A book to make you love reading again
I’ve read less this year than any other time in my life. Reading breaks come for us all, eventually—illness, overwork, overcommitment, bad sleep, the abrupt beginning of quarantine during a global plague, whatever—but this one has been particularly long and annoying for me. Luckily, Tana French has a new book out, and it felt expressly designed to bring me back from the wilderness.
French is famously the mystery writer for snobs; I first heard about her from a New Yorker review. Her books have beautiful sentences, complex characters, rich settings, the occasional hint of the uncanny, and also an irresistible amount of plot. They’re long but never slow, which great for me right now. If I manage to start a book, I don’t want to have to think about what the next one will be for a while.
Her new book is The Hunter, a sequel to 2021’s The Searcher, which wasn’t my favorite of French’s books when I first read it but is probably the one I’ve thought about the most since. The protagonist is an American expat in rural Ireland, living a retirement dream that’s actually kind of a nightmare. The setting is beautiful and sinister, but never scary or off-putting. There are multiple very good dogs.
Best of all for my current situation, the plot of The Hunter feels like it’s on train tracks, steadily plowing towards its inevitable destination. Even the mystery’s reveal, which I didn’t guess or even consider, seems inevitable as soon as it’s uttered. This isn’t what I’m looking for in every mystery, but The Hunter is about consequences, cause-and-effect, and the plots (in all senses of the word) you set in inexorable motion without knowing you’re doing it. Twists and turns can be fun, but right now I need solid and confident, and The Hunter delivered.