I just recently finished the fairly new book, In the Woods by Tana French. I had seen this book displayed in a Barnes and Noble, read the synopses, and immediately felt the need to read it. It had a very promising plot line: In 1984, three 12-year-old friends go missing in the woods of Knocknaree, Ireland. One boy is found clinging to a tree with blood in his shoes and no memory of what happened to himself and his friends. His two friends were never found. The book takes place over 20 years later where this boy is now a 30-something detective who gets assigned to a murder case in Knocknaree. There are pieces of evidence found that connect back to his 1984 case. The detective struggles throughout the book with trying to remember the events that happened in the woods, as well as struggling with his current difficult case.
This book had suspense, an intricate plot, poetic language, and… the worst ending I have ever read. Without giving away too much detail, the worst thing you can do to a character as a writer-worst than killing them off- is set them up to be a very real, human, compassionate character that is very identifiable to the reader. Then, make their life completely miserable and end the book without any hope or resolution for the reader to hold onto, “Sorry, but that’s the way life goes sometimes. You can’t always get what you want!” This is exactly what French did with this book and I was left feeling extremely empty at the end.
If you (for some reason) feel a desire to read this book, we unfortunately do not have this book at Snell Library. I didn’t want to pay the $14 at Barnes and Noble, so I ordered it through the Virtual Catalog.
As I promised in a previous post on library school, I will post my websites for all to see with the same warning: I am not a very good website-maker!
Tricia’s Writing
And as a bonus, my final site for the same Web Design class!:
All About Fred!
It’s interesting to read your take on In the Woods–I also remember picking it up at the bookstore, and being intrigued. But now, I’m not so sure! I checked on Amazon, and it does look like she’s written a sequel that comes out next month: http://www.amazon.com/Likeness-Novel-Tana-French/dp/0670018864/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1213655060&sr=1-3. I don’t know if you’d be motivated to pick that up again or not. (It looks like she might planning it as a series.)
That is really interesting! Thanks for pointing me to that, I didn’t notice at all. It’s funny-usually when authors are writing a series they have little excerpts or blurbs about the next book in their series at the back of the first book, but there was no indication of this from In the Woods, so I had no idea and was forced to take the book at face value. I am most interested in the 1984 case, so perhaps I will wait until she writes a book with the original main character in it to check out her books again, hehe.
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