The Witch Elm

August 1, 2018
A stand-alone novel from the author of the Dublin Murder Squad series.French has earned a reputation for atmospheric and existentially troubling police procedurals. Here, the protagonist is a crime victim rather than a detective. Toby Hennessy is a lucky man. He has a job he enjoys at an art gallery. He has a lovely girlfriend named Melissa. And he has a large, supportive family, including his kind Uncle Hugo and two cousins who are more like siblings. As the story begins, Toby's just gotten himself into a bit of a mess at work, but he's certain that he'll be able to smooth things over, because life is easy for him--until two men break into his apartment and brutally beat him. The damage Toby suffers, both physical and mental, undermines his sense of self. His movements are no longer relaxed and confident. His facility with words is gone. And his memory is full of appalling blanks. When he learns that his uncle is dying, Toby decides that he can still be useful by caring for him, so he moves into the Hennessy family's ancestral home, and Melissa goes with him. The three of them form a happy family unit, but their idyll comes to an abrupt end when Toby's cousin's children find a human skull in the trunk of an elm tree at the bottom of the garden. As the police try to solve the mystery posed by this gruesome discovery, Toby begins to question everything he thought he knew about himself and his family. The narrative is fueled by some of the same themes French has explored in the past. It's reminiscent of The Likeness (2008) in the way it challenges the idea of identity as a fixed and certain construct. And the unreliability of memory was a central issue in her first novel, In the Woods (2007). The pace is slow, but the story is compelling, and French is deft in unraveling this book's puzzles. Readers will see some revelations coming long before Toby, but there are some shocking twists, too.Psychologically intense.

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Starred review from August 20, 2018
Reviewed by Julie Buntin, The Witch Elm is Tana French’s first standalone, following five Dublin Murder Squad mysteries. It’s as good as the best of those novels, if not better. In theme and atmosphere, it evokes her earliest two books, Into the Woods and The Likeness, using the driving mystery—of course, there’s a murder—as a vehicle for asking complex questions about identity and human nature. But in this latest work, privilege is French’s subject; more specifically, the relationship between privilege and what we perceive as luck. Who might we become if the privileges we take for granted were suddenly ripped away?, Instead of a world-weary detective, our narrator is Toby, an easygoing 20-something who has always taken his wild good fortune as a matter of course. He’s attractive, clever, and universally liked. A publicist for a Dublin art gallery, he has a girlfriend so saintly that it takes a while for her to register as a real character (or at least for him to see her that way). Then robbers break into his apartment and beat him so badly that the physical damage permeates every aspect of his life, fundamentally altering his appearance, his gait, and his sense of self. His memory is newly riddled with gaps; his frustration as he attempts to discern what’s real, what’s remembered, and what’s paranoia adds fuel to the plot. While he’s in the hospital, his beloved Uncle Hugo, keeper of the Ivy House, a family property that’s rendered with French’s signature attention to real estate, is diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. Toby moves in with him, both to keep him company and because he, too, needs a caretaker., When a human skull turns up in a hollow of a witch elm in the backyard of the Ivy House, the plot revs its engine. Who does the skull belong to? And what does Toby have to do with whoever died in his backyard, or at least who was buried there? In typical French fashion, just when you think you’ve started to piece it all together, the picture shifts before your eyes. It’s a bold move to wait until nearly a third of the way into the book to deploy the body. But what might seem like throat-clearing in another writer’s novel is taut and tense in The Witch Elm, thanks to a layered network of subplots and the increasing fragmentation of Toby himself. In many ways, the most interesting question the novel asks is not whodunit; it’s whether, and how, Toby will come back together again., Stepping outside the restrictions of the Dublin Murder Squad format suits French. Readers used to the detective’s perspective might miss the shop talk, not to mention the pleasure of inhabiting the POV of the smartest character rather than (in this case) the most bewildered. By channeling the story through a narrator who’s unfamiliar with the very worst parts of human nature, she’s able to put her thematic questions at center stage . She carefully builds Toby up, and then strips every part of him away; the result is a chilling interrogation of privilege and the transformative effects of trauma. , Julie Buntin is the author of Marlena, a novel.

Starred review from August 1, 2018
French, author of the award-winning Dublin Murder Squad series, delivers a spellbinding stand-alone novel carefully crafted in her unique, darkly elegant prose style, which Stephen King has called incandescent. Toby Hennessy always considered himself a lucky guy, trading on his considerable charm for a successful life, until he has the misfortune to surprise two burglars in his flat. He is beaten and left for dead, and after a less-than-successful recovery, he agrees to care for his dying uncle, Hugo, at the family's ancestral home while working on regaining his own cognitive and motor skills. When a skull is found in the trunk of an ancient tree in the garden, his dysfunctional brain struggles to reassess the past, evidently not what it once seemed and now abounding in million-euro questions. Issues of identity permeate the narrative. Toby's previous forays using fake social-media accounts become an issue for the police. Welcome comic relief comes via Hugo's genealogy investigation service, now in high gear because of Americans confounded by their Irish DNA test results. Toby finds himself wondering how much he had ever really known about his family, now so disconcerted that their misery is like some rampaging animal, and the reader gets pulled into the vortex right along with them. As Oscar Wilde wrote, The truth is rarely pure and never simple. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

Starred review from September 15, 2018

This first stand-alone novel by French ("Dublin Murder Squad" series) features personable Dubliner Toby. Toby does social media work for an art gallery, maintains close relationships with his cousins Leon and Susanna, and has loose plans to marry girlfriend Melissa. Then one night, two burglers in his apartment beat him senseless and leave him for dead. Struggling mentally and physically, Toby is unable to continue working or living on his own, so he and Melissa move in with his Uncle Hugo, who is in the late stages of brain cancer. When a skeleton found in a tree in the backyard is identified as a high school friend of Toby's, long-held secrets bubble just below the surface. But with Toby's memory problems, he can't be sure how much he knows about Dominic, his death, or any of the people in his life--including himself. VERDICT French's slow-burning, character-driven examination of male privilege is timely, sharp, and meticulously crafted. Recommended for her legions of fans, as well as any readers of literary crime fiction.--Stephanie Klose, Library Journal

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2018

In this stand-alone from the multi-award-winning French, easygoing Toby encounters two burglars when returning home from a celebratory night out and is left for dead after a severe beating. Recovering at his ancestral home sounds like a good idea, if it weren't for the skull found in the garden's elm.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.