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In The Woods by Tana French
Feb. 10th, 2010 12:03 amThe 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 crackling 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.
Okay, see, prose like that above is what gets me to turn the pages in this whodunit mystery debut novel by Tana French. The first few pages got me, with sprawling descriptions of how idyllic and peaceful life was back then, children playing, suburbia-type ordinariness blahblahblah and then blam! Two kids have gone missing, and their other playmate is the only one found, with odd scratches and bloody shoes and no memory of what happened whatsoever.
That kid grows up to be the protagonist in the story, Rob, a detective who works in the murder department in Ireland, investigating a new case with his female partner, Cassie. I read this as quickly as possible, intrigued by the two murder mysteries, with Ms. French foreshadowing some kind of connection between the mysterious disappearances and the recent case--I wanted to find out what happened. The wording is beautiful, albeit a bit sexist and trying to be tough macho, and each chapter finishes with Rob's introspection, something different from the usual cliffhangers/leads in the usual detective/Dan Brown novels, which is actually quite interesting, for a change. The words were strung prettily, but nothing much was happening in some chapters, which had me putting down the book several times and picking up BUST magazine instead (but that's another story), and times like these I wish I had enough patience and wasn't too short-attention spanned.
Reading about the mysterious things happening in the woods did give me the heebiejeebies though, and made me glad I lived in a place right now surrounded by concrete. Rob reminded me of Ballard from Dollhouse, with his pursuit of truth and justice, blind to his own flaws and blind spots and possessing that sulky annoying arrogance. I didn't like him, and kept wishing he was a woman instead, would have made things more interesting.
Anyways, when I reached the middle, things picked up and I couldn't put it down. Suddenly there were flashbacks and unexplained memory loss and I wanted SO BAD for it to be connected to the disappearances, and not just put there to throw me off-track. It ended satisfactorily and eerily for the murder case, but the disappearances were never explained, which irked me a bit. Some might like that, but the loose ends made me feel a little shortchanged. I want to drop some spoilers about what happened between Cassie and Rob, but it's too much like real life, and I actually liked how it was played in the end, so I won't. Plus Cassie appears in The Likeness, which I'm looking forward to reading, since I like Cassie more than Rob.
What I think: 7 unicorns
Okay, see, prose like that above is what gets me to turn the pages in this whodunit mystery debut novel by Tana French. The first few pages got me, with sprawling descriptions of how idyllic and peaceful life was back then, children playing, suburbia-type ordinariness blahblahblah and then blam! Two kids have gone missing, and their other playmate is the only one found, with odd scratches and bloody shoes and no memory of what happened whatsoever.
That kid grows up to be the protagonist in the story, Rob, a detective who works in the murder department in Ireland, investigating a new case with his female partner, Cassie. I read this as quickly as possible, intrigued by the two murder mysteries, with Ms. French foreshadowing some kind of connection between the mysterious disappearances and the recent case--I wanted to find out what happened. The wording is beautiful, albeit a bit sexist and trying to be tough macho, and each chapter finishes with Rob's introspection, something different from the usual cliffhangers/leads in the usual detective/Dan Brown novels, which is actually quite interesting, for a change. The words were strung prettily, but nothing much was happening in some chapters, which had me putting down the book several times and picking up BUST magazine instead (but that's another story), and times like these I wish I had enough patience and wasn't too short-attention spanned.
Reading about the mysterious things happening in the woods did give me the heebiejeebies though, and made me glad I lived in a place right now surrounded by concrete. Rob reminded me of Ballard from Dollhouse, with his pursuit of truth and justice, blind to his own flaws and blind spots and possessing that sulky annoying arrogance. I didn't like him, and kept wishing he was a woman instead, would have made things more interesting.
Anyways, when I reached the middle, things picked up and I couldn't put it down. Suddenly there were flashbacks and unexplained memory loss and I wanted SO BAD for it to be connected to the disappearances, and not just put there to throw me off-track. It ended satisfactorily and eerily for the murder case, but the disappearances were never explained, which irked me a bit. Some might like that, but the loose ends made me feel a little shortchanged. I want to drop some spoilers about what happened between Cassie and Rob, but it's too much like real life, and I actually liked how it was played in the end, so I won't. Plus Cassie appears in The Likeness, which I'm looking forward to reading, since I like Cassie more than Rob.
What I think: 7 unicorns
