The Truth About The Harry Quebert Affair

Harry Quebert’s significance is evident in the title itself, as the whole plot revolves around his past and present, and he represents the most organic connective tissue between the two. In the present, he is 67, a celebrated and venerated author who lives an isolated existence in a small coastal town. The extent of his solitude becomes evident when we realize Marcus Goldman is his only friend, even though they rarely see each other, and Marcus has sorely neglected him over the years. Harry sees Marcus as a son he never had, and he is proud of his accomplishments, even though he is aware that there is a long journey of self-realization ahead of the young man.

In the past, the 34-year-old Harry meets young Nola Kellergan and falls disastrously in love. Harry cannot control his emotions nor avoid the reality of his young love’s tender age. This creates a crucial dilemma for Harry and sets in motion a sequence of events that will have tragic consequences for everyone involved. Nola’s eventual disappearance represents not only the loss of the love of his life but also the terror of responsibility and the hard truth of dishonesty, lies, and deceit that become the mark of his life. However, although he is responsible for some reprehensible acts (his fatal inaction when he realizes Nola is ill and the theft of Caleb’s manuscript), Harry becomes one of the tragic figures of the novel through his inability to let go of the past and his refusal to admit to himself his limits as a writer. These tragic flaws determine his fate but, crucially, help Marcus to better understand his own. This is another example of Harry playing a significant mentor role to the younger writer.

Nola Kellergan is the beautiful, tragic mystery at the core of the novel. The 15-year-old girl is kind, beautiful, and mature beyond her age. She is also tragically ill, suffering from infantile psychosis that leads her to develop a split personality. The author shows there are many factors that lead to Nola’s senseless murder, but everything starts with her meeting Harry Quebert. Even though she is very young, Nola is sure of her emotions from the beginning, and she fails to see why their love cannot exist in reality. Her attempt at suicide reflects all of her characteristics: her unbalanced nature, the drama of her youth, her despair at not being with the man she loves, and her tragic cry for help. The fact that all adults around her fail her only exacerbates her condition and symbolically leads her directly to her death.

Our understanding of Nola develops with the investigation of her murder, reflecting the words of Sergeant Perry Gahalowood: “You have to find out who the victim was. Find out who Nola Kellergan was” (117). In crime fiction, the murder is just the beginning, and to discover what happened investigators must dedicate their time to understanding the past. Thus, we see Nola only in recollections from other characters who are still alive in 2008, and through switches to the third-person-narrated past. Essentially, Nola comes to us through mediation and filter from other characters, and Marcus assembles her personality like a collage of images and snippets. By the end of the novel, she becomes alive in all her naivety, her love of seagulls and dancing in the rain, her desires and her joys, as well as her suffering, such that the reader can appreciate her tragic destiny even more. 

Another character that is a tragic victim of the cruel world, Luther Caleb is a young man whose life has been fraught with misfortune. The author portrays him as having a gentle, artistic nature—a sensitive painter ill-equipped to deal with reality. Attacked by a ruthless gang when he was 19, Caleb spends the rest of his life as a physically disfigured man who can barely speak, but his soul remains pure and naïve, almost childish. The traumatic event of the past has locked him inside a time capsule, and he dreams of his life before the accident and of his former fiancée, whom he continues to paint. The man who gives him his hope back is Elijah Stern, who is, we learn, the member of the gang responsible for the attack, and his helping Caleb is a way to allay his guilt. Once Caleb has realized this, his life shatters once again.

As with other great literary figures who share similar destinies (the Hunchback of Notre-Dame, Frankenstein, Boo Radley), Caleb is frequently misunderstood and taken for a villain because of his unappealing looks. Other characters misinterpret his actions, most significantly Travis Dawn, who murders him along with Chief Pratt). Luther Caleb is one of the truly creative and artistic people in the novel, perhaps even more so than Marcus Goldberg, as his talents are raw, instinctive, and wide. Unable to fight for Nola’s love, he enjoys vicariously her relationship with Harry and writes a book that will become the all-American classic. His death is as tragic as Nola’s and equally as senseless and unnecessary, which underlines the cruelty of life.

As a young police officer in 1975, Travis Dawn a “nice young man” (456), writes Dicker, almost painfully shy in his attempts to ask the love of his life, Jenny Quinn, for a date. He is jealous and hotheaded, however, which we see in his overly aggressive reaction to Luther Caleb, whom he beats up and threatens. This streak of uncontrollable jealousy and mistaken loyalty will ultimately lead him to murder first Caleb, then Nola Kellergan, in an attempt to hide his crime.

In 2008, he is the chief of police and Jenny’s husband of many years. He leaves the impression of “a mild-mannered man in his sixties […], the kind of nice-guy country cop who had not scared anyone for a long time” (62). For Marcus, he is “the first person to show concern” (62) after Harry has been arrested. The author portrays Travis Dawn in such a way primarily to make him the least likely suspect for Nola’s murder, but also to signal that some murderers start from being genuinely decent men. In this context, Travis’s road to ruin is more poignant, especially as he allows Chief Gareth Pratt to influence him into committing the crimes and then to help cover them up. During his interrogation, when answering why he kept Nola’s necklace, he says, “That necklace was my punishment. It reminded me of the past” (577), which shows us that he has felt guilt and remorse his whole life. Yet, this was not enough for him to confess to his crimes before the police catches Jenny and him as they attempt to flee the country.

We meet Jenny in two incarnations: as 24-year-old Jenny Quinn, “a pretty, sexy blonde, and a former cheerleader and prom queen at Somerset High School” (125) working in her mother’s diner in 1975, and as Jenny Travis, the owner of the diner in 2008, when she shows “a gentleness that was almost maternal” (60). Jenny Quinn falls in love with Harry Quebert, and as a “voluptuous blonde who would turn any man’s head” (134), she is not used to rejections, so she develops an obsession with Harry. Young Jenny’s behavior is largely passive, and she serves more as a causative agent of incidents than an active participant.

The older Jenny, now marred to Travis Dawn “because she had no hope left” (481), fears that Marcus will learn the truth about Travis’s guilt, and this fear guides her into action. By writing threatening notes and setting his car and house on fire to make him stop his investigations, she assumes agency she did not have as a young girl. Although she has never stopped loving Harry, she is fiercely protective of Travis because she is loyal by nature. 

In 1975, Tamara Quinn is the owner of Clark’s, the diner where Harry spends his time. She is Robert’s wife and Jenny’s mother. She is a harsh and domineering woman, obsessed with the idea that she might rise above the little town of Somerset and become a well-respected owner of a restaurant chain. She treats everyone around her with disdain, especially her husband, whom she regards as a weakling. She sees Harry’s arrival as an opportunity to achieve her goals, and when she is not able to arrange his and her daughter’s relationship to her wishes, she grows resentful. This is why she wishes to destroy Harry by revealing his feelings for Nola. She lacks empathy and only shows superficial social skills.

Through her conversation with her psychiatrist, we witness another side to Tamara. She reveals her behavior toward her family “makes me miserable. Oh, it makes me so miserable!” (306). When talking of her fears about her daughter, she says, “my whole stomach is tied up in knots” (421). These conversations show Tamara to be a woman who finds it hard to share her feelings and who hides behind her abrasive behavior. The journal she keeps hidden in her safe at the restaurant is another way we learn of her true feelings. Of Robert, she writes, “I don’t know why I have to be so nasty. I love him so much”, and of her behavior: “I feel guilty and I hate myself, and then I treat him even more badly” (467). She is a complex character whose behavior incites complicated reactions in others, and this helps move the plot along and characterize those around her. 

Robert Quinn is Tamara Quinn’s ostensibly meek and silent husband and the victim of her frequent bullying. In 1975, he is a largely passive, unobtrusive, and at times comically inept man. Even though he can be witty and popular with their friends, his wife sees him as an obstacle to achieving a higher status of living, and he seemingly accepts her putdowns with equanimity.

It is only from the perspective of the present time that we learn of the other side to Robert’s character. He frequently drugs his wife with sleeping pills and steals the keys from her diner safe, where she keeps her journal. This is the only way he knows how to connect with her tender side, the one that loves him deeply. Additionally, when his daughter asks for help in removing the evidence of Travis’s guilt, he agrees to commit a crime for her without hesitation, and then he lies to the police, taking the blame for the murders—it is his way of showing love and support. Through Robert’s character, the author reminds us there are many hidden traits to ordinary people and that the things we can tell just by looking at them or their public lives do not tell their true story.  

In the novel’s present (2008), David Kellergan is an 85-year-old former Reverend who has “stopped believing in God” (166) after his daughter’s disappearance, “a fragile little old man with gray hair and gray skin” (163). He feels guilty for not finding help for Nola, who was seriously ill, and his guilt complicates his sorrow for the loss of his daughter. We can presume, therefore, that his lack of belief has more to do with failing to save her daughter from herself, and finally, from her death. However, when Marcus faces him with his findings about Nola, he “got up and, as if possessed, threw himself at me, grabbing my throat with a strength I would never have guessed he had” (289). There are two sides to David Kellergan: He is the sad, old man who listens to music “loud enough to deafen himself, as a form of punishment” (109), but he is also the angry man who “made clear his intention to go to court in order to defend himself from allegations that he had mistreated his daughter” (397).

In 1975, Reverend David Kellergan is “a jolly, gentle-faced man”, who is “thin and rather frail, but he radiated great strength” (146). The change in his appearance and attitude over time testifies to the torment he has suffered. Although he has attempted to protect his family, he was too weak to help Nola when she needed him the most, and he is one of the adults who are responsible for her fate.