French, Tana: In the Woods
In the Woods (2007)
Written by: Tana French
Genre: Mystery
Pages: 429 (Trade Paperback)
This book has had my attention for a while. For starters, the cover, which we'll talk about later, is striking. Second, and this is a me-thing, I kept wanting to call the book "InTO the Woods" after the musical, Into the Woods, which I performed in my senior year of high school (which was forever ago). Lastly, this was SHU's residency read immediately following my graduation. It received some mixed reviews, but despite those, I couldn't ignore the book. It was one of those I put on my wishlist and hoped someone would get for me, and finally, someone did. :) And because I'm trying not only to read gifts ASAP, but also whittle down my TBR pile and expand my genre-reading, In the Woods was a perfect fit.
The premise: ganked from BN.com, because I'm seriously lazy. ;) As dusk approaches a small Dublin suburb in the summer of 1984, mothers begin to call their children home. But on this warm evening, three children do not return from the dark and silent woods. When the police arrive, they find only one of the children gripping a tree trunk in terror, wearing blood-filled sneakers, and unable to recall a single detail of the previous hours.
Twenty years later, the found boy, Rob Ryan, is a detective on the Dublin Murder Squad and keeps his past a secret. But when a twelve-year-old girl is found murdered in the same woods, he and Detective Cassie Maddox-his partner and closest friend-find themselves investigating a case chillingly similar to the previous unsolved mystery. Now, with only snippets of long-buried memories to guide him, Ryan has the chance to uncover both the mystery of the case before him and that of his own shadowy past.
Review style: spoilers, so beware. While reading this I had no desire to flip to the end to spoil myself, and I'm glad for it. So if you have any interest in this book, skip to the "My Rating" section. It's a MYSTERY for goodness's sakes: why spoil the mystery for yourself?
So I wasn't kidding about not wanting to spoil the book for myself. Flipping to the end was a bad habit I picked up last year, and I think part of it was pure impatience to finish the book I was on and move on the the next, and the idea of peeking meant I knew what I was reading toward and could therefore read faster. At any rate, this is the year for PATIENCE, so no more peeking (unless I'm so disliking the book that peeking might keep me reading).
One thing that really impressed me with this book was the characterization and relationships. I loved Ryan's and Cassie's dynamic so damn much that it broke my heart when they slept together. Don't get me wrong: the events leading up to it? Made so much sense. Them coming together in bed was inevitable, which also meant the dissolution of the relationship was also inevitable, because Ryan was in such a bad, bad place. It broke my heart when that happened, because I loved their dynamic. I wish they'd never slept together, and that's exactly what I'm supposed to feel, because that's what Ryan wishes too.
It's a funny thing, reading this book. Growing up, I was into procedurals and mysteries. Because of that, I didn't feel like I was entering some new genre with new rules, but I didn't feel like I was coming home either. Conventions I recognized I nodded at, but what kept my attention was the voice, which read fantastically and in some places, very lyrically, the characters and their relationships, and the mysteries themselves: are the two cases related, and how are these cases going to be solved by the end of the book?
And that, my friends, is the catch: I reached a point where I realized that if either case was going to be solved, it would only be one, not both. And because I felt that coming, I had time to ask myself how I felt about such a thing. After all, we're taught that good plotting ties up all the strings, and if you leave a mystery unsolved, that's a pretty loose string.
Yet, how truly reflective of real life. I'm going to spoil this now, so if you don't want to know which mystery is solved and which isn't, SKIP TO THE END OF THE REVIEW NOW. *clears throat* Okay, is everyone here who wants to be? Good.
Let's face it: the chances that Ryan was really going to remember what happened to him and his friends was slim to none. There was that moment in the woods, where he remembered the moment RIGHT BEFORE, and was so terrified he lost the thread of memory, and from that point on, that was it. Once lost, it was gone, and he could hardly grasp anything relating to that time, save for a few cherished moments. Medically realistic or not, it makes sense to me. While I was waiting in those last pages for just a flash of memory, something that'd give me a clue to what really happened to Peter and Jamie, I knew it wouldn't and by time I finished the book, I was okay with that. Because some mysteries remain unsolved, and to truly solve this one would point too closely to the fictional world this book lives in. It's far more chilling to leave it without answers, to know the world isn't as orderly as we'd like, that for the most part, we live in a certain amount of chaos.
And then there's the murder of Katy and the motivation behind it. I can see how some readers might be really put off by the fact that while Katy's murder was solved, there's no real justice. Rosalind's character was so well-crafted too. You knew, as a reader, something wasn't right, but like Ryan and Cassie, you were looking for the obvious. I was furious and disheartened when it was revealed that all their hard work was for nothing, because she was underage, but again, it goes back to the realism: life doesn't hand itself over with a pretty bow.
Some of it relates to how I come to the genre. I don't think it's fair to say I'm not a mystery reader anymore (especially since mystery is such a key element in urban fantasy and science fiction). While I'm no expert in the genre or its conventions, I've read just enough to lose the newbie status. I'm more or less an amateur in the genre, but because of that, I don't have the baggage or expectations that other, more advanced/professional mystery readers might have. In the Woods is a well-crafted novel with incredibly engaging characters and engaging mystery, enough so that when I don't get all of the answers, I'm able to sit back and still be satisfied, and that's a fine thing in a book.
My Rating
Worth the Cash: Actually, it almost feels like a "Keeper Shelf." I really, really enjoyed this book. Especially the characters, and I enjoyed it so much that I was tempted to get the sequel written in Cassie's POV before I ever finished reading In the Woods. I held myself back because I knew some people were really unhappy with the way In the Woods ended and I didn't want to end up as one of those people but with the sequel on my hands. That said, I could've bought the sequel and been perfectly happy. This book haunted me, folks. Its ending and resolution is such that after I finished the book, I dreamed about it, my brain making a desperate effort to understand everything and to give me a kind of extended ending. That's kind of cool and kind of creepy, but I was very satisfied with the ending, even though it doesn't wrap the book up in a nice, pretty bow. The ending isn't for readers looking for escapism, or readers who want to see order and justice in every pocket of the world. It's not to say it isn't there on some level, but this book should disturb you on a certain level, for what it says about humanity and its unsolved mysteries. It's a good book with excellent characterization, and I really felt for these guys and wished to hell certain things hadn't happened in the book that were perfectly inevitable. Oh, how it broke my heart. But oh, how satisfying this was. I look forward to French's next book featuring Cassie, which is called The Likeness.
Cover Commentary: Love it. I love the design and creativity of it all, how the woods spring out of the words and kind of take over the cover. Very eye-catching, and that along with the title were the primary reasons I kept coveting the thing.
Next up: because I can't give you the review for Mary E. Pearson's The Adoration of Jenna Fox until January 31st, you'll just have to make due with a review for Carrie Vaughn's Kitty's House of Horrors. You can do that, right? :)