at you chapter narrated by the number 324 and the chapter narrated by a blog---not the blog content--just the blog as a sentient being communicating it's disgust with not being used very much. WTF?!)

- the last 20% of the book hosted arguments between the author and the narrator as well as the narrator and other characters. This also included many insults about the book itself that by this time I found myself agreeing with.

"If publishing had a system to determine how many readers give up after each page, your fingers would be in freefall, I'd bet on it."

- lastly we come to the writing itself. This is hard since the flow of words is beautiful if you look at it without context, she has real potential for greatness. This read like a writing project I did in school many years ago. You had to free flow your thoughts onto paper without thinking, just write down everything that pops into your head as quickly as you can. It was a way to pull ideas out to form into something later. This book reads like the raw free flow without any editing on it. There were times that I read 5+ pages with NO punctuation on any of the pages and several different thought process and character changes happened within those pages.

All these things infuriated me and made this book frustrating to read. It took me a month and a half to get through this since I kept having to set it aside to pick up something more enjoyable to read. I have never come so close to DNFing a book before. I am sad for this book.

Very literary version of a mystery using the characters and mechanics of the board game, Clue. Throughout most of it, I felt Not a Clue who would find this book an enjoyable read.

“There are six of you and you killed me. One of you or maybe each of you.”

Each of the characters in the board game are used as pseudonyms in an insane asylum. Fully two-thirds of the book is used for only two of them. Miss Scarlett is an office worker sleeping with her boss who is in an asylum for amnesia. Professor Plum is an unsuccessful writer and suicide practitioner.

I can’t overestimate the importance of the book’s language to your enjoyment of the book. If you have a Kindle, download the sample. If you are in a bookstore (and good for you if you are), read at least the first two chapters before purchasing the book. You will immediately know if Not a Clue is for you.

After reading it in its entirety, I can assure you it is not for me. Using the forced concept of a game of Clue just made this book pretentious. I’m sure this book will be discussed in many English literature Master’s theses but it didn’t work for me. I didn’t care what happened to any of the characters and was just praying for the last page. 1 star.

Thanks to University of Nebraska Press and NetGalley for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

The truth is that I have been looking forward to read this one. I like reading international authors and I was completely fascinated by the blurb. A mystery, a crime and a mental health angle? Sounds like a pretty good recipe for a successful read to me. Sadly, it wasn't ment to be. As soon as I started reading Not A Clue I knew we won't be able to get along. Why? The writing style. Right from the very first sentence, I found myself scratching my head and wondering what the heck I just started reading. The writing style is just one big humble bumble of random words and nonsense being woven together, short 'sentences' mixed with randomness and endless weird descriptions and repetitions over and over again. I get that the patients have mental health problems, but that doesn't mean I should feel so confused they could lock me up myself along with those patients, right? And I also get it, they killed him. But who on earth are they in the first place? And how am I supposed to make sense of this mess? I've decided to include a sample to give you a hint of what the writing looks like.

"There are six of you, you are alone, a stuffed mynah bird stands in for your memory, your tartarclot tears scratch your corneas plow your cheekbones into furrows more sterile than horror could ever be."

Someone please make sense of that sentence for me? Or the rest of the sentences for that matter? I'm not sure if this is a case of 'lost in translation' or a writing style that is 200% not for me, but I just couldn't bring myself to keep struggling through the pages. I almost never make the decision to DNF, especially this early in a story, but sadly Not A Clue and me just weren't ment to be.

*Many thanks to the Author, University of Nebraska Press and Netgalley for providing me with ARC in exchange for my honest review.*
My review is honest and totally subjective: I started reading this book several times but never could finish it. The synopsis sounded interesting but the writing style and possibly translation made this book unreadable for me. In the end, I gave up and I do not think I will try this novel again. These are my personal feelings, naturally. I would not like to post my review on any websites due to the fact that I did not complete reading.

Despite being very well written for the most part, the novel doesn’t quite meet its ambition. The book has a number of characters but there is only a limited focus on a couple of them which did get rather annoying at times. Feel the novel would have been better without the Clue/Cluedo association as it set false expectations.

With thanks to Netgalley and the University of Nebraska Press for the ARC.

Six psychiatric patients all suspects in the murder of their doctor- Dr Black. A modern day Clue- different weapons, different rooms, different stories. A fanstastic whodunnit mixed with a political underbelly.

Masterfully juggling an omniscient narratrix, an accusing murder victim, at least six possible suspects as well as their psychiatrists, and a writer who intervenes by refusing to intervene, Delaume uses the characters, weapons, and rooms of the board game Clue to challenge—sometimes violently, sometimes playfully—the norms of typography, syntax, and narrative conventions.

While reading this, I got the traditional Clue feel from it. Not A Clue was about a life size game of Clue with six people trying to solve a murder. It held my interest enough to finish it. I didn't love but I didn't hate it either. It was a different kind of story, that's for sure!

Thanks to #NetGalley for the ARC of #NotAclue
Pub Date: 01 Dec 2018

I really could not get into this book and did not finish it. I will not be rating it anywhere else.

'You’re all even more sealed off from your environment than from yourselves, have been for a long time.'

We are told in the beginning there are six patients and ‘you killed me. One of you or maybe each of you.” The murdered is Dr. Black, each of the accused patients at Paris’s St. Anne’s Hospital is gathered to play a life-size game of clue. The murderer really isn’t important, the novel lends itself to unraveling minds, and the writing can induce nervousness, anxiety, depression, confusion, anger, paranoia the list goes on. How to trust minds that don’t even trust themselves? This is not an easy read, and may well slip through the cracks of reader’s minds, myself included. I think I get it, some of it, but confess to being lost here and there. This is challenging reading, certainly creative writing that plays with and bites you in turns. I was exhausted, just as exhausted as the wounded characters. The author has lived through tragedy herself, I won’t go on about that, though certainly it must lend itself to her work as anything in life touches us, from tragedy to the most mundane moments, if you’re curious just look her up.

I got to the point that I didn’t care about killer, murderer and found I was far more invested in the why. Why is each patient sick, who brought them here or why did they come of ‘their own volition’. What about life disturbed this ‘chorus of misfits’ so much that they broke? There is a lot to trudge through, and if you aren’t one who reads literary fiction, who accuses certain books of being ‘too wordy’ then move along. “In her head, Aline was talking loud. In your head it’s always very easy to talk so loud you bother yourself.” There are certainly gems, beautiful writing between these pages. I’m not sure I’ve grasped the writer’s purpose but there seems to be any manner of meaning one can find.

Each patient brings their damage to the table, to the game. Life has had its way, and the result lies in forgetting, vacancy, or best yet becoming a revisionist. Aren’t we all, in our own precious way revisionists? Some look at themselves and are horrified, maybe it is better not to look at oneself too closely. One of my favorite lines “I can feel the word solitude.” Solitude not a horror for the patient, but a comfort, a necessity. One of the b&l’s (The Bipolars and the Like) goes on to discuss the torment of memories, wanting to be emptied out. To express the pain of not wanting to accept the particular body given, well… it’s hard not to the polish that little nugget of wisdom. To not understand in some circumstances that with so much internal struggle, you are bound to be swallowed by tidal waves. It’s eye-opening to think about the difference between temptation and those with illnesses they don’t chose. Never being able to avoid their mental torment as an alcoholic or drug addict can deny themselves (if even for a moment) their fix. Those with their poor polluted brains, their vanishing or rotting memories gathered together, afraid of who they are in the outside world, suspects, pariahs, discarded for your reading pleasure. Most didn’t have a say in their pollution, their fog.

Then there is the Omniscient Narratrix, a ‘psychological harassment’ to all fictional characters who should really be charged with a crime too, all those ‘repeated offenses’ against characters just trying to live, much like real people, without judgement or humiliation. A god, who wants to manage its cast, make them be better or worse than they are. Oh the hell of literature! Then there is the writer who won’t interfere, laughable because that’s all writers do is interfere. The characters in this novel are in revolt, and refuse to be managed! There will be no established form, this book is inhabited by characters that want to be left alone, to simply exist whether worse for wear or not, and remain unimproved if they so chose. Not A Clue thumbs it’s nose at how we say things, and Delaume disturbs the text, shakes things up. She is testing narrative conventions, breaking out of themes, toying with the setting, blowing up the plot because I am still not fully certain of the plot here. It works but it also confuses the hell out of you, or maybe just me.

If you want to read something wildly different, this is it. I liked it and at times found it aggravating, sort of like my own life. For me, room I want to visit is what is real for the patients, not for arrogance of repairing them but simply to see their perspective. Not A Clue certainly is a unique read, though won’t be everyone’s drug of choice, ha.

Publication Date: December 1, 2018

University of Nebraska Press

I was excited to receive an early Kindle ARC of Not a Clue from NetGalley, judging from the plot it has a Clue-esque premise, I was eager to read it.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get past the first five pages.

First, the third person omniscient narrator was incredibly distracting. It adds a certain uniqueness to the narrative but it takes a certain kind of plot and story for this device to work well and I didn't like the narrator's voice and style.

Second, some of the language was extremely repetitive, like the reader is constantly reminded someone is dead or this person is mentally ill. We get it. After awhile, it sounds like you're beating a dead horse or that the narrator presumes we, the readers, or the people involved in the mystery, are nitwits.

Third, the language is overly flowery, wordy and convoluted. I don't know if its the translation or the author really does write like this, but I don't find this style of writing amusing or interesting. I find it distracting and mind numbing.

Not a Clue wasn't for me, but it might interest readers who like this style of writing.

The author’s use of language is exquisite—and tiring. Nothing is really a plot I found yet the writing kept me reading until I just gave it up.

I found this really disappointing. The premise seemed really interesting and going into it, it seemed like it had a lot of promise. When i made it 75 pages in, I could not go any further. I don't know whether it was the translation or the story itself but it was just poor. This book had so much potential and it never lived up to it.