The New York Times Book Review - Stephen King
…Tana French's extraordinary new novel…[lands] in that twilight zone between mystery and suspense (where this book will undoubtedly be shelved at your local bookstore) and literature. It is a strange and rich territory inhabited by such novelists as Michael Robotham, Laura Lippman, George Pelecanos, James Ellroy and Ruth Rendell. All of these novelists (and a dozen others) have "transcended the genre," as they say, none of them in quite the same fashion…The fine-drawn quality of French's characterizations is one measure of the novel's above-average success as literary fiction…[and] the book is lifted by French's nervy, almost obsessive prose… [which] as fine as it is, as dense as it is, as obsessive as it is, remains in service to the story. This is good work by a good writer.
The New York Times - Janet Maslin
…Tana French's best and most intricately nuanced novel yet…She is in a class by herself as a superb psychological novelist for whom plot is secondary. She is not a crime writer per se; her books just happen to involve deaths and detectives, whose talk and jockeying and gamesmanship she captures perfectly…French's intense interest in identity and self-deception might make this a slow-building book for some. But if you read her as carefully as you should, it's a seductively detailed start in which every bit of dailiness is made to matter…French's pacing goes pedal-to-the-metal for the book's last section. Get ready for the whiplash brought on by its final twists and turns. Despite the speed, none of the final revelations feel rushed or artificial. And French never loses sight of the idea she voiced in her very first sentence. Luck haunts this story every step of the way.
Publishers Weekly
★ 08/20/2018
Reviewed by Julie BuntinThe 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.
From the Publisher
Extraordinary . . . Here’s a things-go-bad story Thomas Hardy could have written in his prime. . . . The book is lifted by French’s nervy, almost obsessive prose. . . . This is good work by a good writer. For the reader, what luck.”
—Stephen King, The New York Times Book Review
“Tana French is at her suspenseful best in The Witch Elm . . . Tana French’s best and most intricately nuanced novel yet . . . She is in a class by herself as a superb psychological novelist . . . French’s heretofore finest novel . . . Get ready for the whiplash brought on by its final twists and turns.”
—Janet Maslin, The New York Times
“Like all of her novels, it becomes an incisive psychological portrait embedded in a mesmerizing murder mystery. [French] could make a Target run feel tense and revelatory.”
—Los Angeles Times
“Like all of French’s novels, The Witch Elm can be swooningly evocative . . . even if Toby isn’t on the Dublin Murder Squad, the events in The Witch Elm spur his great, transformative upheaval. The discovery they force on him revolves around one question: Whose story is this? By the time French is done retooling the mystery form—it seems there’s nothing she can’t make it do, no purpose she can’t make it serve—the answer is clear: hers and hers alone.”
—Laura Miller, Slate
“Ms. French’s new standalone is a stunner. Unapologetically atmospheric, the book is thought-provoking and a pleasure to read at the sentence level. Her suspense and crime elements are done exceptionally well and with great originality.”
—Paula McLain
“Head-spinning. . . French has spun an engrossing meditation on memory, identity, and family. A master of psychological complexity, she toys with the minds of her characters and readers both.”
—Vogue
“The Witch Elm, which follows a privileged man whose life gets derailed, is a timely window into what happens when men lose their precious power . . . French’s masterful character study is absolutely riveting and timely.”
—Buzzfeed
“Detail-rich sequences lead to psychological insights and unexpected revelations.”
—The Wall Street Journal
“The literary world’s favorite mystery writer.”
—The Cut
“Since bursting onto the mystery scene with her genre-bending 2007 debut In the Woods, Tana French has cemented her reputation as a literary novelist who happens to write about murder.”
—Vulture
“Tana French—she of the lusciously complex sentences, she of the dense and eerie atmospheres—is one of the greatest crime novelists writing today. . . . The Witch Elm is a rich, immersive, and spine-chilling book, because Tana French is great at what she does and she knows how to tell a story. But it’s also a scathing and insightful deconstruction of social privilege, coming from a master of the form at the height of her powers.”
—Vox
“A crime thriller at the top of its game.”
—InStyle
“Tana French’s new novel is an intriguing blend of whodunit and ‘who am I’ . . . a high priestess of tense, twisty plots . . . the mystery’s resolution is astonishing.”
—O, Oprah Magazine
“Spooky. . . . one of the premier voices in contemporary crime fiction . . . The final revelations in Witch are startling . . . a whodunit far more memorable for the why than the who.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“French’s alluring storytelling keeps you hooked.”
—Time
“French burrows deeply into her victim’s psyche, plucking out his thoughts and presenting them with such elegantly worded descriptions one may think the author has nestled herself in an armchair squarely in Toby’s frontal cortex . . . This one is worth two readings: the first with the constant tightening of the chest that accompanies all of French’s work, the second after the reader can breathe again.”
—The Associated Press
“Scratch a bit beneath the surface of The Witch Elm, then, and you’ll find a book that captures the tensions of our current era, which is defined both by identity politics and the backlash against them. Through Toby, the novel offers powerful insight into how luck—which is, often enough, another way of saying privilege—can blind people to the suffering of others, with disastrous consequences.”
—Quartz
“A thrilling novel about privilege, family lore, and perception.”
—PopSugar
“The crime writer for people who think they don’t like genre fiction. Her prose is enveloping and intricate, but casually masks its cleverness. She sucks you in with mystery, then unfurls a masterfully rendered, super specific slice of Irish society.”
—Vogue.com
“Tana French is at the cutting edge of crime fiction, and The Witch Elm pushes its boundaries further.”
—The New Republic
“A spellbinding stand-alone novel carefully crafted in her unique, darkly elegant prose style.”
—Booklist
“Prose so smooth you forget about it and just sink right in.”
—Literary Hub
“Exquisitely suspenseful.”
—Bustle
“Tana French’s The Witch Elm is a chilling mystery about the unreliability of memory.”
—Real Simple
“You savor the details—the delicious portrayal of crisp fall weather in Ireland—as you race through the pages. . . . A tick-tocking mystery and a fascinating portrayal of memory as a cracked mirror, through which the past can’t quite be seen clearly.”
—Seattle Times
“French spins a compelling, twisty plot and maintains an atmosphere of foreboding and paranoia that runs throughout the book . . . games within games as each tries to deflect blame from themselves and onto someone else . . . [but] French has still created a compelling novel of suspense, in which a world that no longer makes sense is the scariest thing of all.”
—Providence Journal
“An amazing read from an iconic thriller writer.”
—Mystery Tribune
“Fans of [Tana French’s] previous Dublin Murder Squad books will find themselves happily tangled up in her new novel, and ultimately delighted by the deep psychological dive she leads them on.”
—Mystery Scene
“Tana French, having tailored psychological suspense to her own voice, demonstrates anew that the solution never fits neatly into the crime-solving order that detective novels demand.”
—Bookforum
“Edgar-winner French is at her suspenseful best in this standalone, in which an Irishman, who’s always considered himself a lucky person, has to reassess his past in the light of a gruesome find on the grounds of his family’s ancestral home.”
—Publishers Weekly
“The story is compelling, and French is deft in unraveling this book’s puzzles . . . Psychologically intense.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“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.”
—Library Journal
OCTOBER 2018 - AudioFile
Narrator Paul Nugent’s conversational delivery turns Tana French's stand-alone mystery into a painstaking confession over pints at a pub. Nugent's earnest tone makes the privileged and oblivious Toby seem charming as the story dives into the ripple effect of becoming a crime victim. After suffering a severe head injury from a brutal burglary, Toby stays with his ailing uncle in the ivy-covered family home. When a skull is discovered in the witch elm in the backyard, Toby begins to question his cheery memories of his youth and his relationship with his cousins. Nugent's myriad character voices sound authentic, keeping the listener locked inside Toby’s head. French’s faithful listeners will recognize the Dublin detectives who become involved, with Mike Rafferty taking the lead in the ivy house case. S.T.C. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
