Rating: 5/5
Review:
Another outstanding novel from Tana French
This is another outstanding book from Tana French. I think her
Dublin Murder Squad series has been excellent and this stand-alone
book is just as good. It’s a psychological thriller which of
itself would have put me off rather; dd to this a description
including a damaged, unreliable narrator and dark family secrets
coming to light and frankly, if it had been by almost anyone else I
wouldn’t have bothered. However, French takes these well-worn
tropes and makes something rich and rewarding from them.
The plot revolves
around the narrator, Toby, a good looking, intelligent young man from
a comfortable, supportive family whose life so far has been an easy
cruise, smoothed by circumstance and easy charm. However, at the
very start of the book he suffers a head trauma which changes
everything. This is followed by a grisly discovery in the garden of
a family house; the police investigate and slowly a past of which
Toby has been blissfully unaware begins to emerge.
This is a long book
at over 500 pages and events unfold slowly, but it never dragged at
all for me. French is brilliant at creating wholly believable
characters and situations and her portrait of someone trying to come
to terms with genuine struggle for the first time in his life is
exceptionally good. Anyone who has had to watch someone they love go
through a terminal illness will recognise that this, too, is superbly
and sensitively done...and so on. And throughout all this runs an
increasingly tense plot as Toby tries to piece events together.
French writes lovely, unfussy but very evocative prose, and her ear
for dialogue is superb, I think. I found it compulsively readable
and utterly engrossing throughout.
In short, this is a
very fine novel with crime as its driver but which is much, much more
than just a thriller and is in a wholly different league from the
usual “Gripping Psychological Thrillers.” It’s definitely one
of my books of the year and very, very warmly recommended.
(My thanks to
Penguin for an ARC via NetGalley.)
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