The Wych Elm by Tana French

(The Witch Elm in the USA)

published 2018 US / 2019 UK







Someone was standing in the open door. At first I barely recognized it as a person; stripped of substance by the bright sunfall through the leaves, flutter of white t-shirt, confusing gold swirl of hair, white brushstroke face and dense dark smudges of eyes, it had something illusory about it, as if my mind had conjured it from patches of light and shadow and at any moment it might break up and be gone. The smell of of lavender rose up to meet me, spectrally strong.

Then I got closer and realized that it was Susanna, holding a watering can watching me, unmoving.





commentary: I wanted to read this book so much that when I found out it was being published in the US before the UK, I imported a copy. So I first read it last year, and then read it again in a review version just now. It’s a rare thriller/crime story that can stand up to two reads in six months, but this one did. It is not, by the way, part of Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad series, but a standalone. Though some Dublin policemen do feature.

I remembered just the right amount: I knew the general outline of the crime at the centre of the story, and I could see how carefully French seeded it – not clues exactly, I’m not sure that’s what she was doing, but phrases and sentences that made sense second time around. But there were still many surprises (including quite a large late event which I had completely forgotten) and the whole thing was a compelling page-turner all over again.
The key characters are three first cousins, two men and a woman, all the same age, who grew up together and as teenagers spent a lot of time with their Uncle Hugo in a family house in Dublin. Long happy summers, parties, nights out under the stars, experimenting with smoking and drugs and drinking and sex.




The book is narrated by Toby, and starts out 10 years after they all leave school – that was the key summer in the plot. It takes place entirely now: all the history is memory, and description, and discussion, no flashbacks as such.

The characters are so fully-realized – for a long time (if you didn’t know) you would think this was a literary novel about a young man having a crisis. Something bad happens to Toby early on, but this doesn’t seem related to the big crime plot that you know is coming – which starts a long way in. Toby is charming to others (it’s not always apparent to the reader) and entitled, and tells us he is lucky.

French does long casual social events extremely well. When the family gathers at Ivy House, the three cousins go and sit outside together, the first of several such conversations, all related at great length, throughout the book.
Susanna let out a breath precariously near to laughter or tears. ‘Last night she came to me,’ she sang softly, ‘my dead love came in…’ 
Oliver’s voice, eroded to veil-thinness by distance, fell on hers like an echo. My dead love came in… Out over the grass, among the Queen Anne’s lace and the leaves.
Isn’t that perfect? A perfect moment, the perfect song (She Moved Through the Fair), and your indicator that some bad times are coming.

And it’s a good third of the way through (p 165) before the real events start… but that is not at all meant to imply the book is not compulsively readable: it just shows how brilliant French is.

One weird thing is this: I have always enjoyed those books where the characters look back to a long hot summer, tangled relationships, a house that meant something, a secret and something bad – Barbara Vine’s A Fatal Inversion, Erin Kelly’s The Poison Tree, Harriet Evans’ Wildflowers – but it is something of a shocker where the long-ago summer was a time of mobile phones and cameras. Just saying. Made me feel old. I will say that I started out worrying about the smartphones and technology ten years back from what is obviously roughly now, but gave up trying to track it in the end. There may have been liberties taken, but the two strands work perfectly well.

I am intrigued (in general) by the phrase 'you do you', which has been around a while, but doesn't come up in books much (well not the ones I read) and here it is:

'picking at it after how many years, what's the point? But you do you.'
(If, like me, you are not always down with the slang, it means something like 'you are how you are', with a strong implication that how you are is not perfect. I think. Correct me if you think otherwise.)

The final verdict is that  The Wych Elm is just marvellous. Tana French is surely one of the best writers around these days. There are a number of her other books on the blog.

My go-to for pics of Irish houses will always be the lovely National Library of Ireland – they have a fabulous collection of photos (of all aspects of Irish life) and they make them freely available for Creative Commons. This is a Dublin house that could stand in for Ivy House in the book, even though the library caption says it’s not a great photo (top cut off, photographed on a slight tilt).

The Toast fashion catalogue is a go-to for women looking moody in lovely quirky clothes, as seem to fit the characters here, so that is where those pictures come from. Melissa wears ‘bright flowered dresses in soft cotton’ (and, fair play, isn’t very moody considering everything going on, unlike Susanna, above.)

The tiny picture of a wych elm is from a 19thC book about trees of the British Isles.














Comments

  1. I'm so glad ('though not surprised) that this lived up to what you hoped it would, Moira. As you say, French is that good. And I love the way she weaves past and present into her stories. I think that's one of her many real talents. That plus the slow reveal that she does so seemingly effortlessly. I have to say, though, that looking back on a summer that includes a lot of mobile 'phones and such is making me feel...old!

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    1. Yes exactly Margot! What happened to those long-ago-summer books where people were wearing 60s fashions and using a landline? It's yet another way we have to see we are getting older...
      But - for all that - a great book. We are lucky to be reading in a time of some wonderful contemporary crime series. I had Elly Griffiths last week, now French - two marvellous writers.

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  2. Never heard or read "you do you." Must be specifically used in the UK. Sounds like "Wherever you go, there you are" which has been attributed to Confucius and Buddha. I hear that all the time and use it myself. I'm always interested in new slang, but I don't get "you do you". But I'm perhaps too rigid these days and not a fan of flexible meanings. I still don't understand "woke" and how it's used or why it supposedly means what it means. Yes, I am officially pathetically old now.

    I may finally read a Tana French book. I've avoided her because I'm always suspicious of writers who receive nothing but raves from the moment they appear on the scene. Her early books just never appealed to me, sounded too much like the 'same old thing' in the gritty realism and police procedural school.

    That elm drawing you chose looks suspiciously like a live oak. Are my eyes failing me too? It's mostly the way the leaves and branches spread out wider. I always think of elms growing tall, branches staying tightly contained and the leaves forming a silhouette of a pyramid shape. But of course I only know North American elm species and I may be entirely wrong.

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    1. Woke means eyes wide open, seeing the truth (or what you believe to be the truth) even if it is unpalatable. Being woke is being aware. However it's also become a bit of a pejorative to mock people who try to show off how aware they are by claiming that, for example (trying to think of something suitably ridiculous) "bleaching diapers is white supremacy". So it is both a good thing to be and also an insult.

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    2. So, first, I had to double-check I had the right tree (NOT my area of expertise) and have added the source above - yes it is a wych elm. I do know that here in UK we also have something called Dutch elm, maybe they all look different? I can see that it looks like an oak...

      I'm trying to decide whether you would like her or not, John, and not reached any conclusion! But for me, one of the (say) 5 best contemporary crime writers I've discovered in the past ten years... She brings something extra to the table, but is hard to define!

      'You do you' - I had not heard it at all till recently, and now have seen it several times (as is always the way don't you find?) But there is a definite claim it is American in fact - and this is from 2015: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/magazine/how-you-do-you-perfectly-captures-our-narcissistic-culture.html

      But then I've never come across 'Wherever you go, there you are' !

      And thanks Daniel - I am only recently getting my head round 'woke'.

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  3. You do you? It means exactly what it says. Basically, it's like, "you be yourself" or "You go on with being who you are and doing what you do, it's none of my business."

    Basically, you be yourself.

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    1. Thanks again Daniel - but do you think there is no implication in 'you do you' that 'you' might be imperfect, making a mistake? That is what I'm trying to get straight in my head. In all the (very few) instances I have heard, it was more or less someone washing their hands of the other person. Oh, language, so fascinating!

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    2. Pretty much, yes. Like, you be you, I'm not getting involved.

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    3. Good, that's the best simple explanation I've had.

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  4. Help! I googled "wych elm" to find out exactly what it is and whether it has anything to do with witches (it doesn't) and found this:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_put_Bella_in_the_Wych_Elm%3F
    I couldn't stop reading. It is like a Stephen King novel with a bit of Lady Macbeth thrown in, but it isn't fiction. It happened. I read it on my laptop at the kitchen table late at night and I was so terrified that I was paralysed. I couldn't move from the table and I started to think I could hear weird noises. (And this is NOT like me - if you asked my children I strongly suspect they would fine it more likely that a burglar would flee or that a ghost would evaporate than that their mother would be frightened.) In the end I had to go to a fashion/clothing site to calm down. Which gives a new meaning to "retail therapy".

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    1. I know, it's a very horrible and disturbing story isn't it - French mentioned it in an interview as an inspiration of this book. I know that feeling when something really just gets to you - I hope the fashion did the trick and you're not too creeped out!

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  5. If she ever wrote a short book I might be tempted. Can't be doing with 500 odd pages, life's too short especially on an unproven (to me at least) author.

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    1. I can see that - I don't think she does short. Maybe she'll do short stories some time...

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  6. I am glad you liked it enough to read twice in three months. Once I get to it, I will probably like it too. But I will wait until I finish all the series books she wrote. I haven't read much about it because I want to come to it without preconceptions as much as possible under the circumstances, but I do think I read that it takes a while to get to the main story, but that has never bothered me. Especially if the writing is good.

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  7. Sorry, twice in 6 months, too late, too tired.

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    1. I'm still holding off on finishing the series books - I've been reading them out of order anyway, and I don't want there to be none left. Yes, this is very slow to get going. On the second reading it was somehow more noticeable, but understandable.
      I do hope she goes back to the Dublin Murder Squad as well - though will read anything she writes.

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  8. Glad to read this review and the comments. I did't know this was a scary book. In the "I do me" category, I don't do scary very well. It means a lot of chocolate and tea and reading humor online. I have read all of her Murder Squad books. The Trespasser is superb, stands head and shoulders above so many books. I remember lines from it that blew me away, and the smarmy journalist who puts a "Sartre cover" on top of a sleazy book he's reading.
    "You do you" is saying "you be yourself," and in the counterpart it's "I'll be me." If I'm neat and someone else is messy and I don't want to criticize and get involved in that person's mess but don't want to judge, I would say "you do you," and I won't clean up the mess, but you can be who you are.
    Being "woke" is used in the U.S. a lot. It means being politically aware of racism, sexism, environmental pollution, poverty, etc. It has a very specific meaning. Someone who is "woke" is socially aware of injustices. It particularly applies to racism over here.

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    1. I always associate you with Tana French, I knew you loved her. I think she is one of the best writers out there, and will always read what she writes. I hope you can find this book. And thanks for thoughts on the various phrases.

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  9. Yes. I do like Tana French. And The Trespasser has a page with some dialogue with a particular meaning for anyone who is of Irish descent, done in a witty way.

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    1. Now I'm trying to remember what that page in The Trespasser would be! Remind me...

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  10. The word "woke" was originated in the African-American community here.

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