Customer Reviews

Faithful Place

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(25)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Tana French has been a cut above from the word go. Her haunting debut In the Woods left no doubt in my mind that a distinctive new voice in crime fiction had spoken up, demanding a fair hearing, and though French's next novel had its issues - perhaps The Likeness was a touch too Murder She Wrote in the belief-beggaring mystery of coincidence at its core - nevertheless its was a gripping read, so taut and thrilling and refreshingly character-driven most longtime crime writers would have stood to learn a thing or two from it.

Well you ain't seen nothin' yet.

Faithful Place in French's best yet, and by a country mile. With a brilliantly conflicted new protagonist to come to grips with, and a grim new neighbourhood with its very own closet full of skeletons to explore, the Irish import of the hour ably breaks away from the pack, delivering an unabashedly heartfelt portrait of a people, a place, and a time.

Twenty years ago, Frank Mackey planned to escape Faithful Place with his gorgeous girlfriend, Rosie Daly. The son and the daughter of two tight-knit families at war with one another over a long-forgotten grudge, these star-cross'd lovers had hoped to run away from the estate, to take off towards the bright city lights of London and never return. In secret the pair packed their bags, arranged with great care a rendezvous point from which they would stage their daring flight, and bided their sweet time.

But come the appointed hour, there was no sign of Rosie. Frank waited for her the whole night through... but nothing. And with the dawning of the next day came the dawning realisation that the love of his life had stood him up. Rather than coming crawling back to the Mackeys, with his tail between his legs, Frank resolved instead to forge on with the plan, such as it was.

The one that got away has been the bane of his existence ever since, so when Frank - an undercover detective now, working for the Dublin police force - when Frank gets wind of the discovery of a suitcase filled with Rosie's things stuffed up the chimney flue of Number 16, Faithful Place, and returns home to hear tell of a rank smell as of rotting rats in the same abandoned building shortly after he and the Daly girl were presumed to have run away together, he must face the very real possibility that twenty years ago, Rosie met a markedly more awful fate than the life he has imagined her living ever since: murder.

As dark as anything Tana French has written, as fraught with cruelty, loss, and the corruption of quiet hope, Faithful Place is yet an indelibly endearing novel. Charming in a thuggish sort of sense, say like Jason Statham coming home for a cup of tea, and funny in the way a Glasgow kiss might be, if it went badly wrong - as so often such things do - Faithful Place will surely grab you from the get-go, disarming you with its warmth and its humanity, disturbing you with its brutal honesty, and insight.

It's somewhat off-kilter as far as crime fiction goes - but then this author has made that style of narrative her stock in trade - and perhaps French can be a little over-verbose when directness is all such-and-such a moment demands, but these are niggles... nothings, really, next to the fabulously alarming way your heart will pound when inevitably, Frank confronts a killer.

Faithful Place is crime fiction at its very finest. A tragic tale, brilliantly told... loving but bittersweet... and told with such prescient truth that you'll be a mess well before the end: the latest from Tana French? Superb.

I read "Into the Woods" and really enjoyed it then bought "The Likeness" which bored me so much I gave up half way through. Then with much trepidation bought "Faithful Place" WOW what a tale I was hooked immediately. The characters are brilliantly drawn and totally true to life (I am a Dubliner myself) and I was so moved by the love story between Frank & Rosie it brought tears to my eyes on several occasions. I did however guess the killer quite early on but this in no way put me off the story. Tana's understanding of Dublin and particularly in the 1980's is spot on, not sure if she lived there then or not and her portrayal of a family from Dublin's poorer district's is totally authentic. I don't live in Dublin any longer but the book transported me back so well I could even smell the hops from the Guinness factory. Well done Tana, more please.

I found this book compulsive from the opening sentence onwards, to the very last page. I have read one of her other books, 'The Likeness' which was strong on many levels, but this gripped far more than that book did, much as I enjoyed the way French played with the idea of doubles in 'The Likeness'. 'Divorced Cop' is a cliche, what French does is turn the cliche inside out so that the first murder is the catalyst for a much bigger story, told in retrospect, about how a deeply unhappy family might contribute to the potential for divorce and estrangement, never mind the motivation for becoming a policeman, and how the unhappy family background and police work combined would strain the most committed of marraige partnerships. The portrayal of the Frank Mackey is humane-ness itself, tested by an inhumane situation.

As for predictability, some will guess who did what and when they did it fairly early in, but the point is more why they did it, which is where the compulsion comes into the reading of it. One of the reasons Greek Tragedy has lasted is because the plots are about 'why' rather than 'how' or 'when', character rather than procedural details, and those tragedies were about invoking catharsis. The family at the centre of this story, and the street on which they live, are hewn out tragedy, and have a strong sense of spiking each other's chances from before birth onwards. I am sure French kept a note book of the aggressive vernacular working class phrases which fit the Dublin she portrays, which particularly delighted me. Even now, though, I would not like to think of or count the number of expletives in the book, nor the number of seperate portrayals of domestic violence, or times when drink put reason and calm to sleep. Only once does a television get destroyed, but they are disposable anyway.

The book ends with a ragged catharsis, a rather emotionally drained potential for a fresh start is there for the taking, if the rest of Frank's life is calm enough. But of course that is all for another book.

This story takes forever to get going and when it does Tana French continues to over describe things. I could not believe in the supposed male voice of the narrative.

Nothing about the people and places gained my interest. I could picture the scenes being described easily enough, but they lacked excitement. The dialogue is often very cheesy.

Those who know Dublin better than I do, might get more out of it than I did, but overall I would not recommend this read.

Extremely well written, interesting view of Irish culture. Amusing in places, and quite disturbing in places. Altogether a brilliant read.

This thriller combines a look at family dynamics with the resolution of a so-called "cold case" and Tana French's tremendous grasp of Dublin idiom makes the dialogue very entertaining to anyone who knows it well. Her principal protagonist is both a police officer and connected to the crime, in more ways than first appear to be the case. Although I enjoyed this book, I did feel that it was too long - some of the descriptive passages didn't really take the story anywhere, and the plot exposition was relatively slow. A plus, if you don't like to finish a book too quickly, but less so if hints/clues have been dropped with a clang you could hear on Mars and yet the answers are coyly retained for another 80 pages. Perhaps it was written with an eye to its conversion in due course to a film/tv drama - the flashbacks in particular are vivid and would work well in that context, but again are rather drawn-out in terms of what they add to the narrative. I have read another Tana French following this one and ordered a third, so I do like the writing, but I can think of other authors whose crime writing is leaner and therefore has greater impact.

I went into Faithful Place quite half-heartedly, because I had really not enjoyed the last Tana French book I had read. I didn't know what I was going to be in for and I had just had a run of really bad books so I was hoping this would be somewhat decent.

It was brilliant. French's best yet. Right from the start, it grabbed me by the collar and wouldn't let go until the very end. Such a well-woven story of loss, betrayal, family, tensions, loyalty and love, the ride never stopped for me. I would be itching to pick it back up again at any chance I could to continue with a story that was not so much fast-paced as it was absolutely gripping.

This is a long book but you never once get the sense that it is too drawn out. Sometimes the details may seem superfluous - on the contrary, every bit of the story matters. To get an accurate picture of the reasons why things happened, every detail matters. There were flashbacks in the novel - depending on how they are written, these can be quite confusing and unnecessary but French handled them with such flair that I never once lost track of what was happening.

This was such a well written book. The excellent writing style I have come to expect but worried was lost after reading Broken Harbour is strongly evident in Faithful Place and I would urge anyone who is after a good read to pick this one up.

Highly, highly recommended.

Having previously read Broken Harbour and enjoyed it I wanted to read another book by this same author. Faithful Place was a really good choice. It was totally different from Broken Harbour but still had the same depth of detail which managed to make you feel there with the characters. I really enjoyed it and would recommend it.

Only got few pages into this and didn't grab me so gave up. Bit too soft edged for my liking - I'm more into Rebus/Robicheaux gritty detective stuff which gets interesting from page 1.

I have read one other Tana French book (Broken Harbour) which I quite enjoyed, so thought I'd try another. The author could have painted an effective picture of the rough side of Dublin and the life of an undercover cop without writing the whole novel in the vernacular, which made it hard going. Add to that some very laboured prose and over-use of cliche and the result is a dire experience. eg: "I gave him everything I had and how I had got it, down to the last rancid stingking detail: info is ammo, and Stephen didnt need any blanks in his stockpile. and "..he even threw me a new and insanely complicated operation involving Lithuania and AK-47's and several interesting guys named Vytautas, on which I could easily work hundred-hour weeks if I felt the urge, which I did".

Not worth the effort, and certainly not worth the price I paid to be annoyed. This is my last foray with Tana French.