Not her best title by far. I thought it would have greatly benefited from much more editing. ( )

Previously on Rebecca Reads Tana French: I was a mystery book junkie for all of my childhood, but I fell out of the habit as an adult -- I found the plot twists too obvious and the characters too derivative. So when Tana French was first recommended to me, I figured I'd read one and move on. Instead, I became completely entranced with her approach to mystery. Murders tear at the fabric of what we believe makes us human. French uses this tear the same way that speculative fiction writers use magic or giant robots: to explore what makes us human and where the borders of humanity are.

Although Witch Elm departs from French's previous formula by not including the detectives as protagonists, it's otherwise true to form. The book centers on two main themes: first, the warmth of families, and on the obverse the distance that can grow in relationships by pretending that everything is normal and second, who well one can ever really know themselves. French excels at evoking visceral feelings -- both positive and then rapidly cooling as things go wrong -- and here the set up of friends, romantic relationships and family all feel very real. The new format really gives her space for thematic development and she uses it to approach these questions from multiple angles even before the central crime comes to light (over 100 pages in -- a corpse in the witch elm, details borrowed almost completely from the "Who Put Bella in the Wych Elm" case)

I really loved the exploration of self and how well one knows oneself. Although not the protagonist, the most vivid character is the spiritual patriarch of the family, Hugo, slowly losing his personality to a brain tumor, and his response to why he never had children of his own: "one gets used to being oneself" sets the tone for the whole book. What does it mean to be oneself? Who are we? Do we ever really know how we will react to events that unsettle us. It's a very 2018 book: in the face of rising white nationalism does one resist or cling to routine? (I'm turning out to be the latter, much to my own dismay. If that's you, too, this is your book.)

Much like other French books, the whodunnit of the murder is not the point, although I found the plot twists more satisfying than usual perhaps because they all happened from the lens of a pretty unreliable narrator. Also, I love unreliable narrators and this was a very satisfying instantiation -- ostensibly, the narration is simply unreliable because the protagonist is recovering from a concussion; however, even before the head injury, the narration reminded me of [b:The Farm|17557913|The Farm|Tom Rob Smith|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1391017911s/17557913.jpg|24485092] -- the narrator would report out his happy-go-luckiness and how fine everything was, while clearly panicking. I enjoyed the exploration of what it's like inside the psyche of someone who's invested in being OK -- it's a common personality trope in real life and pretty alien to me.

It's clear that without the detectives, French had even more room to blend into "literary fiction" and develop her themes. On the other hand, I thought it also resulted in a loss of the internal skeleton of the narrative. Without it, some parts seemed bloated, while others seemed overly condensed. Particularly the last plot twist, which was given so little space within the narrative, suffered from this.

Nonetheless, French is the only mystery writer whose books are appointment-reading for me and this didn't disappoint.

(I received a free copy in exchange for my unbiased review. But also I'd already bought a pre-order copy before I won the giveaway.) ( )

Immersive and occasionally unsettling, The Wych Elm by Tana French is an engrossing exploration into the fracturing of one's identity amidst an unexpected crisis. The story revolves around Toby, a charismatic young man from Dublin who suffers a debilitating head injury after a brutal home invasion. French pairs this personal jeopardy with the shocking discovery of a skull in an elm tree at Toby's family's ancestral garden, pulling him into a whirlwind investigation that discloses uncomfortable realities about his past.

French’s delicacy in portraying the protagonist provides a deep insight into human nature, memory, and self-deception. Toby is written sympathetically, despite being an unreliable narrator, which further enhances the intrigue. The gradual disintegration of Toby’s erstwhile life, bundled with the eeriness of uncovered family secrets, creates a thick layer of psychological suspense.

Although tangled at times, French’s narrative delivers unfolding layers of truth encapsulated in an atmosphere of fear and disbelief. The eerie ambience echoes long after finishing. The illustrations of privilege, luck, and the malleability of truth make The Wych Elm an engrossing read. However, ambiguity in resolution might leave some readers craving more closure. Despite its few drawbacks, French succeeds in delivering a compelling blend of thrill and introspection.

For any interested, the seed for this story lies in an unsolved true crime case that did, indeed, involve a female skull found in a Wych elm in 1943. The following year the graffiti phrase 'Who put Bella down the Wych elm' showed up. Forensics has determined her likely time of death was in or around October 1941.

***Purchased and read for my own enjoyment. ( )

The writing was terrible. In fact it was so terrible that it made me angry, and the only way I could keep going was by highlighting particularly poorly-written sections on my Kindle. Here are some excerpts:

- "I wasn't really in the state to describe incipient epiphanies to Sean - there was no way I could even have pronounced "incipient epiphanies" - but I did my best.
- "He even looked farther away, as if he had deliberately receded a few steps down some long passageway, although I was pretty sure that had to do with the booze."
- "For some reason this is the mistake - hardly a mistake, really, what's wrong with having a few pints on a Friday night after a stressful week, what's wrong with wanting the girl you love to think the best of you? - this is the choice to which I return over and over..."
- "He was holding a sheaf of cryptic-looking paper that I assumed was my chart, whatever that meant."
- ..."gossip about her flatmate's latest drama (Megan was a petulant, nitpicky girl who managed a chichi organic-raw-kale-type cafe and couldn't work out why everyone she met turned out to be an arsehole; only Melisa could have lived with her for any length of time):" ...

The final one that broke me involved a long and detailed aside about brochures. Here's the thing about asides: they take you out of the flow of the story, that is to say to the side of it, and there had better be a good fucking reason why an author is doing this to a reader. The payoff must be more than an extra dose of detail, and in every aside that the author makes in this book all we get is more pointless detail.

It is all tell, no show in this book, and that is an unpardonable sin. HARD PASS. ( )

3.5 stars rounded up. The ending felt like kind of a letdown, but otherwise this kept my interest and and made me curious about how things would play out. ( )