In the Woods

by Tana French

“Probably just somebody’s nasty black poodle. But I’ve always wondered…What if it really was Him, and He decided I wasn’t worth it?” —Tony Kushner, A Bright Room Called Day

Even the epigraph references pooka ("A pooka took/killed the kids" is still my favorite theory... Come on; why mention it in the EPIGRAPH if THAT isn't the correct explanation???)

These children will not be coming of age,

All 3. Rob stays stunted despite surviving

This August will not ask them to find hidden reserves of strength and courage as they confront the complexity of the adult world and come away sadder and wiser and bonded for life. This summer has other requirements for them.

Themes of (failure to) grow up. Strained dissolving friendships. Other REQUIREments= not dead, but taken?

The truth is the most desirable woman in the world and we are the most jealous lovers, reflexively denying anyone else the slightest glimpse of her. We betray her routinely, spending hours and days stupor-deep in lies, and then turn back to her holding out the lover’s ultimate Möbius strip: But I only did it because I love you so much.

Rob wants to know truth without giving any away. This bites him in the ass.

This is my job, and you don’t go into it—or, if you do, you don’t last—without some natural affinity for its priorities and demands. What I am telling you, before you begin my story, is this—two things: I crave truth. And I lie.

Unreliable narrator unable to solve himself

this is the only story in the world that nobody but me will ever be able to tell.

Rob is the only one able to tell what happened.... and he never will, not even to himself.

a policeman with a torch found Adam Ryan in a densely wooded area near the center of the wood, standing with his back and palms pressed against a large oak tree. His fingernails were digging into the trunk so deeply that they had broken off in the bark. He appeared to have been there for some time but had not responded to the searchers’ calling. He was taken to hospital.

Part 1- second person (Rob/Adam can't remember it)

I was also near-catatonic: I made no voluntary movement for almost thirty-six hours and did not speak for a further two weeks. When I did, I had no memory of anything between leaving home that afternoon and being examined in the hospital.

Part 2- now first person POV. Rob/Adam accepts this is what happened to him, even without remembering it.

Contrary to what you might assume, I did not become a detective on some quixotic quest to solve my childhood mystery. I read the file once, that first day, late on my own in the squad room with my desk lamp the only pool of light (forgotten names setting echoes flicking like bats around my head as they testified in faded Biro that Jamie had kicked her mother because she didn’t want to go to boarding school, that “dangerous-looking” teenage boys spent evenings hanging around at the edge of the wood, that Peter’s mother once had a bruise on her cheekbone), and then never looked at it again.

All important info for later. 1. Jamie's boarding school rebellion 2. teenage boys in the woods 3. Peter's father is abusive 4. Rob trying to convince himself (and us, the audience) that he's TOTES FINE, REALLY!!!

This strikes me as odd and, in certain moods, as very magical, linking the evening to those fugue states that over the centuries have been blamed on fairies or witches or aliens, and from which no one returns unchanged. But those lost, liminal pockets of time are usually solitary; there is something about the idea of a shared one that makes me think of twins, reaching out slow blind hands in a gravity-free and wordless space.

Even though this friendship-building with Cassie is a positive experience for Rob, it carries a lot of imagery of his more negative experiences... 1. "Fugue states" 2. fairies/witches/aliens 3. "no one returns unchanged" 4. "lost/liminal pockets of time" USUALLY solitary 5. TWINS!!! (Katy + Jessica; also Traumatized Adam becoming Rob)

“You’ll want wellies,” he told me, giving my shoes a sardonic look: QED. His accent had a hard border-country edge. “Spares in the tools shed.” “I’ll be fine as I am,” I said. I had an idea that archaeological digs involved trenches several feet deep in mud, but I was damned if I was going to spend the morning clumping around after this guy with my suit trailing off ludicrously into someone’s discarded wellies.

If Rob wasn't so damn vain, they would've found the murder site in the first chapter!!!

All she had left was her death and I wanted to leave her that, that at least. I wanted to wrap her up in soft blankets, stroke back her clotted hair, pull up a duvet of falling leaves and little animals’ rustles. Leave her to sleep, sliding away forever down her secret underground river, while breathing seasons spun dandelion seeds and moon phases and snowflakes above her head.

Rob romantacizes child death and wants to leave it unsolved

There was a time when I believed, with the police and the media and my stunned parents, that I was the redeemed one, the boy borne safely home on the ebb of whatever freak tide carried Peter and Jamie away. Not any more. In ways too dark and crucial to be called metaphorical, I never left that wood.

We KNOW, Rob

When I went to boarding school I dropped the Adam and started using my middle name. I’m not sure whether this was my parents’ idea or mine, but I think it was a good one. There are five pages of Ryans in the Dublin phone book alone, but Adam is not a particularly common name, and the publicity was overwhelming (even in England: I used to scan furtively through the newspapers I was supposed to be using to light prefects’ fires, rip out anything relevant, memorize it later in a toilet cubicle before flushing it away). Sooner or later, someone would have made the connection. As it is, nobody is likely to link up Detective Rob and his English accent with little Adam Ryan from Knocknaree.

"Adam" didn't come out of the woods either; Rob did (however metaphorical)

Rob's self preservation keeps him from remembering his childhood #1

I don’t want to give the impression that my life was blighted by what happened at Knocknaree, that I drifted through twenty years as some kind of tragic figure with a haunted past, smiling sadly at the world from behind a bittersweet veil of cigarette smoke and memories. Knocknaree didn’t leave me with night terrors or impotence or a pathological fear of trees or any of the other good stuff that, in a made-for-TV movie, would have led me to a therapist and redemption and a more communicative relationship with my supportive but frustrated wife. To be honest, I could go for months on end without ever thinking about it. Occasionally some newspaper or other would run a feature on missing people and there they would be, Peter and Jamie, smiling from the cover of a Sunday supplement in grainy photographs made premonitory by hindsight and overuse, between vanished tourists and runaway housewives and all the mythic, murmuring ranks of Ireland’s lost. I’d see the article and notice, detachedly, that my hands were shaking and it was hard to breathe, but this was purely a physical reflex and only lasted a few minutes anyway.

"I'm fine," lied Rob, the liar.

I was twelve, after all, an age at which kids are bewildered and amorphous, transforming overnight, no matter how stable their lives are;

Age 12 is a precipice age ("tween"). It's not a coincidence Jamie and Peter disappeared at that age, Cassie was (nearly) molested at that age, and Katy died at that age.

I think I had a narrow escape: a couple of years further into the eighties and I would probably have been sent to kiddie counseling and forced to share my feelings with hand puppets.

MIGHT'VE BEEN A GOOD THING, ROB

… Okay, but did Rob ACTUALLY "get rid of" Peter in a NOT metaphorical way?

His wife had left him the year before; since then the grapevine had picked up a series of awkward attempts at relationships, including one spectacularly unsuccessful blind date where the woman turned out to be an ex-hooker he had arrested regularly in his Vice days.

LMAO

Repressed memories of Sandra's rape

Every detective has a certain kind of case that he or she finds almost unbearable, against which the usual shield of practiced professional detachment turns brittle and untrustworthy. Cassie, though nobody else knows this, has nightmares when she works rape-murders; I, displaying a singular lack of originality, have serious trouble with murdered children; and, apparently, family killings gave Sam the heebie-jeebies. This case could turn out to be perfect for all three of us.

That's kinda the MO for the whole series... Each book focuses on a different detective working the case most likely to strip them down to their bare essentials

Irish politics are tribal, incestuous, tangled and furtive, incomprehensible even to many of the people involved. To an outside eye there is basically no difference between the two main parties, which occupy identical self-satisfied positions on the far right of the spectrum, but many people are still passionate about one or the other because of which side their great-grandfathers fought on during the Civil War, or because Daddy does business with the local candidate and says he’s a lovely fella. Corruption is taken for granted, even grudgingly admired: the guerrilla cunning of the colonized is still ingrained into us, and tax evasion and shady deals are seen as forms of the same spirit of rebellion that hid horses and seed potatoes from the British.

“You know what it means, Knocknaree?” he said eventually. “Hill of the king. We’re not sure when the name originated, but we’re pretty sure it’s a pre-Christian religious reference, not a political one. There’s no evidence of any royal burials or dwelling places on the site, but we found Bronze Age religious artifacts all over the place—the altar stone, votive figurines, a gold offering cup, remains of animal sacrifices and some possible human ones. That used to be a major religious site, that hill.” “Who were they worshipping?” He shrugged, drumming harder.

Maybe they were worshipping the pooka?

Thought 1: Pooka? Thought 2: That crazy guy who lives in the woods? (Maybe with a rake?)

I don't know what to make of Rob misremembering this childhood incident. Was PETER the one who stopped Willy's bullying, or was Rob? Was Rob lying to his mother (taking credit of the kindness), or was he lying to HIMSELF, making a saint out of Peter when really it was his own kindness?

Another point towardsthe supernatural theory; was Rob somehow "unworthy" of the pooka that took (or killed) his friends? See the epigraph.

Rob's self preservation #2

Is it at all possible that Rob killed his friends and his parents know it?

Rob's self preservation keeps him from remembering his childhood #3

This is probably unimportant, but Simone's "gold" eyes were also referenced at the 15% mark. The thing in Robs' vague memories (whatever was in the tree in particular) also had golden eyes. I'm very attached to the thought that it was a pooka that killed Jamie and Peter, and I don't think Simone has anything to do with it. I just think it's a strange detail to keep in mind.

Rosalind was eighteen, and appropriate as far as I was concerned.

fuuuuuuck

You’re the perfect person for this case, Rosalind had said to me, and the words were still ringing in my head as I watched her go. Even now, I wonder whether subsequent events proved her completely right or utterly and horribly wrong, and what criteria one could possibly use to tell the difference.

Of course he's perfect for her needs. >.>

“Redden my arse, Celestine” had instantly become a squad catchphrase.

I'm dying, Scoob.