This does not only become repetitive, Toby often also lacks any form of agency as the novel goes on, rather acting as a passive observer – which makes it even harder to care for him.
More often than not Toby keeps explaining how overwhelmed he is with his trauma and he explores less and less how his previous life contrasts with his new one. In many chapters after this, though, this takes an unfortunate turn. At the same time, he retrospectively tries to justify several of his immoral actions, adding an engaging sense of unreliability to his side of the story. One of the aspects that hooked me right from the first chapter was Toby’s self-awareness of his all-too lucky, all-too privileged life. And as more forgotten secrets about Toby’s past and his supposedly reliable network of confidantes resurface, he loses control of everything he once thought to be inalterable. Even when he visits his relatives and friends at his family home Ivy House, Toby can’t help but feel strangely disassociated from his former life and his supposedly stable identity. But with the appearance of two burglars, who disrupt Toby’s well-ordered home and leave him deadly wounded, his stable little world begins to fall apart.įrom then on, the novel draws on Toby’s unsuccessful recovery from his traumatic encounter with the burglars.
We get to know the narrator Toby Hennessy, an Irish public relations specialist with an almost annoyingly good fortune: Be it his supportive friends, his well-paying job or his compassionate girlfriend – a part of you just wants to see the guy get torn down just a little bit. A promising psychological thriller that lacks the psychological depth of a full-on character study while missing out on the suspense of a thriller. An Unfortunately Hollow Tree Introductionĭid you ever have to listen to a presentation of someone at school or work who had everything perfectly organised but just couldn’t execute it the way they wanted to? Or have you ever seen a movie with a gripping underlying tension which simply dissolves as the film drags on and on? This is what reading Tana French’s The Witch Elm felt like to me.
0 kommentar(er)
