A friendly warning to those who sampled the first chapters of Zoran Drvenkar’s Sorry on Kindle and thought the prologue was merely cartoonishly gory, in the hee-hee-that's-gotta-hurt-as-you-dig-into-the-bucket-for-more-popcorn Hostel-like vein: the novel gets progressively disturbing and repugnant, in ways that get under your skin. I don’t mean that as an (appropriate) pun either; the crime that precipitates the narrative is meant to be deliberately nasty.

The novel’s premise is simple but high-concept. An enterprising startup -- the best thing to call this group of young entrepreneurs -- comes up with a novel idea: they’re hired to apologize to wronged people. (If they had combined this with a mobile app and geolocation ability, they’d be going public by now.) The insulted, the cuckolded, the wrongfully terminated: all are visited by the Sorry team with apologies and/or financial renumeration.

The idea could have fueled a novel alone, as a comment on modernity and emotional detachment. But Drvenkar dispenses with the central theme fairly early, turning it into a cat-and-mouse thriller with philosophical underpinnings.

Sorry, as cleverly plotted as it is, requires not a little suspension of disbelief from the reader. If you ever wondered, say, how Jigsaw from the Saw series managed to drug and kidnap all those people without anyone seeing -- well, this isn't the book for you. The logistics of surveillance and corpse disposal just aren't covered here.

Part of the fun, though, is seeing how much mileage Drvenkar gets out of his sly use of pronouns: while the story is told mostly in the third person, there's also a "you" being addressed and an "I" who's relating another part of the story. But who are they, and who are you? Are the events flashbacks or flash forwards, or are they happening in the present? It’s a clever tactic, perpetually destabilizing the reader’s frame of reference. But its most crucial effect is that it subtly implicates the reader herself with every use of the second person: you kill, and you forgive, and not necessarily in that order.

The pronoun use is clever, but it contributes to a faint sense of a flimsy and judgmental morality infecting the proceedings: can you, the reader, still forgive, especially after being dragged through hell for the past few hundred pages? The ending isn't nearly as satisfying for someone who expected the equivalent of a cinematic twist, as it ends exactly how you thought it would. ( )

Seeing a couple break-up in public Kris goes over to apologise to the woman. He tells her that her ex is sorry for what he has done, that he wishes he hadn’t, that he wanted to say this himself but couldn’t. It makes her feel better. Of course, it was a lie, Kris doesn’t know this woman. Doesn’t know her boyfriend, he just thought it would help her. And now, it has given him an idea. All around Berlin there are people, corporations who would like to say sorry, but they just don’t know how. Kris is going to set up an agency. A company to apologise on another’s behalf.

And what a success he, his brother and their friends make of this enterprise. Soon they are getting more jobs than they can handle. They are making so much money they don’t know how to spend it. It seems like things are going well. But there is always a but, isn’t there?

In this case it results in Wolf standing in front of a dead woman. A murdered woman, with instructions to apologise to her. And then to dispose of the body. And from here, things get a lot worse.

I’m a bit conflicted over this book. It isn’t my usual sort of read, but I do like to pick up something “different” every now and then, and this is certainly different. It is divided into sections and timelines. Before and After. And while some chapters are told in the usual third person narrator, others are first person, while others are second person. And there is a mystery over who these narrators are. It makes for a confusing read to start with. But once you come to grips with that you can get more into the mystery aspect.

Who is the murderer? Who are the murder victims? And what does it all have to do with the agency?

And then of course there are the bigger underlying themes. What is remorse? Forgiveness? What is an excuse and what is a reason? Where does compassion and understanding end and judgement and condemnation begin.

As I read the opening few chapters of this novel I was almost ready to put it down and forget about it, but the more I read the more interested I became. I still don’t think I’d rave about it, but it certainly raises some interesting questions. ( )

I picked up this crime novel because of a glowing review in the NYT. It is the story of four Gen X slackers who don't yet know what to do with their lives. One of them comes up with the idea of setting up a company which provides the service of apologizing to people for its clients. Originally, it was imagined that most of its clients would be companies laying off employees. Some clients were, but there were many other types too, and the company flourished. One day, a mysterious client calls and sends them to a particular address to make an apology. When they arrive, they discover a dead body nailed to the wall. They are horrified, and when contacted by the client try to back off. The client then threatens each of them with hurting someone they love, so the four do the wishes of this mysterious client.
The NYT review seemed impressed mostly by the manner in which the novel is narrated. For the most part, an unknown narrator directly addresses the reader: "We're now approaching the start. You are now ready for the present and know who's going to be crossing your path. Over the next few days you will learn more about Frauke, Tamara and Wolf. Kris, on the other hand will remain a mystery to you." Throughout, the book plays with point of view. It also contains some gruesome scenes of pedophilia and murders. It is a well-crafted book and stayed with me quite a while. ( )

Four friends living in Berlin hatch an idea to start a company specializing in apologizing to people for those who are too cowardly to do it themselves. They start to get a name for their company, mostly through word of mouth, and the business grows quickly.

One day at what seemed like a routine appointment, they arrive at the location to find a dead woman nailed to a wall. The instructions are to apologize to her and dispose of her body. The friends find photos of their family members at the location with a threat that if they do not carry out the instructions, their loved ones will be hurt.

As they navigate how to proceed, their relationships with each other become strained. They also fear they will continue to be called upon by the killer to continue to apologize. As the reader learns more about how the woman came to die and a man also dies in a similar manner, the story gets even darker and more tragic. This killer must have his reasons for doing what he has done.

The most interesting aspect of this book is the style in which it is written. Switching between first person, second person, and third person narratives and between the past and present, the author manages to maintain a coherent storyline. Though confusing at times trying to piece together where in the story things are taking place, the confusion comes off as intentional. Like the characters, the reader is thrust into bewilderment and maneuvering the twists and turns.

Plot:
Everybody screws up every once in a while, everybody needs to apologize every once in a while, too. But saying sorry is hard, both when you mean it and when you don't. So Kris, his brother Wolf, and their friends Frauke and Tamara come up with an idea that sounds so unlikely, it just has to work: they found a company that can be hired to apologize for people. Things are going great until they're hired by Lars Meybach. He sends them to the scene of a murder to apologize to the body - and to get rid of it. And he knows everything about the foursome, so they see no way out. But that's only the beginning of Meybach's plans for them.

Sorry is not a book I would have picked at a bookstore. I'm just not much of a crime reader. But I got it as a present and decided to give it a try. It was definitely different from what I expected. It is an interestingly structured, unusual thriller.

Read more on my blog: http://kalafudra.com/2017/04/13/sorry-zoran-drvenkar/ ( )