Review: In the Woods by Tana French

In the Woods by Tana French 

As a rule, I stay away from detective novels. Trying to break a case before the main character does isn’t something that gets me going. I also hate that creepy crawly feeling I get when reading a gruesome thriller late at night. It makes me jumpy and uncomfortable for a few days and I start looking over my shoulder too many times when walking home alone late at night. 

Well, Tana French is the go-to author for anyone, like me, who has been harboring reservations about the mystery/thriller genre, but might be interested in experiencing that creepy crawly feeling, as well as some other, deeper emotions. What French has done in “In the Woods” is just amazing. The short end of the story is that I am now in love with both her and her characters. 

Set in Dublin, “In the Woods” follows newbie detectives Rob Ryan and Cassie Maddox, both members of the Dublin Murder Squad, who just got the lead on a new, high profile murder case. A 12 year old girl named Katy Devlin is found dead at a wooded archeological site just outside the capital. The clues surrounding the crime are limited, while the questions and suspects are numerous and every new hunch to the solve hard to prove. Making things even more complicated is the fact that detective Ryan has a case-shattering secret: 20 years ago he was a witness to the disappearance of two of his childhood friends who went missing in the same woods where Katy’s body was found. This old crime was never solved because young Rob Ryan suffered permanent memory loss and was never able to recall what happened to him or his friends when they went to play in the woods that day. 

Although the connection between the two crimes is unclear, Detective Ryan is unable to shake the guilt he feels over what happened. His unresolved emotions about his past begin to affect his ability to work the Devlin case and slowly infiltrate and deteriorate the strong bond he has with his partner Cassie (think along the lines of Law & Order: SVU’s Benson and Stabler with a little bit more flirtation and booze). Singularly, Rob and Cassie are two broken and messed up individuals, but when they are together everything just makes sense. Although solving the crime is of peak interest at the start of the book, by the end of it, the reader’s attention is almost exclusively focused on the shifts within Ryan and Maddox and their connection. Their very complex individual and shared pasts combined with the strain imparted by the Devlin murder case wreak havoc on everyone and everyone, possibly beyond repair. 

Never have I ever been so involved as a reader in the relationship between two fictional people as I was with Cassie and Rob. I wasn’t expecting to find this level of earnest emotions and cruelty and pain in a detective crime novel (sincerest apologies to that genre). Tina French had the ability to transport me inside the story and at times I felt like I wasn’t only reading the pages, but actually living each moment described. Just thinking about those last few chapters of the book makes me angry and sad, even now...and damn, do I have some burning questions for you Tana French! 

LitSnit Grade: A


Quote: "The girls I dream of are the gentle ones, wistful by high windows or singing sweet old songs at a piano, long hair drifting, tender as apple blossom. But a girl who goes into battle beside you and keeps your back is a different thing, a thing to make you shiver. Think of the first time you slept with someone, or the first time you fell in love: that blinding explosion that left you cracking to the fingertips with electricity, initiated and transformed. I tell you that was nothing, nothing at all, beside the power of putting your lives, simply and daily, into each other's hands."


Pros:

• Great writing-some say it was wordy, but I loved every minute of it.
• Very, very, very complex, but intelligent characters, the kind of characters that you love and want to be (or be with)
• Great setting: Dublin and nearby countyside is a great, atmospheric backdrop to a suspense novel

Cons:

• I hate to say it, but the actual crime and its eventual resolution were eclipsed by the characters and their individual storylines. This might not be the book for detective fiction purists.
• French tidies up the murder case pretty well, but she leaves a lot of unanswered questions about Ryan and Maddox. This book is only for readers who can deal with authors that like to leave some issues unresolved. 

More Like It: The Likeness (Dublin Murder Squad, #2) by Tana French

The Secret History

Title: The Secret History

Author: Donna Tartt

Gist: “The Secret History” is the story of six friends  (Richard, Camilla, Charles, Edmund, Francis and Henry) who attend a very posh university in rural New England. They have it all: beauty, wealth, sophistication, intelligence, exclusivity, mystery, and are connected by an unparalleled devotion to studying Ancient Greek.

Driven by the boredom of not having a care in the world, they begin to engage in a wide array of immoral activities that test their apparent limitlessness. Their demented devotion to extreme experiences eventually tear them apart and leads to their individual demises. 

Told though the first person narration of this groups latest inductee, Richard (who unlike the other five comes from a middle-class family and is most sensitive to the strange behaviors of the group), this is a tragic but extremely sophisticated coming-of-age mystery that starts with the death of one of group member and and ends with the death of another. The suspense surrounding the reason behind each death is worth the 576 page effort because it unveils the ugliness behind the impeccably beautiful introductory facade Camilla, Charles, Edmund, Francis and Henry put up when they first meet Richard. The five of them easily comprise the most attractive and captivating set of supporting characters I’ve encountered in all fiction I’ve read this year. Like some mysterious, beautiful yet dangerous creatures, they live their outlandish lives beautifully and meet their tragic ends just as beautifully.

Richard is the narrator, but in many ways he is no more involved in the story than the reader. Like us he is taken for a strange ride as a spectator, incapable of changing the course of events set in motion by the other five. It’s only his sense of undying devotion and curiosity about what is to unfold that keeps him and us astride for the whole ride. We are Richard and Richard is us from start to finish. 

Quote:

"It's a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely?...To be absolutely free!...To sing, to scream, to dance barefoot in the woods in the dead of night, with no more awareness of mortality than an animal! These are powerful mysteries...If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn." 

Pros: 

• Great supporting characters-Camilla, Charles, Edmund, Francis and Henry are like an unhealthy addiction. You hate them, but can’t tear your gaze away either. 
• The gothically romantic and sometimes chilling mood Tartt is able to infuse into her writing (if you’re into that stuff, of course).

Cons: 

• There is a feeling of pretentiousness about this book and its supposed complexity, which can be off-putting from time to time.

Target Audience: lit majors

More Like It: Brideshead Revisited 

Extra: Check out Fravorwire’s casting of “The Secret History” the the movie. 


Rating: A-

Waiting on Wednesday - Christy

Graveminder by Melissa Marr

Expected publication: May 17th 2011
Publisher: William Morrow & Company

Summary (via Goodreads) Melissa Mar is known to young adult readers as the author of the popular faery series Wicked Lovely. Her debut leap into adult fiction lands her in the small community of Claysville, a town where the dead walk free unless there their graves are not properly tended. Into this eerie maelstrom, Rebekkah Barrow descends as she returns to a place that she once believed she knew. Kelley Armstrong justly described Graveminder as "a deliciously creepy tale that is as skillfully wrought as it is spellbindingly imagined." A new genre author to watch.

I've read and enjoyed Wicked Lovely by this author (though I haven't gotten around to reading past the first book). Graveminder looks interesting, and I love the cover (run-down house/barn in sepia tones never fails to be creepy). I have to wonder what kind of care these graves require... I will be checking it out when it's released in a couple weeks.

What are you waiting on this week?

Waiting on Wednesday is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

Summary (from Goodreads): In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race's next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin lives with his kind but distant parents, his sadistic brother Peter, and the person he loves more than anyone else, his sister Valentine. Peter and Valentine were candidates for the soldier-training program but didn't make the cut—young Ender is the Wiggin drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training.

Ender's skills make him a leader in school and respected in the Battle Room, where children play at mock battles in zero gravity. Yet growing up in an artificial community of young soldiers Ender suffers greatly from isolation, rivalry from his peers, pressure from the adult teachers, and an unsettling fear of the alien invaders. His psychological battles include loneliness, fear that he is becoming like the cruel brother he remembers, and fanning the flames of devotion to his beloved sister.

Is Ender the general Earth needs? But Ender is not the only result of the genetic experiments. The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway for almost as long. Ender's two older siblings are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. Between the three of them lie the abilities to remake a world. If, that is, the world survives.

I recently finished reading "Ender's Shadow", which is a novel told in the same time-line as "Ender's Game", but from the point of view of the character Bean, following his journey into battle school instead of Ender's. I really enjoyed it, just as much as I enjoyed Ender’s Game, and now want everyone to at least read this first book.

Ender's Game was one of those sci-fi classics that I'd heard of, but didn't know much about. No movie yet (main characters are both very young and time-line spans a few too many years for casting to be easy). Then, one Christmas, I bought and started readed it, brought it home with me and told my dad about it. I didn’t see that book again until my dad was through reading it himself. He’d even read Ender’s Shadow by the time I left. (moral of the story: tell people about books you love only after you're done reading them yourself ;))

In Ender’s Game, you’ll find mock battles in zero g, kids playing at war, humanity scrambling to defend itself against an alien race that has twice invaded Earth. The heavy weight of an all-out war of worlds is put on these child geniuses. It’s games now, but ever-present is the knowledge that there is a real war going on out there. The buggers (the nickname for the alien race) might come back at any time. These kids are being trained to command armies in the war to come. Humanity is depending on them. No, humanity might just be depending on Ender alone, the boy who seems to take war strategy and leadership to a level no one else can compete with.

Okay, so maybe this book isn’t for everyone. It’s all war games and soldiers in training, and not a drop of romance and not much comedy, but the story and characters are great and the books are hard to put down. If you’re at all intrigued by this book, read it! Read it now.

Lit Snit Verdict: A+

WoW - Christy

11/22/63 by Stephen King
Pub Date: Nov 8, 2011

Summary (from Goodreads): On November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas, President Kennedy died, and the world changed.

If you had the chance to change history, would you?
Would the consequences be worth it?



Jake Epping is a thirty-five-year-old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching adults in the GED program. He receives an essay from one of the students—a gruesome, harrowing first person story about the night 50 years ago when Harry Dunning’s father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a hammer. Harry escaped with a smashed leg, as evidenced by his crooked walk.

Not much later, Jake’s friend Al, who runs the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to 1958. He enlists Jake on an insane—and insanely possible—mission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination. So begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson and his new world of Elvis and JFK, of big American cars and sock hops, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jake’s life—a life that transgresses all the normal rules of time.

First, how awesome is the cover? JFK's assassination is a big what-if, and I know it's been discussed before, so I'm interested to see how King handles this. The book sounds like it has potential to be really cool, if done right.

What are you waiting on this week?

Waiting on Wednesday is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.

Madame Tussaud by Michelle Moran

Madame Tussaud: A Novel of the French Revolution By Michelle Moran

Summary (from Goodreads): In this deft historical novel, Madame Tussaud (1761-1850) escapes the pages of trivia quizzes to become a real person far more arresting than even her waxwork sculptures. Who among us knew, for instance, that she moved freely through the royal court of Louis XVI, only to become a prisoner of the Reign of Terror? Her head was shaven for guillotining, but she escaped execution, though she was forced to make death masks for prominent victims. Novelist Michelle Moran covers this breathtaking period without losing the thread of its subject's singular story.

I've never read anything by Michelle Moran, but you can tell right away she really does her research on a time period (I see she has also has several other books that take place in ancient Egypt).

In Madame Tussaud, we see the French Revolution from the perspective of someone who is right in the middle of it all. Marie runs the Salon de Cire, and in order to fill her salon with wax figures of popular and interesting people (and thereby keep her income steady in these hard times of food shortages), Marie listens to the gossip, takes every opportunity to meet with prominent figures in society, even if she has to visit the local prison to do it.

When an opportunity arises to be the tutor to King Louis’s sister, pious and mild mannered Madame Elisabeth, Marie must take it (what an opportunity to find more faces for her wax museum!). But the public is hungry and unhappy with the lavish spending of the French royalty (though Marie could see Queen Marie Antoinette would be blamed no matter what she did). In Marie's salon, people like Robespierre and Marat meet and lash out against the monarchy.

This book was interesting because it straddles both sides of the argument. Marie and her family don’t really want to take sides, but in this political climate, and especially given their prominent role in the spreading of information (through wax figures, posters, and newsletters posted throughout their salon), not choosing sides is hardly an option. Refusing to wear the revolutionary’s cockade (symbol of loyalty to the cause) is not really an option, not when men will stop you on the street and demand to know why you are not supporting the revolution.

To stand against the king is treason, to stand against the revolution is just dangerous … but which side will win? What will that mean for Marie’s new friend in Madame Elisabeth? How long can Marie last?

The guillotine doesn’t even show up until most of the way through this book, and I see now how much more there is to the French Revolution, so many subtleties and shifts in thinking. I only knew the basics before, that aristocracy were rich and arrogant. That common people were poor and starving. Heads were lost. The fictional Scarlet Pimpernel gallantly saved aristocrats from the guillotine when the revolution turned bloody.

I really enjoyed this book. I especially loved that, at the very end, there is a section with some bits of the author's research that didn't fit in the novel (mostly because it took place after the story was over). There was a picture of the very first person to ever be photographed—a random guy on the street who happened to stand still long enough to be caught by the extra-long expose time.

Lit Snit Verdict: A-

Spotlight on Non-Fiction

Most of what I read is fiction, of all sorts of genres. So, when I do go for non-fiction, I'm pretty choosy. I don’t want to be one of those people, though, who (for example) has only ever gone to one musical and then tries to convince theater-loving friends that one was the best thing ever. I don’t read a ton of non-fiction (I’ve only ever read one book about painting and it made the list), so if you take this list with a grain of salt, I won’t be offended! And if you have recommendations, feel free to share in the comments!

Here's some non-fiction I've enjoyed in the last year:

Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku. Complex science, explained in easy-to-understand terms, all springing from science fiction concepts. What's not to love? We see how far science has come in recreating the sort of stuff we see in the movies (yes, there are people out there today working on teleportation), and how science fiction has been the inspiration behind some of the research. Plus, we get a history of humanity's fascination with the Sci-Fi concept (force fields, time travel, invisibility). It does get pretty complicated, going into topics like string theory and Schrödinger’s cat, but even when I didn’t completely understand it (how can the cat be dead and not dead at the same time!?!), it was still fascinating.

Untended side effect of reading this book: I understood the characters of Big Bang Theory even more ... and I was already a little frightened of how much I related to them (Sheldon: "Windows 7 is much more user friendly. I don't like that." ha!)

Tales of a Female Nomad by Rita Golden Gelman. I know Eat, Pray, Love has been in the news lately, with the Julia Roberts movie, but I really enjoyed the style of this travel memoir, and had heard from a friend that it was better (can’t compare myself as I haven’t read Eat, Pray, Love). A woman facing a huge life change (separating from her husband), decides to leave her world behind and immerse herself in the culture of another country … and another country after that … and then a few more. In each place, she lives as the local people live, leaving behind (as much as possible) her own Western viewpoints. The writing style was relatable, and the adventures compelling. I wish I had this author’s courage.

Color and Light by James Gurney. A painting book brought to you by the artist who did Dinotopia (warm fuzzies to Dinotopia). Some fascinating stuff about how colors interact, how light and shadows behave in various settings. Everything from scientific explanation of cones and rods in your eyes to easy ways to set up your palette for painting en plein air to tips on photography (that is, taking pics to be painted later or pics of your paintings). Some eye-opening stuff, and some cool artwork throughout.

The Most Human Human by Brian Christian. A look at what artificial intelligence means for humanity & how we view ourselves. A surprisingly wide array of topics (philosophy, science, history, technology) spring from this topic of how our author might convince the judges of his humanity and earn the "most human human" prize in the Turing test. (The Turing test is a challenge to programmers to fool at least 30% of human judges that computer software is a human in a text-based 5 minute conversation).

What non-fiction books do you enjoy?