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    The Witch Elm: A Novel
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    The Witch Elm: A Novel
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    The Witch Elm: A Novel
    Audiobook22 hours

    The Witch Elm: A Novel

    Written by Tana French

    Narrated by Paul Nugent

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    From the writer who "inspires cultic devotion in readers" (The New Yorker) and has been called "incandescent" by Stephen King, "absolutely mesmerizing" by Gillian Flynn, and "unputdownable" (People), comes a gripping new novel that turns a crime story inside out.

    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&madsh;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.

    A spellbinding standalone from one of the best suspense writers working today, The Witch Elm asks what we become, and what we're capable of, when we no longer know who we are.

    Editor's Note

    A crime story turned inside out…

    “The Witch Elm” is a departure from Tana French’s previous books: it’s her first stand-alone mystery. Like the best roller coasters, French takes her time building the drama, slowly climbing up and up, but that’s what makes the descent at the end such a scream.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateOct 9, 2018
    ISBN9781984837998
    Unavailable
    The Witch Elm: A Novel
    Author

    Tana French

    Tana French grew up in Ireland, Italy, the United States, and Malawi. She is the author of In the Woods (winner of the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity and Barry awards), The Likeness, Faithful Place, Broken Harbor (winner of the LA Times prize for Best Mystery/Thriller) and The Secret Place. She lives in Dublin with her husband and two children.

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    Reviews for The Witch Elm

    3.5/5

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    • 3/5
      French is very wordy, but somehow that really helped building this mystery. The story is very atmospheric with a wonderful skew, but it lost me halfway through chapter 12.
    • 4/5
      The plot is is good, if a bit tedious. It seems to take a long time to get to the meat of the story. The author exposes every little nuance of the main character, which is both good and not so good. He is very complex (more so than he even realizes), but not someone you feel very sympathetic toward.

      The main reason for this not being five stars is the ending. I think the book went on about fifty page longer than is should have. I won't go into details, as I don't want to spoil the story, but I think anyone who reads the book will understand my point, weather of not they agree.
    • 2/5
      The tone of this book reminded me a lot of Tart's The Goldfinch, which I did not care for. Story: The story of a privileged young man who is severely beaten and never recovers physically or mentally.Form: This was a very slow moving book; mind-numbingly so. It wasn't until page 200 that we find out a crime has been committed. 90 pages of this book is senseless dialogue between the protagonist and his cousin--nothing of substance. The word fock and shyte were used at least 1000 times and did not add to the story.(We were as tired as fock, we were as hungry as fock Come on Tana, vocabulary expansion!Audio: As this took place in Ireland I'm sure the reader had an Irish accent. But they spoke so quickly that I had to turn the audio down to 90% speed to understand what was said (in English, mind you). The range of sounds, which is normally a good thing, was so vast that on the normal setting you couldn't either hear the whispers or you were blasted by the yelling.All in all, this was just one horrible, long experience! 528 pages
    • 4/5
      Toby surprises two burglars in his home and is beaten so badly that he moves in with a relative, a relative whose house reveals a dead body and it takes all of Toby's effort to try and remember what happened. It is a long, meandering tale and from Toby's point of view and with ANY other author, it would have been dreary, but, as always is true with French, she keeps me needing to turn pages. I have no idea how she does it, but I love her for it. Another great book from a great author.
    • 2/5
      The concept of the unreliable narrator is trending rather popular these days, whether it's someone who's actively lying to you (Gone Girl) or someone who's a black-out drunk and can't remember things (The Girl on the Train) and TF picks up that trend and runs with it by including a main character who gets clubbed in the head in the first act and can't remember stuff too good afterward. Brain injuries will do that to you.Still, though, the cluelessness he exhibits during the remaining seven eighths of the novel is remarkably focused in just a few areas. Not only can't he remember details of the night he was attacked (as you would expect), and while speaking he suddenly loses words and struggles to finish sentences, he also can't remember details (rather important details) of his life ten years earlier. Okay, so that's a convenient plot contrivance, and I'll buy it. But here's where TF loses me: he's clueless in the face of things happening in present time. TF unfolds her story and doles out clues as to "whodunit" (not that this is exactly a murder mystery, per se, but sort of) so obvious and so often that the reader feels beaten about the head with them. Our main character is of course receiving all of thee clues with us in real time (as this story is told in the first person), and he doesn't catch on until well into the eleventh hour. The fifty-ninth minute of the eleventh hour, in fact. And sure, brain injury = cognitive interruptions (at best) and failures (at worst), but he doesn't seem to be cognitively failing at much else. Details of the night he was attacked and random words, notwithstanding, he's still pretty sharp. Just not about the important thing that TF wants to do a big reveal on. I can't tell who she has a lower opinion of: her main character or her average reader.On top of that, this book is dark. I mean, REALLY dark. It starts with a semi-likable character getting beaten half to death in the first act and goes far downhill from there. Once you're done, you look back on those halcyon early chapters with the regret of lost innocence. I don't mind a dark, bleak story, but there needs to be other ingredients to round it out. You never just have grilled beef liver on a plate for dinner by itself. Too bitter. Too tough. You add onions and gravy, maybe some mashed potatoes, and a nice chianti. When I was growing up, we smothered it with ketchup. I digress, but you get the point. One horrible scene after another wears on you.And finally, jeez TF, how many plot twists do you need? About as many as red herrings, apparently. Listen, if you really want some advice (and you don't) you should have written this book from Susanna's point of view. She was the really interesting character here. And we barely learned a thing about her until the final third (quarter?) of the book.
    • 3/5
      I'm not a big crime fiction reader, but I was intrigued enough by reviews claiming this to be a literary take on the genre to reserve a copy at the library.I suppose it's literary in the sense that there seems to be a theme of privilege running throughout, although there didn't seem to be a clear message coming through about this. It's also a long, slow burner of a read filled with descriptive detail. I found it a bit too long, to be honest, especially as the action isn't evenly distributed throughout, and there was something about Toby's narrative voice that mentally tired me out quite quickly.On the upside, I did want to read to the end and I very much enjoyed the 'big family house' setting. I really liked Hugo's character, but felt a bit more ambivalent about a couple of the other people in the book. I definitely didn't see the end coming, although I did suspect there was something in store considering the resolution of the main mystery seemed to take place quite a few pages from the end!I may read another of Tana French's books at some point, but I have to say that I was left slightly disappointed by this one. It's certainly no Secret History as has been suggested in the press!
    • 4/5
      Tana French is definitely one of my favorite authors so I was eagerly looking forward to reading this book. I could not believe how long it took me to begin to enjoy it, but I see that many other readers had the same experience. The molasses-slow pace caused me to put the book down frequently, and even after things began to happen, the action was slowed by more inaction on the part of the main character, Toby. I'm glad I hung in there because the last third of the book is amazing as the plot twists and secrets are revealed about Toby's family and himself.
    • 5/5
      Tana French has been lauded for her writing and her "ingenious plotting" by people who know a lot more about those subjects than I do (like Stephen King) but I concur with that assessment. I've only read one other book by her but I intend to read more.Toby has lived a charmed life--he's good looking, intelligent, charming and, above all, lucky. At the age of twenty-eight he has a great job as the public relations person for a Dublin art gallery, he has a girlfriend who he adores and who adores him, he's got good mates and a close family. He has no siblings but his two cousins, Leon and Susanna, are his age and because they spent each summer with their uncle Hugo in his huge old house while their parents vacationed together they are closer perhaps than siblings would have been. Then his life is torn asunder one night when Toby's flat is broken into and he is badly beaten by the robbers. He has continuing neurological problems which may or may not resolve over time. He is not fit for work and he is terrified of being alone in his apartment. So, when his cousin Susanna tells him that Uncle Hugo is dying of brain cancer and he could use someone to move in with him, Toby decides to give it a go. He convinces his girlfriend Melissa to move in with him and it all seems to be working well for everyone. One Sunday when the whole clan has gathered at Hugo's house for lunch Susanna's two youngsters make a terrifying discovery. They find a skull in a hollow in a big wych elm at the end of Hugo's garden. Soon the police are crawling all over the garden where they discover a complete skeleton which turns out to be a classmate of Toby and Leon's who went missing the summer after they graduated from school. Everyone assumed he had committed suicide because he got such bad marks he couldn't get into any post-secondary schools. Of course the police soon determine he was killed and put into the tree to hide him. Did Toby kill him? Some evidence seems to point to him. When you finally learn who the guilty party was you can see how deftly French set this up. And then there is a final little twist that will leave your head spinning.Remarkably good.
    • 3/5
      This was picked for our book club. Based off the cover, I thought it was going to be a supernatural/horror book. Nope not at all. This book draggggggged for so long I am really surprised I finished it. In a nutshell, a skeleton is found in a tree and the cousins and uncle who were in the house at the time are suspects So much irrelevant detail I didn't need to know. This book really could have been cut in half. There was really no point during this book where it was a quick read... nowhere. Was I surprised at who the killer was? Nope not really... I was more surprised who set up the burglary/beat up of Toby. I was very surprised at the whole Rafferty/Toby last interaction and what followed after that. For those two surprises and those alone is why I'm even giving this book any stars.
    • 4/5
      Ms. French always delivers a well-planned mystery with plenty of misdirection and a thoughtful commentary on the main protagonist. This novel is no different. Toby is a "lucky" guy who has his world turned upside down when he is brutally beaten. That experience ultimately leads Toby to question everything about his family history, the people he loves, and ultimately his own character as he confronts huge blanks in his memory and has to rely on what other people tell him about his past. It makes for a lovely and complex mystery.
    • 4/5
      If it has Tana French's name on it, I'm going to read it. I love the Dublin Murder Squad series. The Witch Elm is however, a stand alone novel.Toby breezes through life, doing well at work, lucky in love and with many friends and a supportive and loving extended family. But his life changes one night when his apartment is broken into - and he is severely beaten. He retreats to the family home to take time to heal and help out his elderly uncle. But that wished for peace is also broken - by the discovery of a skeleton in the garden of the house.What can I say? French's writing is brilliant. The plot and the reader's expectations change multiple times. As Toby tries to puzzle out the past and present, new pieces are added and subtracted by his family, the police and his faulty memory until he can no longer discern what is truth and what is not. We become privy to the past even as the present changes direction. My outlook as to the whodunit and the ending changed many times over the course of the book.French's characterizations are in-depth, rich and full with detail. The reader feels as though these are people they have actually met and conversed with. Many of the characters are not particularly likeable - and for me that included lead character Toby. The exceptions are Uncle Hugo and Toby's girlfriend Melissa. His cousins are particularly well-drawn, evoking a visceral reaction. Detective Rafferty is after the truth and his interrogations and actions are so well done.The Witch Elm is hard to categorize - it's a mystery and police procedural, but at the heart of it I would say it's a character study.This one's a chunkster weighing in at over 500 pages. I decided to listen to The Witch Elm this time 'round. Paul Nugent was the reader and he was wonderful. His voice is easy to listen to, his enunciation clear and his accent appealing. But where he really shines is in bringing the story to life. His interpretation was wonderful. He captures the emotion, angst, action, tension and more, drawing the listener in. Different tones, accents and tenors identify each character. I will be eagerly waiting the next book from French!
    • 3/5
      Can you say unreliable narrator? I realize he got hit on the head towards the beginning of the book and subsequently had trouble remembering stuff, but if this guy had been a little more honest about what he didn't recall and his own mental state, he might have saved himself a lot of trouble. Anyway, this was an overall decent read, although I will say that the mystery is very slow to develop and it generally wasn't my kind of book.
    • 5/5
      An enthralling and very complex book.Toby didn't really want to return to the Ivy House and he wasn't really sure why. After he was attacked at home and beaten almost to death, his memory had great holes. But the family thought that going to stay at the Ivy House would help in his recuperation and also solve the problem of someone being there to look after Hugo.The discovery of the skull hidden in the wych elm changes all that and becomes a pivotal point in the novel. How recent is the skull? The elm has been there about 200 years. But then the identity of the skull is discovered and the question becomes one of who put it there. Toby realises it must be someone he knows and he is not even sure it isn't himself.There is no getting away from the fact that this is a long book. It is made to feel longer by the fact that it seems to take so long to get wherever it is going, and for much of the time the reader is not sure what the outcome will be. You are not really sure of how much detail you need to hang onto. And some of the main characters are simply unlikeable. I even felt ambivalent about Toby himself. I kept thinking about how unobservant and self-absorbed he must have been when he was younger. And then, we are nearly at the end when something quite awful and unpredictable happens.
    • 4/5
      This is another great Tana French work with lots of twists and turns. We have an unreliable narrator, a mystery from the past, a fascinating cast of characters, and enough red herrings to keep you guessing until the end.
    • 5/5
      While Toby, the protagonist, and everyone around him are not pleasant to encounter, this book plunges you into a dark psyche that is only too familiar: the smart, confident young man who has had everything handed to him and is so certain he can control everything and everyone around him. It demonstrates what someone can do once they get the chain of events started, and yet how little they understand the potential outcomes. Life is not really a chess game. It's a depressing book, but one that rings horribly true, even if the events are over the top. If anything, that lack of realism is what allows you to keep reading and recognize the value of what French is trying to do here.
    • 4/5
      The Wych Elm by Tana French 513 pagesI found this a well written murder mystery with realistic characters and an almost Gothic-in-a-modern-setting feel to it. There was an old family house; a family secret; an evil villain; a murder; and the threat of dungeons, well, prison cells.The characters include professional, Dublin millennials, totally focused on having fun; their parents, who are well-to-do meaning the millennials are of the more privileged members of society; members (both uniformed and detectives) of An Garda Síochána (the Irish police force); a handful of less privileged members of society who would be, and are, looked down upon by the main characters; the Ivy House. The Ivy House is the family home that has been in the family for four generations. It has to be considered as a character in this tale as it is the hub of the story and is instrumental in defining the socio-economic status of the characters and their position in the privileged class.Tana French does an excellent job of portraying the lives and attitudes of the families who have lived in the big old houses in the rich leafy suburbs that are now some of the most expensive real-estate in the country, and whose children are the fodder of the modern Millenial business world, people who believe they are indestructible and that rules and laws are for others.I came to this book having just read two other murder mysteries, [47 Seconds] and [The Hunting Party]. As soon as I started reading [The Wych Elm] I knew I was dealing with an author whose writing skill was infinitely better than that of the authors of my earlier two reads. I am giving this book 3.5 stars out of 5. For me a 3 represents a good book. 3.5 is praise indeed. I reserve 4 and above for books that teach me something and that I find to have interesting wordplay, or novel ideas and insights. [The Wych Elm] is a good read; it is an interesting murder mystery. I will read more books by Tana French, but I did not find myself making notes in the margin, putting comments in the back cover to remind me to go back to certain pages and reread wonderful ideas and phrases. This is the type of book I would read for a relaxing read. It is well written and entertaining and I will approach further Tana French books with that in mind. I would recommend it as a summer read.
    • 5/5
      Tana French wrote it. Paul Nugent narrates the audio. That's all you need to know. A shocker!
    • 3/5
      I wanted to like this one, I really did, but Toby is such an annoying character! I had a hard time feeling sympathy for any of the characters - except for Uncle Hugo who is a fabulous character! - and really struggled with the dragging plot. If I am honest, I swear that French, for some crazy reason, felt that a stand alone novel needs to be longer in length than any of her Dublin Murder Squad books, and wrote accordingly. She could have easily shaved off 150 pages, which would have resulted in a tighter packaged story that "might" have keep me riveted. Hum... condensing the story might not have helped in a huge way as Toby would probably still have been annoying, but one can ponder. *sighs*Now that I have vented my frustrations, I can be a little more objective with this review. Yes, French continues to implement her signature style of group dynamics and psychological profiles as part of the story. Mixing things up - and probably the only reason this one is being billed as a 'stand alone' novel, separate from her Dublin Murder Squad series - is because this time, the story is told from the point of view of the Toby and not a cop assigned to the case(s). Different perspective, different story. Got that. The only thing saving this story from being a total stinker dive in the star rating, for me anyways, is the fabulous setting of Ivy House, the ancestral home for Toby's extended family, and French's ability to weave a story that leaves the reader guessing the "who" and the "why". beyond those positives, this was not a great story. In fact, the ended had me tempted to bang my head against the desk top....I was that frustrated with the story. Overall, not the best foray into a stand alone novel and I can easily recommend other Tana French novels from her Dublin Murder Squad series as a good starting point. This is not one I would recommend, to anyone.
    • 4/5
      Ich weiß gar nicht recht, was ich zu diesem Buch schreiben soll. Handlung und Botschaft machen mich etwas ratlos.Zunächst einmal lässt sich festhalten, dass dieser Roman sehr gut geschrieben ist. Es gibt wunderbare Zwischentöne, die Figuren sind psychologisch überzeugend. Es geht um den jungen Toby, der eigentlich alles hat, ein echtes Glückskind. Schon in der Pubertät war er beliebt, wurde nie gemobbt, ist sympathisch, sieht gut aus, hat einen guten Job und eine wunderbare Freundin, also ein perfektes Leben.Dann wird er in seiner eigenen Wohnung brutal zusammengeschlagen. Er zieht daraufhin zu seinem Onkel ins Ivy House, wo er als Junge mit seinem Cousin und seiner Cousine viel Zeit verbracht hat. Doch dort wird eine Leiche entdeckt, bei der es sich um einen ehemaligen Schulkameraden handelte, der sich mit 18 das Leben genommen haben sollte. Es stellt sich aber heraus, dass er ermordet wurde und seitdem im Garten des Ivy House versteckt war. Nun geht es im Buch um die Klärung dieses Falls bzw. eigentlich beider Fälle, aber noch mehr geht es um die Erinnerung Tobys, um die Konstruktion der Vergangenheit und um die Demontage eines einstmals glücklichen Menschen. Selbst im ersten Teil geht es schon um Konstruktion, Wahrheit ist, was wir dafür halten, das zeigt schon Tobys Problem bei der Arbeit.Das Buch ist spannend und sehr gut geschrieben, aber auch sehr düster. Ich kann nicht sagen, was mir die Lektüre gegeben hat. Vielleicht am ehesten die Erkenntnis, dass, je nachdem wie man selbst aufgewachsen ist, man sich mehr mit den Mobbingopfern oder den Davongekommenen identifizieren kann und feststellt, dass es hier selbst bei sich absolut nahestehenden Menschen zwei Welten der Jugend gibt. Und dass die Erinnerung trügerisch ist und nur der eigenen Sichtweise und Erzählung folgt. Und dass man mit der Überwindung dieser Zeit seinen Weg ins Erwachsenenleben bahnt.
    • 3/5
      I found this very ponderous.
    • 5/5
      Toby, the main character, was tough because he kept saying how nice he was but he just told this one lie or he just said this one awful thing, He reminded me of the main character of a book I was forced to read in college: The Stranger by Albert Camus. The book would have been great if only the main character had been a decent guy ;-)This book is a great mystery with some interesting turns and some perceptions about how we think we protect people. I loved it. And Toby is a twerp.
    • 5/5
      An amazing read but very, very dark.
    • 4/5
      With the once lucky protagonist, middle class, charming, good looking, straight Toby with the perfect girlfriend, now the victim of an almost fatally violent burglary, the reader is borne as if by an army of ants slowly and deliberately through his beloved uncle's cancer, a literal skeleton in the closest into the real turmoil of who his dearest cousins, smart sedate Susana, and flamboyant gay Toby, really are and who he was, is, and might become. This book never lets up and never goes easy, and it goes on for quite a bit.
    • 4/5
      After being violently attacked during a burglary in his apartment, the normally unflappable Toby is no longer able to spend nights alone. At his cousin Susanna’s request, he agrees to stay at his family’s ancestral home to look after his uncle Hugo, recently diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. And perhaps the time off from work and the peaceful setting will speed Toby’s recovery. But one afternoon during a family gathering a skull is discovered in the trunk of a wych elm tree in the garden, and the subsequent investigation throws the family into chaos.The victim turns out to be someone known to Toby and his cousins, but it’s hard to imagine how the skull ended up in the tree. Was it in any way related to the burglary and attack? The police investigation has so many twists that almost any character in the novel could have committed the crimes. Tana French kept the suspense on high from start to finish, bringing forward more than one plausible suspect with only the number of pages remaining as a clue to whether they were really “the one.”I found Toby rather obnoxious and self-centered, but that made for the most interesting aspect of this novel. While the attack damaged Toby’s memory and made him an unreliable narrator, in a painfully emotional scene with cousins Susanna & Leon, they revealed how Toby’s white male privilege caused him to minimize, discard, or “forget” key events in their lives. This behavior turned out to be a significant contributing factor in the victim’s untimely death. While it took Tana French a long time (508 pages!) to wrap up all the loose ends in this book, there is much to admire and think about.
    • 4/5
      This is my 4th Tana French novel and the first outside her Dublin Detective Squad books. I do not read a lot of crime/mystery books but French has excellent prose and does a good job on character development. Her plots are good but not always that twisted. This book is over 500 pages and has way too many dead spots and could have done with a good editing. You really don't want to give away too much when reviewing a plot driven book. The main character Toby is the sole narrator and French uses that to make the reader question how accurate his description of events are . The book starts out with Toby, a 28 year old upper middle class PR guy living in Dublin. He has a good job, friends, family, and girl friend. It is all shattered when he confronts burglars in his apartment and suffers severe injuries. This diminishes his memory so we question more his narrative. Eventually he and his girl friend Melissa go their families estate occupied by life long bachelor Uncle Hugo who has terminal brain cancer. A skeleton is discovered in an elm in the garden and the plot goes on from there. The beginning of the book was slow but I raced through the last half and found it a good read. It was interesting to see the detectives approach to the crime and also the class distinctions in terms of how criminals get treated. If you have never read French then this is not the book I would start with. Anything from her Dublin Squad series is a better place to begin. If you like crime novelists with a literary bent, then try Tana French.
    • 2/5
      I couldn't get into this suspense novel with it's unlikable main character.
    • 5/5
      One of the best she has written. Not a Dublin police story- a stand-alone novel. Great depth in character description and plot.
    • 5/5
      When a series writer switches up to a standalone novel, devoted readers get the willies: uh oh, what about [insert beloved characters here], and they tend to be wary and suspicious of the new. But since I worship at the altar of Tana French, she of the six exquisite Dublin Murder Squad mysteries, I put myself on the endless wait list at our library for The Witch Elm and was not disappointed. Sure, I missed the camaraderie of the detectives, but this one's got two of her standard smart-but-awful ones on the periphery. At the center is Toby, the epitome of a white privileged urban Dublin dudebro until he suffers both a work setback and a horrendous, seemingly random break-in and assault. His family sends him off to care for Uncle Hugo, a genealogist dying of cancer at Ivy House, the genteelly decaying family mansion. Even before Toby has even begun to recover, and as Hugo gets sicker, a skull is found in the garden, and we're off to the races. French is known for her many red herrings and her insertion of odd events that go nowhere, and both are strongly in evidence (ha!) here. And she hasn't lost a step. Some readers won't like the lack of likable characters, but that's also a French hallmark; they are always few and far between. But the gradual ratcheting up of the tension - you feel like a wet rag being twisted in strong hands throughout – glues the reader to the pages until the cascading series of denouements results in a rocky but satisfying ending.Quotes: “That spike of terror went through me again. He was like a raptor, not cruel, not good or evil, only and utterly what he was. The purity of it, unbreakable, was beyond anything I could imagine." "If I had been some tracksuited skanger from a family of dole rats, the whole thing would have played out differently."
    • 4/5
      Complicated reaction to this one which I'll try to process via written review, if not for anyone but myself.If you're deciding to read it, a few key threads and elements involved: a couple of crimes and police investigations, long-held family secrets, the unreliability and vagary of memory - our own, others', those we share, as well as the possibility that we don't ever truly know the people we fancy ourselves closest to, including ourselves. The story is told primarily through the POV of an unreliable narrator, but no one involved in the story is wholly reliable for differing reasons so the story is pieced together in chunks, from different memories and perspectives.I've read other Tana French, but this doesn't seem to be the one to start with if you're new to her. Also, the tone seems different (not better or worse, just different) than what I remembered or felt reading her other books. The Dublin squad books are 'truer' detective stories in the usual sense, this felt like...an outlook on life that involved detective story elements.The writing is solid, with at least a couple of twists that I didn't see coming. However, there are probably chunks of filler that could have been edited out without cost to story, character/plot development or pacing. For me, it was a true page turner for about 30-40% of the book, with the rest a bit more of a slog.The main characters were unlikable to varying degrees, with some key secondary characters remaining amorphous to the end, though I'm not sure it matters and may have been intentional. Personally, I wouldn't say I enjoyed getting to know any of them or even that I enjoyed the read, but when it was compelling and absorbing, it was completely so.Emotionally and psychologically, this might be one of the most unsettling books I've ever read and I really want to take a mental bath. It's not because of gore or gruesomeness or even the copious drug use, but more just....a negative take on the butterfly effect mixed with a strong dose of fatalism. That's the basis for the unsettling part--books, among other things, allow you to try on different points of views and what this one seems to be saying is that our lives are a capriciously-manufactured house of cards. If you think you have a good one, with more or less happy memories, and consider yourself a good person, that belief is less 'true,' than based on a construction of falsehoods and false memories and it can all come crashing down without warning, to break you into pieces beyond repair. Further, not only is that potentially unavoidable (that is, if you avoid it it's only because of dumb luck) and that if it happens, you probably deserved it all along. I don't see the world, myself or other people that way, and it's a POV that I don't want to rent headspace to.
    • 3/5
      The author is intent on stretching herself in The Witch Elm. I can appreciate that she wanted to move beyond the Murder Squad mold of her other books, however:The book is about a hundred pages longer than necessary to tell the story, partially because of the separate but related to-the-main-mystery story that opens and 400 pages later closes the novel. Yes, the reader needs to know the narrator/protagonist was mugged early on, since it effects him physically and psychologically, but that story could have been, should have been, less obtrusive. Several of the events and character behaviors were unconvincing or unbelievable. This is in fact is more or less the case in her Murder Squad mysteries, but bothered me more in this book. Parts were just too damn depressing, so much so that two-thirds in I disliked the narrator/protagonist enough to consider abandoning the book altogether.