The Wych Elm by Tana French
Google cannot tell me whether this book is called The Wych Elm or The Witch Elm, but you get the point. Twentysomething Toby works as a PR-operative for an art gallery somewhere in Dublin. After a night out with friends his apartment is burglarised; Toby catches them in the act and is clobbered on the head with a heavy object. When he wakes up in hospital he is no longer the same. He has a limp, his face droops and he can no longer remember […]
The Witch Elm by Tana French
So if you’re familiar with the other Tana French novels, you know that each is narrated by a detective from the Dublin Murder Squad solving one primary case and maybe other connected cases. In general there’s a kind of slight overlap/relay race kind of structure from one novel to the next, where a secondary character from the previous novel picks up for the next novel. For me, the last two novels in this series were relatively weak, or rather, I felt the detective’s role as […]
https://killingmykindle.com/2018/12/13/episode-1-45-backstabber-hope-grabber-greedy-little-fit-haver/ Wherein I review: 171. The Devil’s Colony (Fatal Folklore Trilogy #3) by Bill Schweigart 172. The Fortune of War (Aubrey & Maturin #6) by Patrick O’Brian 173. Bill, the Galactic Hero and The Planet of the Robot Slaves (Bill the Galactic Hero #2) by Harry Harrison 174. The Witch Elm by Tana French Anyone in America right now can tell you what’s scarier than monsters out of myth is actually creepy ass Nazis. Speaking of America, that’s where the action moves in the Aubrey […]
I have been recommending Tana French ad nauseum every time someone asks me for a book recommendation, ever since I discovered her delightful series in 2007. I have two left to read and I purposefully wait as looong as I can manage before reading one because they are so good and knowing I have one on the horizon makes me happy. That being said, imagine my delight as I’m perusing the “Hot Picks” aisle at my local library and see she has a new one […]
What Tana French, one of my favorite authors, has done here with The Witch Elm (her first non-Dublin Murder Squad book) is very interesting, but I will acknowledge it probably won’t be for everyone. The two starting points for inspiration on this book are Who Put Bella in the Witch Elm? and the idea of: what if your protagonist was a guy who has never had to work hard for anything in his life? And then you swirl those ideas around for a while in […]
If you’ve followed me on GoodReads, you are well aware of my affinity for Tana French. A former parishioner of mine turned me onto her books three years ago. I liked In The Woods well enough but at the time, I felt there was something lacking. I didn’t know that…a. I was unfamiliar with French’s style (subsequent readings would help me appreciate it more) and b. it was a first novel and I’ve since learned to be more graceful with first novels. I then read The Likeness and […]
