My love affair with Tana French’s writing continues with The Witch Elm, which presents Toby Hennesy as the protagonist and the first-person narrator of the story. Toby works as a public relations officer in an art gallery and considers himself a lucky person, in the beginning. This feeling, however, conflicts with what happens to him later.

In his work environment, Toby’s co-worker Tiernan passes his work off under the name of Gouger who is about to enter an exhibition for the underprivileged teens. Toby looks the other way on this fraud but his boss catches it, fires Tiernan, and suspends Toby. A few days later, after his suspension is over and after having a conversation with his cousins Susanna and Leon about the Ivy House where they all spent their summers in, Toby goes home from work to be attacked by two robbers and he is severely hurt, and his mental acuity afflicted due to a head wound. The two detectives on his case have no leads, and Toby ends up fearing to live in his own place.

The only positive here is Melissa, Toby’s girlfriend who loves and cares for Toby selflessly. Then, when Susanna calls Toby to visit their uncle Hugo who now has the ownership of the Ivy House since Hugo, a genealogist, is dying of brain cancer. Not totally wanting it, Toby and Melissa move in with Hugo with Toby helping Hugo to discover the family history of a client named Amelia Wozniak.

One day, Susanna’s young son Zach finds a skull inside a hole of a large elm tree. This brings in the police and the detectives, with the main detective Rafferty. Although, so far, it seems much has happened, this is only the setup of the real story, as this is usually what Tana French does, starting with a complicated setup and tying everything to its elements. For that reason, I’m leaving to the readers to find out the rest of the story.

The setting of the story is in a city in Ireland, possibly in a suburb of Dublin. With the Irish culture as its background, the story’s theme of luck turns into conflict and invasion as the natural world surrounding the Ivy House had been a refuge from the city life.

The Wych Elm is a symbol of this story, possibly a symbol for the Hennesy family and the Ivy House. Ivy house was built by Toby’s great-grandparents and it was in the family ever since. The Wych Elm remains standing as long as the family has owned the Ivy House for more than a century and it hides a murder victim. When the crime is discovered and the tree is cut down, the same happens to the family’s ties.

The main character with his first-person perspective can be called an unreliable narrator as he misses some facts throughout his life and his brain damage doesn’t help matters later either. For that reason, as innocent and well-meaning as he was, he ends up bearing the burden of living with his uncle and being suspected of murder to boot.

As to the other important characters in the books, Hugo and Melissa have impressed me with their innate goodness, and Toby’s cluelessness, second-guessing himself and others, and the depth of his internal speculations have endeared him to me as a relatable character. In short, everything bad that can happen to a character has happened to poor Toby, but then, only an intelligent, capable, and fearless author like Tana French can dare hurt her protagonist to this degree and come out on top at the end.

I am not a big murder-mystery reader, except for Tana French’s work, and for that reason, I am sure that the real fans of the genre may not agree with me, but I believe no matter the genre, the literariness of a work speaks for itself. I think both as a murder-mystery and a psychological suspense story, the Wych Elm dazzles.

see how a simple genre can be uplifted.

The characterization as every character was real, even those who the reader finds out to act out of character because of the way Toby sees them. Also, the ending and the twists in the plot were unexpected.

Tana French, the 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.

I enjoyed it greatly, but it is longer than the average murder-mystery stories, yet so much worth the time.

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Created Jul 09, 2019 at 5:54pm • Submit your own review...