by Tana French
Synopsis:
Toby is a happy-go-lucky charmer who's dodged a scrape at work and is celebrating with friends when the night takes a turn that will change his life: he surprises two burglars who beat him and leave him for dead. Struggling to recover from his injuries, beginning to understand that he might never be the same man again, he takes refuge at his family's ancestral home to care for his dying uncle Hugo. Then a skull is found in the trunk of an elm tree in the garden - and as detectives close in, Toby is forced to face the possibility that his past may not be what he has always believed.
The Witch Elm asks what we become, and what we're capable of, when we no longer know who we are.
(cover image and synopsis lifted from Goodreads)
Series: Standalone
Publisher: Viking
Publication date: October 9th 2018
Source/Format: eARC/Netgalley
Purchase links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Indiebound | Book Depository
My Rating: ★★★★☆
My Thoughts:
Bollocking ballsacks, I just lifted my nose from a very long book! My eyes are tired but it is all worth it.
Our narrator is Toby, a self-professed lucky person. He hit all the breaks in life: good looks, happy childhood, well-to do family, great girlfriend, a job that he got without working really hard for it. Basically, Toby is your standard issue of a privileged cishet white guy. Until...
Toby opened the story on the night that his luck run out. After having drinks with his mates, he went home to his apartment. Safe asleep, he was stirred awake by a couple of burglars who beat him to a pulp. The incident left him with a limp, a drooping eyelid, a slur in speech and an addled brain of fuzzy memories. For purposes of this review, I will not delve too much into details. Suffice it is to say that after that, Toby came to live with his dying beloved uncle in the family’s ancestral home. About one thirds into the book, a skull was found buried under an elm tree in their garden.
The book is more than answering the questions of whose skull is under the tree and why is it there. It’s also about cracking through Toby’s surface and looking for what else is underneath. The book is keen on exploring the character of its protagonist as well as getting on with furthering the whodunit plot. It totally gets what I’ve said before about making the characters human first before making them murder suspects or amateur sleuths .
Toby was not a jerk but I also don’t think that he was written to be a likable character. His dream was so basic: build a family of his own and live a good life in a white Georgian house. But what he got instead –stripped off of his dashing looks and charm– was an opportunity to take a long hard look on himself and his perspective of the people around him without the tainted, rose-colored lens of privilege. Now a victim of violence himself, he realized that his past built-in easy high school life made him shortsighted to the traumatizing teenage troubles of his less popular cousins: gay Leon and nerdy Susanna.
“Probably the memory should have hit me with a rush of shame, guilt, horror, but all I could feel was an immense, bottomless sadness. It had been such a small thing to do. Kids pulled worse pranks on each other every day, thousands of them. I had thought it meant nothing at all; it should have meant nothing at all. And yet, somehow, here we all were, and everything was ruined.”
“Always one more miracle, always one more chance. Pull me from the earthquake rubble, weeks in, dust-coated to a white statue and just one hand lifting feebly, parade me high in triumph. Pull me from the river streaming like a merman, work on me past hope, till the cough and splutter finally come. I’m lucky, my luck will hold.”
Diversity Watch:
Setting: Dublin, Ireland
Toby Hennessy – 28 years old. Described himself as good-looking, with thick smooth fair hair, very blue eyes, and the kind of open, boyish face.
Melissa – Toby’s girlfriend. Described with ruffled blonde hair and a sprinkle of freckles
Gerry Martin – the detective assigned to investigate the burglary in Toby’s apartment. Described as in his fifties, at least six foot, with pleasant blue eyes.
Colm Bannon – Gerry Martin’s partner. Described as younger and skinnier than Martin, with ginger hair.
Susanna – Toby’s cousin. Described with red-gold hair.
Tom – Susanna’s husband. Described by Toby as medium height and medium stocky and medium blond and medium handsome.
Leon – Toby’s cousin. Explicit in text that he is gay.
Mike Rafferty – the detective assigned for investigating the skull found in the Hennessy ancestral home. He is in his early forties. Physical described as tall with a thin rangy build, rough dark hair and long, lean bony face. His eyes are deep-set and an odd light shade of hazel, almost golden.
Faye – Susanna’s friend in their teens. Described with wide blue eyes.
Declan McGinty – Toby’s bestfriend. Described as a white-passing Colombian, stocky and tightly wound, with glasses and a mop of unruly copper hair.
Sean – Toby’s other bestfriend, Described as a big guy, six foot two, with a broad open face and rugby muscles starting to soften.
Tiernan – an artist from Toby’s work. Described as lanky, long chinned with vintage horn-rimmed glasses
Richard – Toby’s boss in the art gallery. Described with blue eyes.
Toby’s physical description of one of the burglars is skinny, white, acned maybe around twenty.
A nurse at the hospital is mentioned to be Indian.
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I'd love to hear from you!
Are you a Tana French fan? Which of her works had you read and would definitely recommend to me? Do you have an experience that you particularly remember as a turning point in your life? Share with me in the comments.
Are you a Tana French fan? Which of her works had you read and would definitely recommend to me? Do you have an experience that you particularly remember as a turning point in your life? Share with me in the comments.
