Okay, so I don't exactly come from the County Kerry (I originated in Chicago but I do still have family in Ireland...admittedly it's County Mayo and not Kerry, but that's beside the point) but this is one of my favorite old Irish songs. The "typical Irishman" part is what's relevant to my post today though.
I read Tana French's debut novel, In The Woods, over my winter break. This book one the 2007 Edgar Award for Best First Novel, and Irish writer French recently published a second book, called The Likeness, focusing on a somewhat secondary character from the first book. In The Woods takes place in Dublin and is told from the point of view of Rob Ryan, a detective on the murder squad of the Irish police force. Far from your average cop drama, this book focuses on the story of a little girl found dead at an archaeological site in the woods of Knocknaree, Ireland. What may or may not be a coincidence is that Rob, formerly known as Adam Ryan, got lost in the very same woods 20 years earlier; he was with his two best friends and the three disappeared into the woods for hours. Adam was found wearing blood-filled shoes and clutching a tree; he didn't speak for two weeks and he had no memories of what happened to his two friends, who were never found. I don't want to give away the ending, but I will say that I was sorely disappointed. This book has been aptly described as a "psychological thriller" by Publisher's Weekly; the unraveling of the murder of Katy Devlin, the girl found in the woods, involves the delving into of a very twisted psyche. At the same time, Rob Ryan is falling apart at the seams trying to figure out what the hell happened to him in those woods when he was a boy. Tana French is a strong writer; the book hooked me and kept me reading incessantly because I wanted to know what happened in the woods. **spoiler alert!** In the end, I was extremely disappointed that I didn't find out what happened to Rob or his friends. I felt like I had been led on, and I'll admit I was a little angry.
I did, however, pass the book along to my dad, who, as I mentioned in my last post, is my go-to guy for book recommendations and literary debate. We agreed, upon finishing the book, that it was a safe assumption that Tana French is not a huge fan of men. This is no commentary on her sexual preference or anything like that, but the way she made Rob out to be the jerk in the end really got on both of our nerves. If I hadn't read The Likeness, I might not agree with my father's conclusion, but having read French's second book I would definitely say that she's just not very nice to most of her male characters. The Likeness is told from Cassie Maddox's point of view; she was Rob's partner in the first book and at the end of In The Woods their relationship falls apart and Rob is given all the blame for how terribly things turn out.
Overall, I thought In The Woods was an alright book - I loved reading it, but the ending really made me angry. French is a good writer and she offers an interesting look at the twisted inner workings of the human psyche, but I definitely enjoyed The Likeness more, simply for the fact that I wasn't left hanging at the end.
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