I wrote at the beginning of the month that I hadn’t read many haunting books this year, but I seem to have been able to find several to review. This last “haunting books” post for this year covers two psychological thrillers—the brand new The Witch Elm, by Tana French, and last year’s He Said/She Said, by Erin Kelly. Neither is a five-star book in my opinion, but they are both very solid four stars. And both novels feature unreliable narrators and dark plots, similar in tone to Gone Girl. They are both worth reading.
I read He Said/She Said this summer. It deals with solar eclipses (I experienced my first solar eclipse last summer, and this novel was published two months before that August 2017 eclipse) and ocean travel (I was on a cruise when I read it). So some of the characters’ experiences resonated with me. But the main action takes place in Cornwall, in the North Atlantic, and in London in neighborhoods I know nothing about. And I’ve never seen the thrill of chasing natural spectacles such as eclipses, the way one of the main characters did.
The three main characters—Laura, her husband Kit (the eclipse chaser), and Beth (a woman they meet under dire circumstances)—were all quirky and neurotic. In addition, they all perceived the same inciting incident differently. In fact, the differences in how men and women interpret what they see contributed to the plot and led to the book’s title. Once Laura and Kit encounter Beth, there are trauma, betrayals, guilt, and angst on every page, between the three lead characters and between each of them and other characters. All of this made the narrators unreliable. I found my sympathies shifting from one to another, just like in Gone Girl, and sometimes I didn’t like any of them.
Laura witnesses what she thought was a crime (the inciting incident) in 1999 and the aftermath draws her, Kit, and Beth into situations that spiral out of control. At each point, I wondered why Laura let herself get sucked into such circumstances. And I thought the fact that Laura and Kit let their plight drive them to hide their identities and live off the grid was over the top. But then, I sometimes tend to underreact to major problems.
The plot thickens when we think one character is stalking the others. But then we learn maybe another character is stalking the stalker. Relationships shift and unravel. Who is the hero? Who is the villain? And the age-old question of women’s magazines—can this marriage survive? We aren’t quite sure of anything until the end, and even then we wonder whose side we’re on. That’s what makes He Said/She Said haunting.
The timeline shifts between 1999, a trial in 2000, the denouement in 2015, and all points in between. So the plot is at times confusing (be sure to read the chapter titles giving the date). The first half of the book is a little slow, as we learn more about the characters and their pasts. The trial scenes were pretty well done, I thought, though I don’t know the intricacies of British criminal law.
I haven’t read any of Erin Kelly’s other books, but I will definitely look for them.
By contrast, I’ve read all of Tana French’s earlier police procedurals. The Witch Elm is not a part of her Dublin Murder Squad series, but it was one of her better novels.
In The Witch Elm, the narrator is a young man named Toby who considers himself lucky to have had a good upbringing and few problems in his life thus far. Then when he confronts burglars in his apartment, he suffers a traumatic brain injury, which divides his life into before and after. He is not only physically but psychologically brutalized by the attack.
Toby and his girlfriend Melissa go to live in his family’s ancestral home with his Uncle Hugo, who is dying of cancer. In addition to Toby, Melissa, and Uncle Hugo, the primary characters are Toby’s two cousins, Susanna and Leon. The three cousins, all only children, were as close as brothers and sister growing up, and all spent time in Uncle Hugo’s home. As Toby tries to recuperate and Uncle Hugo is increasingly debilitated, various family members come to visit. During one family get-together, a skeleton is found in the old home’s garden.
For a mystery novel, The Witch Elm is unusual because the dead body doesn’t show up until about the 30% mark. The earlier part of the book was not wasted—we get to know Toby pretty well. Still, this part of the book could have been shorter, which might have improved the pacing of the novel.
After the body is found, the police conclude the person was murdered. Toby tries to figure out how the body came to be hidden on the family’s property. Toby’s memory and his reasoning are both impaired by his brain injury, and he sometimes isn’t quite sure what’s going on. This makes Toby’s interpretation of events—both past and present—suspect. Because Toby is uncertain, so are readers. Throughout the story, past family relationships and friendships are called into question—who deserves our sympathy and who does not? In addition, the police investigators are alternately friendly and hostile to Toby and to other family members.
As the novel progresses, we see each of the characters make choices for good and for evil, choices that readers will either applaud or denounce. Some choices were in the past, and the characters must now live with the consequences (or try to hide their choices). Some choices are in the present and turn the characters’ lives in new directions.
I had guessed the murderer by the time the crime is solved, but I did not see the final twist in the novel coming at all. I didn’t like it, but it did serve Tana French’s theme, which is about how we see ourselves. Ultimately, this is a book about how well we know ourselves when the chips are down. What will we do when faced with what seems like an existential crisis? Will such circumstances cause us to find or lose ourselves? Those are haunting questions, and they are why The Witch Elm is a haunting book.
What’s the best thriller you’ve read recently?
