The Witch Elm

by Tana French

Toby is a happy-go-lucky charmer who's dodged a scrape at work and is celebrating with friends when the night takes a turn that will change his life: he surprises two burglars who beat him and leave him for dead. Struggling to recover from his injuries, beginning to understand that he might never be the same man again, he takes refuge at his family's ancestral home to care for his dying uncle Hugo. Then a skull is found in the trunk of an elm tree in the garden - and as detectives close in, Toby is forced to face the possibility that his past may not be what he has always believed.

The Witch Elm asks what we become, and what we're capable of, when we no longer know who we are.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Thriller, Mystery Thriller, Audiobook, Crime, Ireland

528 pages, ebook

First published October 9, 2018

About the author

Tana French is the New York Times bestselling author of In the Woods, The Likeness, Faithful Place, Broken Harbor, The Secret Place, The Trespasser and The Witch Elm. Her books have won awards including the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity and Barry Awards, the Los Angeles Times Award for Best Mystery/Thriller, and the Irish Book Award for Crime Fiction. She lives in Dublin with her family.

Reviews

[Emily May · Rating 3 out of 5]

I actually didn't love a Tana French book... the world is broken. I just knew I jinxed it by writing that first paragraph in my review of The Secret Place.

I keep trying to convince myself to bump this up a star because it's hard to believe Tana French can write anything that isn't amazing. It's definitely not a bad book, but The Witch Elm - French's first standalone outside of her Dublin Murder Squad series - just didn't contain a lot of the stuff I've loved from this author.

To start with, I feel like my love for French is centred around her awesome, snarky, flawed, messy, human detectives. The crimes are whatever; the detectives - their voices, quirks, passions and personal histories - are what make her books so damn addictive. I shipped Rob and Cassie so hard in In the Woods, and Cassie herself made the implausible plot of The Likeness actually okay. I will probably never get over Frank and Rosie from Faithful Place. And that's before we've got to Kennedy, Moran and the ferocious Antoinette Conway.

Toby? He just doesn't compare. He's an asshole, but it's not that because sometimes assholes can be interesting (I might want to rewrite that sentence later). It's more that he's obnoxiously clueless, a self-proclaimed "lucky bastard" wrapped in a bubble of his own privilege. He's tall, blond and handsome, works at a PR firm, has a loving girlfriend and a group of good friends, and pretty much gets away with everything. He's a person who thinks this about poor, homeless people:

They could have gone to school. Instead of spending their time sniffing glue and breaking the wing mirrors off cars. They could have got jobs. The recession's over; there's no reason for anyone to be stuck in the muck unless they actually choose to be.

Flaws are interesting, but Toby's casual misogyny, judgement of others, and condescension make him extremely irritating. Plus, French's narrators are typically smart and intuitive, so Toby's head-scratching was frustrating.

I think I can trace a lot of my issues back to Toby. For example, I usually enjoy the long-winded nature of Tana French's books. She can get away with waffling on because I genuinely enjoy learning details about the characters, and listening to them have pages of dialogue about something unrelated to the plot. But I was so uninterested in Toby that huge chunks of this book made me want to go to sleep.

It takes so long to get to the main mystery, too. I get the point of the lengthy build-up in order to understand Toby as a character - someone who has been handed everything in life without having to face the struggles others would have, and someone who cannot believe it when he meets his first misfortune - but that didn't make it any more enjoyable to get through. It's a good hundred pages before the main story even rears its head.

I also can't deny that I miss the exciting investigations and police procedure the detectives usually take us through.

But I don't want this to get too negative. French does a lot of excellent things in this book and she digs into something interesting with Toby: how someone's luck, privilege, whatever-you-want-to-call-it can really affect not just a person's physical circumstances but their entire outlook on life. He's a conceptually fascinating individual, but it was so hard to find sympathy for him. It was this, in the end, that made me unable to care who the murderer was.

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[Meredith (Trying to catch up!) · Rating 3 out of 5]

2 and 4 stars. If I could give this a dual rating, I would!

Explanation of rating: I had 5-star expectations for The Witch Elm--Tana French is one of my favorite authors and while I haven’t loved all of her books, I really enjoyed the most recent installments of the Murder Squad series. Unfortunately, my expectations were not met. There were parts of the Witch Elm that I loved, but others not so much.

It’s hard to describe The Witch Elm--it’s part mystery, part thriller, part family drama. Primarily, it is a psychological character study.

Toby has had all the luck in the world. He has natural good looks and things come easily to him: his jobs, his friends, and his girlfriend. He comes from a loving upper-class Dublin family, who can offer financial support when needed. Needless to say, Toby hasn’t faced many struggles in his young life, until one night when his luck runs out and his life changes forever. The Witch Elm chronicles Toby’s decline from golden boy to an empty shell of a man.

Toby is the primary unreliable narrator. I enjoyed getting inside of his head. I was riveted for about the first 20%--Toby’s voice is charismatic and I couldn't wait to hear more and learn more about him. But then NOTHING happens for quite some time. Yes, the reader learns more details about Toby’s family and his current struggles, but these parts could have been edited down quite a bit. What bothered me was not that there wasn’t much happening and the amount of information provided seemed superfluous. This is a repeated pattern throughout the book: drama- nothing- drama nothing- drama. It seems purposefully done to fully give the reader a full view of Toby’s mental decline, but I feel like the same impact could have been achieved without a full-on recap of every minute of Toby's life. If you are a reader who does not like reading every minute detail about a character’s life, you might struggle with this book.

On the other hand, there are elements of this novel that are fascinating. Tana French certainly knows how to write a sentence; her characters are finely crafted and well-developed. The setting is multidimensional and takes on a life of its own. I really enjoyed the ending and having the opportunity to witness a complete view of Toby’s transformation. While this didn’t wholly work for me, I would still recommend for those who enjoy unreliable narrators and detailed character studies.

I received an ARC of this book from Edelweiss and Penguin Publishing Group in exchange for an honest review.

[Julie · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Witch Elm by Tana French is a 2018 Viking Books publication.

Luck. Toby has never really considered his, until now. He’s always had an easy go of things, able to talk himself out of any potential trouble or situation with his easy charm. But, Toby’s luck has changed overnight. First, he gets into serious trouble with his boss, then his home is broken into, and he is beaten within an inch of his life.

While his parents and faithful, adoring girlfriend are rock solid support systems, Toby is interrogated about the robbery, almost as if he is the perpetrator and not the victim. If that weren’t bad enough, Toby gets word his uncle has been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. With the dual purpose of adjusting to his new normal and to help in the care of his uncle, Toby moves into the family ancestral home, along with his girlfriend. Toby’s two cousins whom he has seen little of over the years, are also in attendance. When one of his cousin’s children makes a ghastly discovery in the garden, Toby’ luck goes from bad to worse. Toby is suddenly quite vulnerable, especially with his memory lapses making it difficult for him to alibi himself. It looks like Toby’s luck may have finally run completely out…

I have loved Tana French since ‘In the Woods’ and have read nearly all of her books since then. I was aware this book was not a part of the Dublin Murder Squad series, but I was super excited to see what French may have in store for me with this stand alone novel. I love TF's style and it is obvious she has some serious writing chops. However, this one was a huge letdown.

The story got off to a strong start. Toby’s struggles to overcome the physical and psychological trauma he endured is very compelling and realistic. However, I wasn’t sure if I could trust Toby. As the detectives play games with him, I wondered who was behind the break in. Did it have to do with the trouble Toby got himself into at work? Why such a severe beating?

I spent the first half of the book wondering when the crime elements would heat up, thinking this was the main thread of the story. Then somewhere around the midway mark, the center shifts away from that thread and lo and behold, there is a real live murder mystery to solve.

Unfortunately, too much time was wasted getting to this part. The story moved so slowly, I started getting a little fidgety. The plot became knotty and cumbersome, and the pace never picked up, tempting me to do the unthinkable- mark a Tana French novel down as a DNF.

I think I understood some of the deeper aspects of the story, such as, how we view ourselves compared to how others see us, how memory plays a role in our lives, how our actions, or inactions often have consequences we are not aware of, as we go merrily along our way. Every action has a reaction, as they say.

In the end, I plodded onward, but there was something seriously off about the book’s structure, and that ending was utterly depressing. Yes, one might have a different point of view on that, but I’m going with the glass half empty on this one. It pains me to rate this one so low, but sadly, it just didn’t work for me.

2 stars

[karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

after languishing for months who-knows-where, my review is finally up at LARB!

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/t...#!

if you celebrate christmas, read it in line as you last-minute shop. if you do not, enjoy it with all the free time not having to worry about mulberries and double-sided tape and trees going up in flames affords you.

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oooh, goodreads choice awards semifinalist for best mystery & thriller 2018! what will happen?

oh, it will lose to stephen king, the man who wrote a glowing review of this book (although his review had a pretty significant factual error) she's still a winner in my heart.

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OH MY GOD, IT'S HERE! AND IT'S NOT AN ARC - IT'S A FINISHED COPY AND IT'S MIIIIIIINE! goodbye, rest of day. you belong to tana french now.



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UPDATE - while my plan to corner an unscrupulous intern (harlequin presents #945: cornering the unscrupulous intern) may have failed, the universe has provided, and i am going to be reviewing this for l.a. review of books - ARC is en route. A MOST FRABJOUS DAY, INDEED!!!

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these are the penguin random house offices in nyc. i am prepared to camp out in front of them until some kindly intern slips me an ARC of this.

[Kathryn · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF at 50%

I spent a long time struggling over this review. I hate insulting my favorite authors. They feel like my friends and I’m betraying them. I ADORE Tana French. In the Woods is one of my all-time favorite mysteries. However, it pains me to say that The Witch Elm, just didn’t do it for me.

The Witch Elm deviates from the Dublin Murder Squad construct. In it, Toby, a 20-something art gallery worker, is the victim of a brutal burglary in which he’s left for dead. A severe head injury leaves Toby unable to work or function on his own. So upon his cousins’ request, he journeys with saintly girlfriend Melissa to his dying uncle’s estate. Among much family drama, a skull is discovered in the garden’s Witch Elm. And from there the mystery commences.

Here’s my main problem with The Witch Elm: it’s just soooo bloody boring. The skull isn’t discovered until around page 200. TWO-HUNDRED. 200 pages of hemming and hawing to reach the main plotline. WHAT. THE. FUCK. And then I reached about halfway and STILL nothing happened. It felt like I was marching to the Gulag through mud six feet deep.

Summary: if you suffer from insomnia, pick up The Witch’s Elm. Better than Ambien.

[Jim Fonseca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Edited, spoilers hidden 2/23/22

The setting is an important part of this story: an old family house* outside of Dublin, nicknamed Ivy House, where two generations ago a whole crowd of brothers and sisters grew up and then their children came for summers, weekends and holidays. It’s now occupied only by the oldest unmarried uncle, slowing dying of a brain tumor.



The real mystery begins halfway through the book when a skull is found in a tree cavity by one of the grandkids. But perhaps the mystery started much earlier in the book, when the main character, a PR guy for an art gallery, was severely beaten during a robbery -- so severely that he is taking more than a year to recover with physical disabilities and long- and short-term memory problems. During recovery he goes to live in the old house with the dying uncle so they can take care of each other. Two of his cousins visit and stay over almost every weekend.

It turns out the skull belongs to a male classmate of the children. The classmate disappeared twenty or so years ago and at that time everyone thought he had killed himself by jumping off a cliff . Now the police are circling round and, based on their investigation, they feel that it must be one of the four who killed him: the main character; the female cousin, married with two kids; the male cousin, gay, and taking a break from his partner in Germany, or the uncle.



The police focus in on the main character. Of course, with his memory problems, he gets to the point where he thinks MAYBE IT WAS ME and I just don’t remember, and my family isn’t going to tell me just so I can give myself away to the police. Little by little as they talk night after night, police visit after police visit, we see that a case could be made for any of the four – or perhaps any two acting together.

There’s a lot of very good writing. I recall thinking early in the book, in the passages about the main character’s group of buddies at a bar on the edge of drunkenness; an incident at his work, and the break-in at his apartment: 'all this is very well-written.'

There’s occasional humor: While the main character recovers in the hospital, his mother brings him so many things that “…random stuff was popping up on every available surface through spontaneous generation and sooner or later the nurses would find me buried under a heap of cupcakes and an accordion.”

So it’s a good read but in my opinion has a flaw. It gets a bit dragged out at the end. By the middle of the 500+ page book, almost every scene is discussion of the murder around the table with the cousins. Night after night they make a fire, have dinner and wine, wait to be sure the uncle doesn’t stumble up the stairs or drop his wine, and then they go over the possibilities again and again. It it one of them who's not telling? Was it the uncle? A bit much – otherwise I would have given it a 5, so a 4.5.

The author (b. 1973) is Irish and American. As a child, her family lived all over the world and she was born in the US, but she went to university in Ireland, married there, and makes her home in Dublin. Because of her series of best-selling crime novels she has been called the “First Lady of Irish Crime.” She also is a well-known actress in Irish theater.



*As an aside, it would be fun to make a list of novels where the house is so important to the story that it is essentially a character. Off the top of my head I think of Sabato’s On Heroes and Tombs set in an old decrepit mansion in in Buenos Aires, and Hatoum’s A Tale of a Certain Orient set in Manaus, Brazil. Even Virginia Woolf’s house in To the Lighthouse might qualify or the beach house in Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, The Sea.

A house in Dublin from artprintimages.com
Grafton Street, Dublin from postmediavancouversun2.files.wordpress.com
Photo of the author from irishamerica.com

[Susanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25 Stars* (rounded down)

There is something about the feeling I get before reading another Tana French novel that calms me and makes me want to sit in a big old comfy chair, with a cushy pillow and a lush blankie surrounding me. I just know that I’m going to be settling in for an in-depth read with highly intelligent, well thought out, interesting characters and I immediately prepare myself. I grab a nice warm cuppa and before I know it, hours have gone by and I am in the thick of it. Such was the case with “The Witch Elm.”

I have read every book Tana French has ever written, so I knew what I was getting myself into. The slower build of the storyline, delving into every aspect of the characters’ personas and their machinations - which you either love or hate. I happen to love this - it makes me feel like I know her characters inside and out - I understand them like the back of my hand and I feel like I could live in their backyard, except for the fact that they all live in Ireland and I don’t! LOL.

“The Witch Elm” is a standalone - a blend of literary fiction / a mystery, not a police procedural or a detective story, unlike her other novels to date. This one is different and it feels quite sinister, even from the very beginning. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, on edge, stomach clenched. The characters are quirky, strange, hard to trust and frankly, a little slimy - and that my friends is where it gets interesting. Even up till the last second, I was never sure what was real and what wasn’t, who to trust or whether or not my instincts were right or not. C’est la vie.

Everything has always gone Toby’s way. He’s just that kind of guy. You’ve met him before, you know, that good looking guy with the fairly successful job and the sly smile who can talk his way out of anything? That is exactly what Toby does – until one night when his apartment gets burgled and he gets assaulted. Afterwards, Toby suffers from neurological deficits, including memory loss, loss of function in his left arm, his hand and one of his legs. Frustrated, Toby knows that his life will never be the same.

Unfortunately, this just isn’t a good year for Toby’s family – shortly after his assault, Toby’s Uncle Hugo suffers a stroke and is unable to take care of himself. The family is in bits about it, so Toby goes to look after him. Every weekend at the Ivy House, his cousins Susanna and Leon and the rest of his family come round. Everyone noshes on food, chills out by the fire, tells stories and reminisces. Then IT happens. While playing, Zach, one of Susanna’s kids, find a Skull inside “The Witch Elm” past the garden. A human skull, no joke. From the moment the Detectives arrive, nothing is the same. Of course all hell breaks loose, but then, what did you expect?

This story plays out in a way that only Tana French can spin it. Back and forth it goes, like a pendulum swinging, faster and faster and I, for one, grew desperate, afraid of where the tale was going to take me. There was however, no reason for me to fear, Tana French was at the helm and she spun this web masterfully. I was all in from the first. These characters, like them or not, grabbed my attention and held on tight. I recommend this to readers who love the “feel” of a great book… how it feels deep in the bones (pun intended) when the characters sink in, when you hear their conversations in your head and you know every facet of their personality and you just can’t shake ‘em, no matter how hard you try.

Tana French – in case it is not obvious, you are one of my go to authors. I am desperately waiting for a sequel to “In the Woods” – I need to know what Rob has been up to! Also, I cannot wait for another Antoinette Conway / Stephen Moran novel. I have mini-crushes on Rob and Stephen.. so help a girl out, would you please? Thank you!

A huge thank you to Edelweiss, Penguin Publishing Group, Viking and Tana French for a complimentary copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Published on Edelweiss, Goodreads, Twitter and Instagram on 10.25.18.

[Tammy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lucky and genial Toby meets the guys for a night out to celebrate his circumvention of a potentially career-wrecking incident at work. Afterwards, he is nearly beaten to death by intruders and his life changes dramatically. He lands at Ivy House to care for his terminally ill uncle and to recover from his own serious injuries. A skull is found in the Wych Elm which takes this finely crafted novel into the events of the past as experienced by the participants looking back from the present day. Impaired and confused (or is he?), Toby tries to unravel the mystery of the skull which leads him to question who he was, who he believes himself to be, as well as, who he has become. His familial relationships are equally as distorted. This book crackles with realistic characterizations. At times, I felt as if I was listening to my husband and his friends good-naturedly jab at each other including that eye roll inducing middle school mentality that that tends to resurface when they are together. While a mystery exists, this book is more of a deep dive into the human psyche and an exploration of the perception of events from different points of view. I was transfixed.

[Elyse Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

NO SPOILERS...
.... safe to read....
It’s a sin to spoil a Tana French novel.
I’ve been reading Tana French since 2007. My memory is clear...I walked into “Borders” looking around...
“Into the Woods” was a new release. I had never heard of the author - but liked what the inside flap said, took a blind chance, bought it... came home and inhaled it instantly. I became an ‘annoying’ book pusher.
I was telling strangers off the street about the new mystery-thriller author Tana French and her amazing characters characters: Rob and Cassie...
I *still* have never given up hope that Tana may one day bring back *Rob*, from “Into the Woods”.
Regardless- Tana French is truly a great writer. She has a distinct voice in crime writing....
And ‘this’ new 2018 release: “The Witch Elm”, is ‘closer’ in style with her first two books: “In The Woods”, and “The Likeness”... than....
“Faithful Place”, “Broken Harbor”, “The Secret Place”, or “The Trespasser”....
...This is not the Dublin series -
...This is Tana’s first stand alone book...
...This is also her first book where the protagonist she introduces us to is not a detective. Instead, the protagonist we meet in “The Witch Elm”, *Toby*, doesn’t have any interest in police investigations or mysteries- he doesn’t have a deeply damage past or demons that haunt him.
He’s been coasting through life as ‘cream-of-the-crop’ type guy-
He’s annoying! He can’t even relate to average problems let alone have compassion for the homeless - the poor - or other misfortunate people.
Toby is king of his universe: has ‘the girl”, “the right job”, “friends”, good looks, etc. !
One ‘very-bad-horrible-very-bad- night-along with Toby’s ‘cocky confidence’, becomes his nemesis.
Hot-shot, semi- arrogant -guy will have to re-evaluate his past and re-asses his identity after a serious ‘blow’.
Not an easy task for a guy who always felt nothing major ever went wrong. As a guy that he himself felt was a lucky bastard, he became a kicking and screaming grouchy miserable pill as anyone would be - fighting to accept that he was facing a shitty raw deal.
‘New Normal’ were not words in ‘his’ vocabulary.

The very beginning of this novel was sarcastic ‘f#ck-off’ dialogue between ‘guys’....men - pissin-in-the-wind....
testosterone chatter....
Toby and his two best guy friends: Dec and Sean were drinking in the pub.
Guys speak to each other so different than women do to each other. It’s always a little fun for me to witness male-bonding.
Many readers will think it’s a Tana French slow-start ( it is a slow start), but I liked the dialogue conversations better the 2nd time I re-read them than the first. ( I had started this book - put it aside- came back and started over once I could devote my full attention.

There’s some weed pulling in this novel, but I don’t always mind pulling weeds - as it can be meditative—but when the exotic fragrant of ‘suspense’ becomes gripping...its ‘your-garden-of-eden-experience’.
It takes a long time to understand Toby’s character. It’s clear - we are not suppose to love this guy...
but it takes to the end of the book to understand why!!
We spend a LONG time getting inside Toby’s head....
When ‘the mystery murder’ starts moving like a speeding train...it’s hard to put this book down.
The twists & turns are the roses in the oasis-
Thorns and all -
The prose is incandescent-

Tana French does something fresh with every novel. Definitely with “The Witch Elm”.

My advice -best to read this stand-alone novel knowing ‘very little’. It’s not a page turner per say.
It took forever to get to ‘the mystery’ - but- it also kinda made sense once you finish it.

Accept your weed pulling duty and you’ll be served a yummy glass of chilled lemonade as a reward!

4.5 stars

[Jaline · Rating 5 out of 5]

Toby had always thought of himself as a lucky person. He came from a good family, he got along with his aunts, uncles, and cousins, and he had a good job, excellent health, a very nice apartment, and a lovely girlfriend.

However, somewhere during his 29th year, he entered into his personal time of Job, where he was tested on every front and since part of that was a burglary of his apartment where he suffered serious injury, he could no longer rely on his wits to carry him through. He was forced to find his way through multiple challenges and difficult situations the hard way: stumbling and bumbling along, with gaps in his memory leaving him vulnerable, and in many respects, his own worst enemy.

Sometimes life throws some incredible curve balls at people, and it is difficult to cope when they come in one’s or two’s, let alone multiples. Add to that the long-range and sluggishly slow pace of recovery from head trauma, and it can be a recipe for disaster.

When the family receives bad news about the health of Toby’s bachelor uncle Hugo, Toby and his girl-friend Melissa move into his uncle’s home, called Ivy House. One day, there is a discovery made inside a large hole of the 200-year-old wych elm in the garden. Thus begins a coalescing of the many trials confronting Toby.

Although the title says “The Witch Elm”, I could only find one occurrence of the word “witch” in the book and it had nothing to do with trees. It could possibly be an “Easter Egg” within the novel. (In computer games, “Easter Eggs” are usually a quirky or fun ‘surprise’ to discover – and they are sometimes so obscure that it might take a few years before finding one. But – I won’t spoil any surprises for people who might want to make their own discoveries.)

This is a long novel and I know it won’t be a fabulous read for everyone – partly because of the length, and partly because not everyone enjoys spending a few days in the lives of people who are going through a very rough time, eager to discover how they will make their way through. That was definitely me, though – I absolutely had to know what would unfold for this family.

This novel also has moral ambiguity in many different shades of gray. For people who prefer shorter reads and more black and white plots and characters, this one would not work at all. For the most part I have discovered for myself that patience with larger novels is a plus: they are the length they are for a very good reason (usually), and the quicker I accept that, the better my reading experience. Still, not everyone reads the same, which is perfectly fine.

For those who do enjoy long novels with excellent writing, a plot full of challenges for the intricately drawn characters to overcome, and an abundance of food for thought, this will be a wonderful read. I definitely found it all of that - and so much more.

[Lori · Rating 2 out of 5]

Apologies to everyone who loves this book, but for me, it’s okay with some good sections thrown cropping up.

A superficially likable and self-absorbed main character, Toby, encounters his first care in the world. Well, I’ll cut him some slack. His fortunate circumstances aren’t his fault nor his credit. But no, the more I know him the less that I like him.

I know! He is severely injured from a brutal beating during home invasion burglary and only saved from death by receiving superb medical care in a timely manner. But, he has abundant resources. Cost is a non-issue. His friends and parents are there for him. It’s probably best that his mother didn’t get him a French poodle. He didn’t have a pet before the attack and could barely care for himself after it. But, her heart was in the right place.

There is a painfully slow beginning full of Toby amplifying his trauma instead of pursuing his recovery. He does use his always available means for appropriate therapies, but not for some years toward the end of the book. Then it got better with Hobie Hugo and his cousins, then Toby bemoans the terrible things happening to him for a long time. His loveable Uncle Hugo self-sacrifice while dying of brain cancer, then it gets better and then the afterword. Kind of like a wave with long troughs and short peaks.

[Mackey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love LOVE and more LOVE for The Witch Elm by the amazing Tana French!!

Amicable Toby is a happy-go-lucky guy who fancies himself as one the "The Lucky Ones." He has a great job, although he did create a major mess there  - but he sorted out his mess so it's all good. He has an amazing girlfriend to whom he is faithful, except for a bit of a roving eye. And he has two terrific mates who love him, at least he thinks they do. But Toby's luck is about to change when he is brutally beaten and robbed in his own apartment. Left for dead, in and out of consciousness for weeks, Toby is trying to put his life back together again while recuperating at his uncle's home, The Ivy House, where he and his two cousins summered throughout their childhood and teens. That is, until a human skull is found in the Wyche Elm, yes a cute play on words there, isn't it? Poor Toby - is anything that he thought true and real actually what it had seemed?

Let me be frank with you, I only dabble in Tana French's series, The Dublin Murder Squad. There are those that I absolutely adore and then there are those that I barely make it through. French does such an incredible, amazing job at developing her characters that if I don't connect with them, I don't enjoy the book. The Witch Elm, however, is a stand-alone and I love - have I already used the word love - Toby! My son's name is Toby and, ironically, my Toby and this Toby are very, VERY similar. It's not hard to see why I connected with the book, is it?

More importantly, though, French creates a supporting cast of characters that are quirky, irritating, affable, hilarious and oh so very flawed. Through them, as they either look for the killer or attempt to cover up for the killer, we learn about family, forgiveness, love, mistakes, second-chances and, sadly, death. While there is definitely mystery and suspense here, this is not a "thriller." It is a slow simmering, beautifully written examination of family, particularly a family in crisis.

Interestingly, as I have read other reviews and previews of the book, they seem to be divided into die-hard fans of the DMS and the rest of us and the ratings reflect that division. This is a book that stands on its own as a marvelously written, creative work that is well worth reading by die-hard fans as well as those of us who simply appreciate a well told tale. Well done Ms. French!

FIVE emerald green Irish Stars for The Witch Elm.

[Paromjit · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tana French writes a densely compelling and complicated character driven psychological drama that is a slow burner, set in Dublin. Toby Hennessy is a privileged young man, an only child, secure and confident, living a charmed life with the luck of the Irish, and an inherent ability to talk himself out of dicey scenarios with ease. After a night out with long term friends, Sean and Dec, Toby makes his way home, and wakes up to find two men burgling his flat who leave him for dead, shattering his life and sense of identity. He manages to survive, left with physical damage,never ending pain, difficulties with memories and severe mental health issues He is sucked into a black vortex of fear, unable to socialise or go out, reliant on medication and Xanax, teetering on the edge of sanity with no hope of returning to work in PR at the art gallery. His uncle Hugo lives in the ancestral family home, Ivy House, a place that Toby spent childhood summers at with his cousins, Susanna and Leon, a golden time of good times, fun and joy.

Hugo, a genealogist, has brain cancer, and not expected to live long. Toby is persuaded to move in to Ivy House to help look after him and keep an eye on him as Hugo's health deteriorates. His loyal and loving girlfriend, Melissa, moves in too, proving to be an invaluable source of help to both Hugo and Toby. The discovery of a skull in the Wych Elm in the garden changes everything, with intense media scrutiny and a police investigation led by Detective Rafferty. Rafferty's investigation proves to a stressful affair for the entire family as their lives are picked apart, the police are insidious and not above engaging in machinations that they hope will throw light on a murderer. Toby's memories are elusive and unreliable ever since the nightmare of being attacked, and does he know Susanna and Leon as well as he thinks he does? As family secrets begin to slowly tumble out, it becomes increasingly clear that Toby is not the person he thought he was, and his memories of the past are unreliable at best, as he finds himself in places he never dreamed he would be in.

French writes a beautifully plotted psychological drama that slips into the interior life of Toby with skill and depth, a subtle examination of what it is to be a young man, acting without thought as a teenager, unaware of the wider consequences of his actions. The portrayal of a man having his life derailed on a number of fronts, by the horror of being attacked in his own home, by his shaky perceptions and memories of the past, and whose picture of himself as a good guy may not be all that there is to him. The stresses on his mental health as he investigates personal and family history put his relationship with Melissa under threat as the future he once envisaged begins to sink without trace. This is a brilliant read for those who like character driven novels that move at a slow pace, all the better for the opportunities it offered for a greater multilayered understanding of Toby in all his complexities, his connections with others and the nature of family dynamics through time. Many thanks to Penguin UK for an ARC.

[Dorie - Cats&Books :) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had only read one book before from this author and that was “The Trespasser” which I loved. This book was just an o.k. read for me, here’s why.

I’m getting a bit tired of unreliable narrators, this seems to be a trend lately. Toby is about as unreliable as you can get since he has suffered a severe brain injury right at the beginning of the story. It all starts, as he states, on the night that he walked home from the pub to his house quite drunk and went to bed without turning on the door alarm. During the night some men came in and robbed him. He interrupted their ransaking when he opened the door to the main room and turned on the lights. It was at this point that they beat him almost to the point of death.

So the story started out with a bang. From there we have many hundreds of pages describing his recovery, his relationship with his girlfriend, Melissa, etc. Finally amidst all of this upheaval he gets a message that his Uncle Hugo is terminally ill and between suggestions from his mother and his own thoughts of wonderful summers spent at Uncle Hugo’s Ivy house with his cousins Susanna and Leon “, he decides to temporarily move there to keep an eye on his uncle and his health. To his happy surprise Melissa decides to join him. There are many weeks of things going quite happily, considering his uncle’s diagnosis. I have to say this part of the book really moved slowly for me.

One Sunday Susanna and her family and Leon were visiting at the Ivy House, there is a blood chilling scream from the yard. “Zach and Sallie were standing at the bottom of the garden. Both of them were rigid, arms out in shock and by this time both of them were screaming, Sallie’s piercing inhuman high note rising above Zach’s ragged howls”. Turns out that the children have discovered a human skull in a deep hole in the Witch Elm in the garden. The adults do what seemed right at the time and called the police.

The detectives spend weeks and weeks investigating the skull, ruining the garden with their digging and setting everyone’s nerves on edge. They did find an entire skeleton and identified it as Dominic, a friend of Toby’s and now they have to find out the reason the skeleton is here. Did his commit suicide as had originally been thought, did someone kill him, did he fall by accident?

The story slows down quite a bit as we are introduced thoroughly to each of Toby’s cousins, what they were like when they were teens spending summers at the Ivy House and what they are like now. Ms. French relies entirely on our interest in her characters to move the story along, it doesn’t really make for a page turner. Her writing as always is superb and I always learn new words when reading her books. Here are a few for you to ponder: “hippogriff, decoction, burger and garrote.

Just when things seem to be winding down and I was really getting tired of the book, bang, something really disturbing happens. This was at about 85% so it came as quite a shock. What ensues next is for you to discover as well as the ending.

Ms. French did touch on some timely topics with this story including, family relations, bullying, PTSD and sexual harassment. I do love reading her novels just for the beautiful writing. My stars would be 5 for writing and 3 for slowness of the plot. On this afterthought I am changing my rating to 4 stars but remember you will have to have patience!

I received an ARC of this novel from the publisher through Edelweiss.

ADDENDUM: I have been asked by many patrons and friends how I liked this book so that is why I'm reposting :)

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 In this rather lengthy stand alone, French again explores the sense of identity, as well as the question, How well do we really know another person? Three cousins, children of four brothers, who have all spent their summers, vacations from school at the house where their unmarried Uncle Hugh lives. Grown up now, not as close as they once were, they all come together after Toby is attacked in his apartment and left for dead. Although he makes it, he has lingering effects from the attack, one being his memory which has huge holes, blank spaces.

So who is he now? He no longer feels like himself, far from the capable man he had thought he was. When a body is found in the old witch tree in his Uncle Hugh's garden, the Garda is notified. When it turns out t be someone they know, all come in suspicion, especially it seems Toby. The one Garda, reminded me so much of Peter Falk, playing Colombo. Dating myself I know. So the story goes,the very slow unraveling of a history of the characters. Intriguing story, well written as all of her novels are, the pace is very slow, and the pages long. One needs patience here, need to be in the mood for a slow burner. There are plenty of surprises, the characters interesting, myself I had a soft spot for Uncle Hugh, and the questions posed within, important ones.

More a character study than a thriller I believe, though there are a few action scenes. I enjoyed this, but not as much as some of her previous works. Have a soft spot for her Dublin murder squad.

ARC from Netgalley.

[Ginger]

I will not be rating this. I got to 100 pages and calling it.
This is my first DNF for the year!! :(

My thoughts so far:
Why did you write such a boring character Tana French?!
I don't care for the main character of Toby and the story is boring. I know there is a mystery coming up but I don't care at this point. I'm not sure why she wrote a 500 page book and it takes until the 1/2 way point of the book to get to the mystery.
I can understand character development but not when it's 200+ pages of it and the character is still boring as hell.

I've been told this does get better. I'm still not sure if I will get back to this in the future.

Moving on. Next!

[Hamad · Rating 2 out of 5]

This review and other non-spoilery reviews can be found @The Book Prescription

“These are doctors. I don’t know what kind of social‑ justice‑warrior shite you’ve been reading, but their job is to make people better, if they can. Which sometimes they can’t. That doesn’t mean they’re evil villains rubbing their hands and looking for ways to fuck up people’s lives.”

🌟 Have you ever watched a TV series or a film and you knew from the start it is not just for you, but it was interesting enough to make you watch a bit more and then more and then you were invested enough to continue the whole thing only to regret the whole process at the end. Well, those were my feelings toward this book!

🌟 I am as disappointed now as I was excited now when I was approved for this ARC-which is quite a lot- I wanted to read something by Tana French for ages now and I wanted a standalone rather than her Dublin Murder squad series. I thought everything was going to be perfect until I started reading this…



🌟 I started this after finishing 3 books in 3 days and I was so excited, I started it while I was a bit tired and got bored so I blamed myself, took a break from reading and started it once again from the beginning the next day, it was a bit better but still I knew I won’t like it.

🌟 So enough ranting and let me explain why I didn’t enjoy this; The writing was sybaritic and voluptuous (who uses these words??). The writing was from 1st person POV and the main character used lavish words that I have never heard from anyone IRL. If it had been a 3rd person POV, then it would have been the author using this language and it would have made much more sense. People in real life don’t talk the way this was written! Also the words Xanax and Bollocks were used every couple of pages and I could not un-notice them then which became annoying!

🌟 Also it is supposed to be a thriller and I only started to get hooked after 30% of the book. See this quote:

“Baby, it’s not Agatha Christie. I’m not going to get stabbed in the li‑ brary with a letter opener for getting too close to the truth.”

Boy, I wish it was an Agatha Christie book, Agatha would have almost a whole book in the 30% that it took me to get involved in this. This was so descriptive and slow, that it felt like a 600-700 pages rather than 464 pages.

🌟 There was much time spent on characters development and backstories. Unfortunately many details can be omitted and it would have been the same. I wasn’t fond of any character but I just powered through this as I don’t like to DNF ARCs.

🌟 By the end of the book, many things happened and one thing took me by surprise. I sadly have lost interest by that time and just wanted to finish. I ended up giving it 2 stars out of 5!

🌟 Summary: This book had a good idea and it can be surprising but I think it had bad execution. It could have been faster, simpler and with more relatable characters. I saw many reviews that said this was not as good as her Dublin Murder squad which is a good news for those -including me- who still want to give Tana a chance.

🌟 Prescription: For those who are patient and can tolerate slow-paced books.

[Michelle]

DNF - No rating - will not be included in my 2018 book challenge.

Oh man, I was so excited for this one. When I saw it as an auto download I nearly screamed before hitting that button. I even gushed to my Goodreads friends to hurry up and grab a copy.

Ooops. My bad.

Tana French is a skilled writer without a doubt but this book went on and on and on and on and on. The pacing was slow as molasses. I honestly don't care about anything that's happening or the people it is happening to.

Maybe my timing was off with this one so I'm going to DNF it for now. The slow pace just isn't working for me but perhaps I will revisit this one again in the future.

Tana French is a wildly popular author with a big fan following and I wish her continued success. I'm better suited to her Dublin Murder Squad books so I think I'll be returning to that series soon.

Thank you to Edelweiss for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.

[Theresa Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. This is a very different novel for Tana French. Still wonderful writing and still more than one mystery to solve, but this isn’t a detective-tracking-down clues story. Instead, the first big thing doesn’t happen until about thirty pages in, and the second really big thing doesn’t happen until you’re well into the novel. This allows for serious character development not just of the protagonist, Toby, but of the supporting cast as well. I found myself incredibly invested in how things would turn out for Toby.

After he’s severely injured when two men break into his home, Toby goes to the Ivy House, a family property where his Uncle Hugh lives and where Toby and his cousins spent their summer vacations until they went away to college at eighteen. There, the discovery of a human skull leads Toby to examine his life and question his family and friends and history—also, who is he now after a head injury.

The writing is magnificent and the twists and turns deftly and satisfyingly surprising. This is much deeper than a typical non-stop action suspense novel. Highly recommend.

For more reviews, please visit: http://www.theresaalan.net/blog

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

After a run of highly successful novels in the Dublin Murder Squad series, Tana French returns with a standalone that has created many waves amongst reviewers on various sites and in the literary world. French’s writing style and plots are surely central to this split, which has reviewers throwing metaphoric punches. Toby Hennessy is out for a weekend chin-wag with his mates at the local pub. When he is well-sauced, he returns home, trying to remember all the nuances of the fragmented conversation in which he was a participant that evening. Arriving at his flat, he encounters two men, who beat him to a pulp and leave him with a serious head injury. Extensive time in the hospital forces Toby to think about who might have done such a thing to him. Even more confusing, when detectives arrive to discuss the matter, he learns that the attack included the robbery of a select number of items from his abode. Fawned over by many, Toby slowly recuperates and is released from hospital. What follows is a slow recovery and Toby decides to move in with Hugo, his terminally ill uncle. During a family gathering, an odd find comes out of the witch elm that towers over everything else. It turns out to be a skull, which sends waves, as no one can be sure who it might be. The house has been in the family for close to a century, meaning it could be anyone and the culprit could come from anywhere on the family ‘tree’. Toby finds himself reminiscing with his friends about their youth and all the trouble they found themselves in, which proves fruitful, as the body is soon identified as their mate, Dominic Ganly, who was presumed missing a decade before. Toby and his friends banter about who among them might have a motive for the crime, though the guilty party seems all but a certainty. With the detectives back and trying to piece the crime together, Toby becomes self-reflective, knowing that his memory loss from the attack could hold the key to the entire situation. Dense and full of many twists, Tana French offers up an interesting mystery that parallels her murder series, with an ending that brings it all together. Recommended to those who have great patience with their mysteries and love the Irish setting that French brings to life on every page.

I can see how the debate over this novel arose, as both sides present strong cases for their sentiments. Having loved French’s past work, I knew that it wold take a special reader to throughly digest the entire premise and nuances of the writing, while keeping me wanting to read a little more. Tana French works through many complexities with her protagonist, Toby Hennessy. Toby exhibits a number of emotions throughout the piece, from his attack and recovery through to his engagements with friends and the flashbacks that occur during their multiple—and only sometimes sober—conversations. Toby wrestles with love, self-exploration, and the pain of loss throughout the novel, layered with a number of other emotions that leave the reader wanting to know more about him. The numerous supporting characters that emerge throughout the book keep the story moving and the narrative somewhat clear, though French is not only to write in a clearly delineated fashion. The characters are usually full of their own backstories and develop slowly through the dense narrative. The premise of this book was strong, though seems to be weighed down by a great deal of periphery window dressing. Slow as molasses in January, French reveals much in her paced fashion, though this is sure to trouble some readers. The numerous reveals serve as entertaining fodder for the reader pushing through the story, seeking to solve the central mystery embedded within the text. French teases and forces the reader to pay attention before the final solution emerges in the latter chapters, leaving some to sigh in disgust for having to wait so long. While I did not dislike the book, my current mindset left me wanting things to move a little faster. I remember loving the Tana French Dublin Murder series for its slow and deliberate narrative, but my patience was tried on numerous occasions.

Kudos, Madam French, for a thought-provoking piece that reminded me of your unique style. I look forward to seeing what else you have in store for fans.

This book fulfils the December 2019 requirement of the Mind the Bookshelf Gap Reading Challenge.

Love/hate the review? An ever-growing collection of others appears at:
http://pecheyponderings.wordpress.com/

A Book for All Seasons, a different sort of Book Challenge: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...

[Nataliya · Rating 4 out of 5]

“All I could feel was, absurdly, devastated. I had got attached, more than I had realized, to the idea of myself as the dragon-slayer. With that gone, I was right back to useless victim.”

In her Dublin Murder Squad books Tana French had mastered the art of putting a spotlight on an unlikable character and making us see the person behind the careful facade, making the readers understand and empathize even when we don’t quite agree. Even though the assholes may have remained assholes - think Frank Mackey of Faithful Place and Scorcher Kennedy of Broken Harbour and even Antoinette Conway of The Trespasser - we still saw the deeply guarded corners of their minds, the broken parts of themselves they tried to hide away, the little bits that made them tick - and through understanding we could come to grudgingly liking or at least accepting the person underneath the carefully cultivated veneer.

“The thing is, I suppose,” he said, “that one gets into the habit of being oneself. It takes some great upheaval to crack that shell and force us to discover what else might be underneath.”

In The Witch Elm, however, French took a deliberate risk with her unlikable protagonist Toby Hennessy. By peeling off his shiny happy-go-lucky veneer she showed that what is underneath is simply not worth the bother. Toby Hennessy is a creature and creation of class privilege - and he is made to stay that way, come hell or high water. A proverbial golden boy, a slick-talking charmer, Toby loves his legendary luck without quite thinking about it as it really is - the clueless and careless security of belonging to upper middle class (being a straight and white non-self-aware clean-cut guy doesn’t hurt either) that remains his reliable safety net and his pedestal from which he is content to look down at others with casual contempt and remarkable lack of empathy. He’s clueless about what others - including those closest to him - have to go through, and therefore is easily, casually dismissive of those struggles that he does not share.

“It honestly wasn’t that I looked down on them, ever—I loved them, I wanted them to have every good thing in the world—just that I was aware, in the back of my mind, that if they were to compare their lives with mine, mine would come out on top.”

Toby is, in short, a genuinely unlikable person. Which makes this book not easy to get through. It’s just not that compelling being in his head and seeing the world through his perspective. It’s a bit icky, really, and made me want to have anything happen to shake him into more awareness. And you’d think for a while that him becoming a victim of a pretty brutal crime (“Holes in my mind, blind spots shimmering nastily like migraine aura”) with his life upended in a genuinely sad way would maybe do the trick, with him suddenly also apparently becoming a scapegoat and a victim at the same time once an old unsolved crime unexpectedly comes to light — but Toby remains Toby, for better or worse, even when at the end his world is shattered in a quite merciless way.

He is not a “typical” bad guy - he’s an ordinary guy, the type you probably meet many times in a day, the type that may share quite a bit of his qualities with you - and that’s what makes this whole thing so unsettling.

“The thing I couldn’t bear wasn’t burglars or blows to the head, wasn’t anything I could beat or evade or set up defenses against; it was myself, whatever that had become.”

This was the first time French stepped away from Dublin Murder Squad and detective POV and the feeling of police procedural (now, of course, we have the wonderful The Searcher as her second non-DMS offering). It was the first time that she took a very long time before the murder mystery plot came into being in her book (I think it takes about a third into the book for the titular witch elm to become story-relevant). It’s the first time she had a narrator whose story was nonredeemable and offputting, and whose inner voice had a remarkable grating quality to it. It was a gamble and made this book much less instantly likable and readable compared to her other offerings. It was a gamble that led to disappointment even for some long-term fans.

“It should have felt even more horrifying this way—targeted, stalked, hunted down—but it didn’t. If they had come after me specifically, for something I’d done or something I had, then I wasn’t just roadkill, not just some object to be mown down because it happened to be in their way: I was real, a person; I had been the crucial factor at the heart of the whole thing, rather than a meaningless irrelevance to be ignored, tossed aside. And if I was a person within all this, then I could do something about it.”

But I do think that in the end this gamble still managed to showcase her skills as a seasoned confident writer who can make you follow and feel the story even of such mildly but persistently unpleasant guy as Toby Hennessy while making you think deeply about the world that produced him and keeps him going and believing in his incredible luck - which really isn’t as much luck as the societal condition.

In the end it’s a story about privilege and unconscious habitual power and class divide and disdain and cluelessness — as well as a decades old murder and a skeleton buried in a hole in a tree.

And I struggled with it. And yet in the end I still loved it. Because French is that good.

4 stars.

“Maybe this is why I still consider myself a lucky person: now more than ever, I can’t afford not to. If I’ve realized nothing else, you see, in the long strange time since that April night, I’ve realized this: I used to believe that luck was a thing outside me, a thing that governed only what did and didn’t happen to me; the speeding car that swerved just in time, the perfect apartment that came on the market the same week I went looking. I believed that if I were to lose my luck I would be losing a thing separate from myself, fancy phone, expensive watch, something valuable but in the end far from indispensable; I took for granted that without it I would still be me, just with a broken arm and no south-facing windows. Now I think I was wrong. I think my luck was built into me, the keystone that cohered my bones, the golden thread that stitched together the secret tapestries of my DNA; I think it was the gem glittering at the fount of me, coloring everything I did and every word I said. And if somehow that has been excised from me, and if in fact I am still here without it, then what am I?”

[Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Witch Elm is the seventh novel by Tana French and though it features Dublin and a dead body, it's her first break from the Dublin Murder Squad series. Published in 2018, French replaces the inner workings of a homicide investigation with the inner workings of a law-abiding citizen, perhaps, a man in the wrong place at the wrong time or maybe something more sinister. French's confidence as a storyteller has expanded with each novel but I grew terribly bored with this departure, not nearly committed to the page length or drawn out remembrances as the author.

The story is the first-person account of Toby Hennessy, a twenty-eight-year-old public relations hotshot employed by an art gallery in Dublin. Toby has coasted on good looks, charisma and what he thinks of as "luck." After five years with the gallery, Toby has his sights set on greater rewards, possibly a house for him and his devoted girlfriend Melissa, an antique store owner. Toby's dark journey begins at work, looking the other way when he discovers an exhibition promoting the work of street artists is a scheme by the gallery manager to sell his own paintings. Nearly fired by his boss, Toby celebrates by getting ossified with his two best mates, Sean and Declan.

Bumbling home rather than going to Melissa, Toby falls asleep with his windows open. He awakens to confront two burglars and ends up in the hospital with a skull fracture and injuries to his brain. Discharged after two weeks, tasks like walking, articulating certain words or accessing certain memories prove burdensome. He treats his anxiety with Xanax and keeps indoors. Toby ultimately accepts an offer to watch after his paternal Uncle Hugo, a genealogist suffering from inoperable brain cancer and running out the clock at "Ivy House," the secluded family mansion Toby has always considered home.

The garden had the same look of low-level unkemptness as the front of the house, but that wasn't new. For a city garden it's enormous, well over a hundred feet long. It's lined along the side walls with oak trees and silver birches and wych elms, behind the rear laneway by back of an old school or factory or something--adapted into a hip apartment block during the Celtic Tiger--five or six stories high; all that towering height gives the place a secret, sunken feel. Gran was the gardener; in her time the garden was artfully, delicately crafted till it felt like somewhere out of a fairy tale, slyly revealing its delights one by one as you earned them, look, behind this tree, crocuses! and over here, hidden under the rosemary bush, wild strawberries, all for you! She died when I was thirteen, less than a year after my grandfather, and since Hugo has loosened the reins a lot ("Not just laziness," he told me once, smiling out the kitchen window at the summer confusion of growth, "I prefer it running wild a bit. I don't mean dandelions, they're just thugs, but I like getting a glimpse of its true colors.") Gradually plants had strayed and tangled, long tendrils of ivy and jasmine trailing from the wall of the house, tumult of green leaves on the unpruned trees and seed-heads poking up among the long grass; the garden had lost its enchanted air and taken on a different quality, remote and self-possessed, archeological. Mostly I felt that I had liked it better before, but that day I was grateful for the new version; I was in no mood for whimsical charm.

With Melissa moving in to Ivy House with her boyfriend while he recuperates, Toby completely blanks that Sunday is family dinner day. Among the many people his girlfriend is introduced to are Toby's cousins Susanna and Leon, as close to siblings as only-child Toby has known. Susanna, a brainy, socially conscious type in high school, went through a wayward, wild phase before settling down with a husband and two kids. Leon, an acutely sensitive homosexual who was bullied quite a bit in high school, doubts that his cousin has the will to stick out a potentially tough scene with their uncle, though Susanna assures Toby that rather than a nurse, what they need is someone to keep watch over Hugo.

Initially, while Melissa is at work, Toby and Hugo have Ivy House to themselves. This changes when Susanna's six-year-old tyrant Zach is out playing around the witch elm, which has a massive hole in its center. The boy discovers a human skull inside the tree. Gardai determine it to be real and the garden is soon filled with medical examiners in white jumpsuits. No one in the family has any notion of who the skull might belong to but Toby feels intimidated by the presence of Detective Rafferty, unable to answer simple questions as confidently or sharply as he once did.

A skeleton is recovered from the tree and dental records reveal the remains belong to Dominic Ganly, a classmate of Toby's and his cousins who disappeared fifteen years ago, presumed a suicide in the sea. Toby has no helpful memories of Dominic, who he remembers as an okay guy who hung around their social circle and sometimes, the Ivy House. Yet the questions Rafferty pose to Toby unsettle him. How the spare key to the garden gate went missing and when. Whether Toby used to wear a red sweatshirt missing its cord, a garrote recovered inside the witch elm being the murder weapon. Hugo's health or mood or both gradually worsen due to the investigation.

It wasn't just Hugo. Around him, Melissa was her usual happy self (and even now he never turned on her, with her his voice was always gentle, to the point where I actually found myself getting absurdly jealous); but when my family came over she went quiet, smiling in a corner with watchful eyes. Even when it was just the two of us, there was a subtle penumbra of withdrawal to her. I knew something was bothering her, and I did try to draw it out of her, a couple of times, maybe not as hard as I might have; I wasn't really in the right form for complex emotional negotiations myself. I was still hitting the Xanax every night and now occasionally during the day, which at this point made it hard to be sure whether my array of resurfacing fuckups--brain fog, smelling disinfectant and blood at improbable moments, a bunch of other predictable stuff way too tedious to go into--was cause or effect, although obviously I had a hard time going for the optimsitic view. Hugo and Melissa pretended not to notice. The three of us maneuvered carefully around one another, as though there was something hidden somewhere in the house (landmine, suicide vest) that at the wrong footfall might blow us all to smithereens.

The Witch Elm has a good deal of momentum early. Whether she's detailing the machinations of a hip art exhibit or the pub banter of three mates or a burglary, Tana French knows her passage through the worlds she's describing. Ivy House is not necessarily a place with dark menace around every corner but she establishes it wonderfully. The dialogue is sharp. The intrigue is passable; I wanted to know where the skeleton came from. My favorite of French's novels Faithful Place dealt with flushing a killer out among family and while nowhere near as suspenseful, this one also presents childhood memories or family dinners as being loaded with booby traps.

My first complaint is how long this is, which is another way of saying that the story got boring. Toby theorizes that his burglary and the body in the tree could be related and that a conspirator is out to frame him, but other than experiencing anxiety, no one is placed in physical danger. The book is low stakes: if Toby is responsible for the body in the tree, he's a bad human being, or if he's not responsible, he's a tragic one. 54 of the 509 pages are devoted to a confession, which is entirely too much ink for a conversation between three characters. I skimmed or quickly read the last third of the novel.

French's prose is sharply detailed, vibrant and at times witty, but with The Witch Elm, I never felt the urge to update my Goodreads status with any of it, which is usually a sign that I'm not really connecting with the world of a book or the point of view of its characters. I've worked with plenty of guys like Toby Hennessy and his character is a familiar one in noir movies or crime fiction that I've enjoyed. I would've preferred a novella or short story from French here, perhaps one with a little more venom or passion to it. Her novels tend to be thick with the fog of unreliable memory covering up trap doors but even that degree of danger felt absent without the Dublin Murder Squad on the case.

Length: 195,658 words

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the slow, ferocious burn of this novel. Tana French is not merely a spectacularly gifted stylist -- every sentence was a thing of rhythmic and phonetic beauty -- but she is an astute and precise chronicler of character. The Witch Elm is a gem. An absolute gem.

[Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 Wych 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 your brain, and out pops a kernel of an idea, which becomes this book. To be clear, this book does not engage at all with the mystery of Bella, just takes the idea of finding the skull in the elm and runs with that in an entirely different context.

Our main character is Toby, and the book begins with him happy and healthy and in full form. Well, actually our narrator is Toby from the future, so it's Toby telling us about when he was happy and healthy and in full form. We see him at his job (in which he's a bit slimy), and with his friends, and with his girlfriend. And then we see him get brutally attacked in a break-in, and his life is changed forever. While he's recovering, his family asks him to move in to care for his uncle Hugo, who is dying of a brain tumor. Events proceed from there.

I can definitely see why people aren't making it past the initial part of this book because Toby isn't a super fun dude to be in the head of, even if that's the point. He's an unreliable narrator, but not in the cliche way we've seen from a lot of thrillers lately (cough unstable alcoholic woman cough). He's unreliable in the sense that a straight white man who's never had to really think outside his own experience is unreliable. It's really kind of masterful (of course it is, it's Tana French), but it's also not *pleasant*. It is, however, interesting, and I found it engaging. I thought it was interesting the whole way through, because Toby really does have a traumatic experience that is completely relevant to his arc, but the mystery itself really kicks off about 1/3 of the way through. It ends up being a slow-burn mindfuck from the perspective of one of the suspects in a murder rather than the detectives.

Anyway, if you like French definitely read this, she's still on form.

[Jessica Woodbury · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recommend knowing as little as possible about this book when you start it. Not even the jacket copy, if you can. While I almost always recommend this for crime novels, this one in particular is quite slow and the typical summary gives you at least one big twist from the early sections that is best enjoyed cold. However, this makes reviewing the book very hard because it does many things so exquisitely but it's hard for me to talk about them without more spoiling than I think a reader should have. So my compromise is that I will give you these first two paragraphs for people who haven't read the book and just want to see if they will like it. The rest is to luxuriate in with me once you're done. Deal?

This is French's first standalone, and her first book that isn't a procedural with a detective protagonist. It's still a crime novel, with two very different crimes at its heart, and the questions of who and why are just as critical here as in any detective novel. It moves at a much slower pace, but it still brings you much of what French does best. A complex character study of a first-person narrator, thrilling scenes of dialogue that can go on and on and keep you riveted, a setting that is as much a character as the people who populate it. Give it a little patience, there were stretches of it when I thought, "Hmm, maybe this is a 4-star book, I'm not sure it's quite at her best." And then I changed my mind. This is a book that rewards you for being patient. I listened to it on audio and while I occasionally wanted the narrator to take it down a touch by the end, overall I quite enjoyed it. (I love hearing accents when books are set in Ireland and Scotland so I don't just give the characters English accents in my head.) You may also want to find a friend who has already read it or is reading it too because I found myself desperate to discuss it with anyone else I could find.

Okay, now if you haven't read the book, move along now. The rest of this is for when you're done.

I am at just about my happiest as a reader when there is a new Tana French book in my hands. Ever since I read IN THE WOODS years and years ago, she keeps giving me the exact books I want to be reading. But I think there is a new level she achieves in THE WITCH ELM, there is a bigger question she is considering here. This isn't that uncommon, her protagonists generally are concerned with some personal demons or questions while in the middle of a case, it's one of the things she does so well. But in this book, because Toby is at the center of it all and not a new person entering just to investigate, you get to dig into it all without it being the B-plot. It's the main event, as critical to the story as the crime itself, and she rises to the challenge.

The big question at the center of the book is one of luck, of how being lucky in that blessed, golden kind of way can turn you into less of a person. Toby is lucky. He's likable, he's good looking, he's always been popular, he's smart, he's got a good family, he has enough money, everything has basically gone his way. This isn't just a story of what happens when your luck changes. It isn't just the new Toby that French is concerned with. It's that old Toby, that same lucky Toby, and who he actually is/was compared to who he's always thought himself to be. I read this book in the middle of a furor around yet another story of sexual assault in the news, where a man who can certainly be classified as lucky is claiming he doesn't remember the event ever taking place, and other say what does it matter he was just a kid. I found myself thinking of Toby's story and this real one in conjunction with each other over and over again, and thinking how sad it was that in real life it's awfully rare for lucky men to undergo the kind of self-examination Toby is forced to undergo and to reach the conclusions about himself that he reaches. Getting to watch that happen was unexpectedly cathartic. I am still going over and over in my head the question of why it takes "bad luck" to make a person empathetic, but that is a bigger question than any one book can answer.

The thing about Toby is he's a jerk. French starts us off with a story from Toby's life that immediately tells us exactly what kind of guy he is and he doesn't come off well yet the way he tells us this story tells us even more about the way he sees himself and his place in the world. This is not French's first time giving us a real jerk as a first person narrator and she is just so good at it. (I know there are many out there who still hate Rob with the fire of a thousand suns, but I think they'll find that Toby is a very different kind of person they'll hate in a less rage-y way.) It's truly phenomenal. And it's not because she makes us really care about a jerk. It's that we continue to think he's a real jerk, that we get to see him objectively, that we also can see how he sees himself and how far off he is, and that we can have sympathy for him without necessarily rooting for him, we can want to see what he will do next without wanting the best for him. It's a very, very high difficulty level maneuver, very different than the Unlikable Female Protagonist. It shouldn't work and yet it does and it brings extra levels of depth to the book that are really astonishing.

As for the mystery itself, Toby is an unusual (often infuriating) amateur detective, but it all comes together here brilliantly, with answers that feel just surprising enough while also feeling like the obvious one. You're not constantly reading this book wondering who did it and I don't think she wants you to, this is one of her great skills in all her books, answers that feel like just one more puzzle piece fitting into place. She fills the book with delectable little twists that aren't surprises exactly, but they are introduced to you when you aren't ready for them. I gasped aloud, made faces, covered my mouth, etc etc while I listened to this book.

There is a large divide among French fans of those who love IN THE WOODS vs those who love THE LIKENESS, almost everyone has one they vastly prefer to the other. In THE WITCH ELM French has given us much of the best of both in ways that should appeal to both sides of the divide. As promised, Toby is not going to fill you with rage the way Rob did. And for people who looked at THE LIKENESS and thought "I see that you're trying to go for a kind of SECRET HISTORY vibe here but I don't think you actually pulled it off" (and, full disclosure, I count myself among that group) here I think she really does it. The setting of the Ivy House, the long scenes with Hugo and Melissa and his cousins, I felt that leisurely settling-in that I never quite got to with THE LIKENESS even though I wanted it. It is tinged with nostalgia just as French wants it to be.

And can we just take a moment to appreciate the way French uses the (frankly) overused device of the unreliable memory? It makes much more sense here than it does elsewhere. The am-I-losing-my-mind trope can be really problematic with issues of mental health, but by using Toby's brain injury as a way to both throw his identity out of whack, leave him struggling to keep up, and leave him as the one person who doesn't actually know what's going on, it all works splendidly. While sometimes the things Toby did and didn't remember and the timing would give me a minor eye roll, I was willing to go with it because it's such a well-executed device.

I have very few actual quibbles. I think the last 5 pages or so could have used a little more... something but I have no idea what that would be. I am baffled by the colors on the cover, but I haven't really liked any of the US covers for her novels except for the very first two. Why she gets such placid, emotion-less covers when her books pulse with life I don't understand. Many will find this book too slow and too long and I don't think they're really wrong, but I think it's intentional. When you consider that the mystery is only part of what's happening, that the question of who Toby is/was is what we're really here for, all these long scenes where we get to just roll slowly through are necessary to give us all those little details that, when assembled, create a picture of a man in such minute detail that I can't remember the last time I knew a character this well.

The only problem is that now it's over and it'll be two or so years until the next one.

[Helga چـو ایـران نباشد تن من مـباد · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thought it would never finish. I forced myself to read the whole book so that I would be entitled to rate it.
This was not a thriller. This was exactly the opposite of a thriller!
This book was so annoying that at some point I didn’t care anymore if all the characters bashed one another’s head in or committed hara-kiri.
I suspect either the author was extremely drunk during writing or the typewriter or whatever she was writing with became self-aware and went on writing without the author’s knowledge or she just wanted to wind the reader up and laugh at him. What the HELL???
I don’t know what category this book should be put in. Philosophy? Poetry? Memoir? Horror? Disaster?
The characters are hateful and boring. They are either smoking, drinking, getting high or taking Xanax. They act like a bunch of 5 year olds. The main character and narrator is whining. ALL THE TIME!
Everything is detailed. Every scene, scent, sound… over and over and over again!
For example:
Let’s say the phone rings. We get to know what color the phone is. What model. Where is it located in the house. What is it next to. What is reflected off of it. What do the leaves outside look like? Is the phone really ringing or is our whiny narrator imagining it? Wait! It’s not finished yet. Is that a bird sitting on the branch of that tree? What kind of tree is it anyway? Our character goes on to remember the good old days when he was standing exactly at that spot and looking at a bird. Was it really a bird or maybe it was a bat? Probably…possibly… maybe???
Everything is analyzed to death!
The phone is still ringing by the way!

God, kill me now.

The book could have been written in maximum 80 pages.
Adjectives are galore! Big meaningless words. Like what does it even mean “the food was humiliatingly delicious”?
“The creamy rush of the chocolate was hitting me as overwhelmingly and rapturously as coke.”

The F-word is used generously. Like almost in every sentence which comes out of our narrator’s mouth. That is when he’s not smoking or drinking or doing both.

It is not enough to be an excellent writer. You also have to know when to cut short. You have to know when to stop.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

After suffering a brain injury during a burglary at his apartment, Toby goes to live with his terminally ill uncle Hugo. When a skull is found in a hollow tree on Hugo's property, the cops eye up Toby as a suspect. But with his brain injury, he can't be sure he's responsible or not...

I've been awaiting this Tana French book since it was available for pre-order since her Dublin Murder Squad books are some of my favorite things. I almost canceled my pre-order when I saw this was a standalone but stuck with it.

Tana French is one of my must-buy authors so it pains me to say I almost tossed this one back on the pile. The skull isn't found until about a third of the way through the book. The writing is as sharp as ever but I felt like something was missing. It was glacially paced and I didn't really care for Toby. He was unsympathetic before the beating and I only liked him a little bit more after.

Once the skull was found, however, I tore through the book in two or three long sittings. When the fuzz started sniffing around, I was about 90% sure Toby did it and was going to wind up in the clink. French ratcheted up the suspense and I was hooked for the duration. At various times, she had me believing a few different people were the killer. Things eventually went off the rails in a huge way and I was quite glad I didn't chuck it.

Once the mystery really kicked in, the book was good, almost great. Before that, I felt like she was padding things until she figured out whether she was writing a literary novel or one of her usual literary-mystery hybrids. A third of the book is too much setup for what was basically a whodunnit, no matter how well written it is!

Okay then. The Witch Elm is an enjoyable book once you get over the sloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow start. I don't want to say Tana French should stick with the Dublin Murder Squad but her next attempt at a standalone needs to be more engaging than this. Three out of five stars.

[Lindsay L · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars.

A heavily detailed, atmospheric and suspenseful mystery.

Toby is physically assaulted when burglars enter his apartment late one night. The attack leaves him in the hospital for weeks with fuzzy memories. Once released, he moves in with his Uncle Hugo to Ivy House, an old manor house filled with countless childhood memories for Toby and his cousins. Uncle Hugo has recently been diagnosed with only a few months left to live and would benefit from Toby’s presence while allowing Toby to continue his healing. While recovering at Ivy House, long hidden family secrets are uncovered.

My favourite part of this novel was the atmosphere — I loved Ivy House. An old crumbling mansion on a large estate. Long hidden family secrets tucked in every room and corner of the house. The author does a wonderful job creating a thick, palpable atmosphere that I loved being engrossed within.

The storyline was interesting, but very long and drawn out. The mystery itself didn’t come to light until around the halfway point. I wouldn’t consider this an easy read by any means. It was a book I had to be “ready” for before I picked it back up. It wasn’t as gripping or memorable as I had hoped. The pace was very slow. I really liked Uncle Hugo and found the brief look into his career as a genealogist was fascinating. However, I didn’t remotely like or sympathize with the main character, Toby. He irritated me and that took away from my overall enjoyment of the book.

Overall, I enjoyed my first Tana French book and look forward to trying out her Dublin Murder Squad Series which I have heard is much more fast paced and gripping.

Audio book review: I did not connect with the narrator and feel that I would have enjoyed this novel much more had I read the entire thing instead of listened. I listened to about 80% and read the last 20%.

Thank you to Edelweiss for my review copy and my lovely local library for loan of the audiobook!

[Dem · Rating 3 out of 5]

My first Novel by Tana French ( yeah I know I live in a bubble) The Witch Elm is a stand alone novel and I thought this book was a good place for me to start as I know her famous Dublin Murder Squad books are a series of crime novels and while I enjoy crime novels every now and again I didn't want to invest in a series.

The Witch Elm is a slow burner and I honestly had difficulty getting into this one due to the slow build up to the story. Smooth talking Toby Hennessy is left for dead when two burglars break into his home, The assault leaves Toby with a damaged memory and this is important to the story.

I love French's character development and her writing and language is faultless. While the plot was tight and imaginative I did feel it took way too long for the story to unravel but I did hang in there and was glad that I did as the book did liven up in the second half and I enjoyed the story's conclusion. I think reader who enjoy crime novel with great character development will enjoy this book.

And interesting and suspensful stand along crime novel from this author and delighted to have added Tana French to my reading list and would love to try another of her books in the future.

. My thanks to Penguin books for the opportunity to read this one in return for an honest review.

[Blair · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings about The Witch Elm.

This is a standalone Tana French novel – the first she's written that isn't part of the Dublin Murder Squad series. It's the story of Toby, a real golden boy: wealthy, handsome, popular and charming, with a loving girlfriend, close family and cushy job, he seems to have everything going for him. That all changes one night when he surprises a pair of burglars in his living room. When he attempts to confront them, Toby is savagely beaten and left with a limp, facial scars and significant neurological damage, including huge holes in his memory. Shortly after getting out of hospital, he discovers his uncle Hugo has a brain tumour and has only months left to live. So, with his girlfriend Melissa in tow, he moves in to Hugo's home – in the family for several generations, known as the Ivy House – both to recuperate, and to help look after his ailing uncle. The Ivy House, for Toby, is a hallowed place: full of cherished memories of idyllic summers with his two cousins, all of them the same age and as close as siblings.

Things finally seem to be looking up for Toby. But then his cousin Susanna's son finds a human skull while exploring Hugo's garden, and all hell breaks loose.

Toby is our narrator. He's an absolute prick. He's supposed to be; you have to get to the end of the book to understand just how much he's supposed to be, and how that ties in to everything else. He's not so awful that you don't sympathise when he's attacked – French depicts the beating and its aftermath in graphic, effective detail, and I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy – but he's frequently low-level offputting: incredibly judgemental, casually sexist, dismissive of others' problems and worries, patronising, etc. On top of that, Toby's ineptness at investigating the skull mystery is frustrating when compared to the meticulous attention to detail typical of the Dublin Murder Squad books. I longed for another perspective.

Melissa, meanwhile, is possibly the smuggest, most sickly-sweet manic pixie dream girlfriend ever committed to paper. She's either a terrible creation on French's part, or Toby's account of her is meant to be obvious bullshit. The latter seems more likely, but if that is the case, there's no payoff, no reveal. Melissa just acts like a convenient plot device: slavishly devoted to Toby until the story needs her not to be, at which point she exits neatly and quietly. She seems nothing at all like a real person with feelings and opinions.

Finally, the story takes a long time to get where it's going, and I'm not sure the meandering journey is really worth it. With the last three Dublin Murder Squad books, I've grown so accustomed to thinking of Tana French as a master craftsman that I sometimes forget I haven't loved everything she's written. The improbable last-act twists in The Witch Elm recall the daft premise of The Likeness more than the excruciating slow-burn of Broken Harbour or the luminous atmosphere of The Secret Place. Crucially, I didn't really care who killed the victim, or whether they got away with it.

But. Toby is also a genius creation. It's not that he's particularly interesting in himself; it's what he represents. Life has been abundantly kind to him, and in the beginning he sees it all as sheer luck. His ordeal with the burglars is significant because it – or rather the damage it does – brings Toby into line with the less 'lucky' around him, and he becomes aware of an invisible world he has never before perceived. It's an eye-opening way to explore the advantages enjoyed by someone like Toby, and what happens when some of those advantages are lost. Yet Toby's narrative also shows how his 'luck' continues to carry him along in relative comfort long after anyone else would have been chewed up and spat out. In its own way, The Witch Elm is just as much a damning indictment of the justice system as, say, something like The Mars Room, which focuses on the other end of the spectrum, the cruelty doled out to those without Toby's privilege.

I know the above sounds more negative than positive overall, but I did enjoy reading this book. It's very absorbing, the descriptions are beautiful (the Ivy House leaves more of an impression than any of the characters) and French's prose sings; as always, she achieves the perfect combination of lyrical and coarse. There's a tonne of ambition in here, loads of careful detail; much to admire. However, altogether it doesn't quite achieve what it's aiming for, and it's no match for the author's increasingly sophisticated police procedurals.

I received an advance review copy of The Witch Elm from the publisher through NetGalley.

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