★★★☆☆ Stand By Me with strings

In the Woods

Tana French

The Rob Reiner film Stand By Me is famous for its portrayal of a close friendship of four boys. Of this Stephen King wrote

I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?

Two such childhood friendships are important in Tana French's In the Woods. And French also describes a friendship of two adults who are closer than lovers.

... above all that and underlying everything we did, she was my partner. I don’t know how to tell you what that word, even now, does to me; what it means... a girl who goes into battle beside you and keeps your back is a different thing, a thing to make you shiver. Think of the first time you slept with someone, or the first time you fell in love: that blinding explosion that left you crackling to the fingertips with electricity, initiated and transformed. I tell you that was nothing, nothing at all, beside the power of putting your lives, simply and daily, into each other’s hands.

That is not what In the Woods is about, but for me it was the best part of the novel.

That's the best part -- the worst part is the clumsy manipulation. Now, let me be clear, I'm not complaining about being manipulated. That's a novelist's job. When I start a new novel I tell the novelist, "Take me! Make me your puppet!" But here's the thing: I don't want to see the strings. When you're in hands of a master puppeteer, the strings vanish. I mean, you know this is fiction, and you know you're reading words in a book, but all that goes away.

In this, Tana French's debut novel, the strings are all too obvious. One in particular: first person narrator detective Adam Robert Ryan. At the beginning I frequently yelled at Ryan, "Oh come on, man! Stop that!". But that was the beginning. By the time I approached the end, I was no longer yelling at Ryan. I had ceased to believe in him as a person. He had become nothing but a string French was pulling on in the mistaken impression that it was attached to something in my psyche, and it was to her that my outraged shouts were directed.

Now, I want to be clear that my complaint is not that Ryan is a jerk. He is, but I don't mind that. Literature is full of selfish cads and fools who are nevertheless excellent protagonists. Ryan is not one of them. He is nothing more than an elaborate and poorly realized plot device.

What really tore it for me was a paragraph near the end of the book in which Ryan gloats over his manipulation of the reader.

Here it is:

I am intensely aware, by the way, that this story does not show me in a particularly flattering light. I am aware that, within an impressively short time of meeting me, Rosalind had me coming to heel like a well-trained dog: running up and down stairs to bring her coffee, nodding along while she bitched about my partner, imagining like some star-struck teenager that she was a kindred soul. But before you decide to despise me too thoroughly, consider this: she fooled you too.

But here's the thing: she didn't! I knew from the first glimpse of Rosalind that she was a wrong 'un. Now, I am not particularly good at mysteries -- if Rosalind was this obvious to me, then she was obvious to most readers, I am sure.

By the end I also found Ryan's partner Cassie Maddox, unbelievable. She's too perfect -- she gets everything right, never makes a serious mistake that isn't really Ryan's fault. However, I am willing to forgive this, because the novel is narrated in the first-person by Ryan, and that is how he sees Cassie.

In summary, it's a mixed bag. There were parts that made my heart sing, but by the end of the novel the technical clunkiness had defeated me. It was French's debut novel, so maybe she deserves a mulligan.

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