Book review: The Anomaly – A playful science fiction yarn from France spins plenty of plates on sticks

Hervé Le Tellier’s inventive doppelgänger narrative of passengers on an Air France flight is already a bestseller in his homeland

Hervé Le Tellier: The Anomaly contains a generously expansive and playful narrative. Picture: Franck Ferville

What if you met an exact replica of yourself? Would you get on famously? Or would you be repelled?

These are questions at the heart of Hervé Le Tellier’s hoot of a novel. His starting point is straight out of The Twilight Zone. Air France flight AF006 from Paris to New York endures some perilously heavy turbulence and is directed to a military base. The passengers are told their plane is an exact copy of ...