Book reviews: new fiction from Maggie O’Farrell, Louise Erdrich and Chris Morgan Jones
O’Farrell examines the dark side of love, Erdrich looks at violence, justice and redemption, and Jones creates a new private detective for the ages
by Maggie O’Farrell (read by Thomas Judd and Penelope Rawlins)
Headline (audiobook)
4/5 stars
The Northern Irish writer Maggie O’Farrell specialises in dissecting relationships, romantic, Platonic and familial. In This Must Be the Place, she examines how one relationship can destroy others. Daniel Sullivan is a linguistic specialist who gives up everything (wife, children, home in New York) for Claudette. Claudette is, of all things, a reclusive film star who would give Thomas Pynchon a run for his money. She is prone to firing on journalists and anyone else brave enough to approach her house in Ireland. This is the stuff of a million novels. O’Farrell turns it upside down to explore how Daniel’s more conventional past intrudes on his glamorous present. Wisely, O’Farrell doesn’t settle for linear storytelling, but dashes back, forth and into a future for which the characters are completely unready. While Daniel dominates, we also hear from bit-part characters and even learn about Claudette through material objects auctioned after her disappearing act. There is, in short, quite a lot of work for Thomas Judd and Penelope Rawlins to do. Judd injects real but calm drama into Daniel’s mid-life crisis: what has he given up to be with Claudette, and was it worth it? Rawlins matches him word for word in this brave, moving novel.
by Louise Erdrich