recently posted on my GoodReads account:

Another funny and poignant book by Tana French, set in the Irish village of Ardnakelty.

The humor comes from the way the residents, especially a certain older man named Mart, use the language. Mart is a talker. He and his friends at the pub love to roast each other, and especially Cal, the American ex-cop who has lived there two years now. For example, when they hear Cal is getting married, they try to convince him that there’s a local custom that the prospective bridegroom needs to carry a torch from his house, through the village, around his intended’s house, and then back to his own house … in his underwear.

The poignancy comes from the plot, which I won’t reveal, but suffice it to say that there is plenty of human tragedy.

French has done an amazing job of portraying a close-knit, gossipy, stifling, eccentric small community where communication is indirect, and becomes even more indirect when the stakes become high. Cal is pretty good at reading, and engaging in, this kind of 4D chess that’s played at one remove, but it gets to even him after a while. “The amount of subtlety around here was pretty near to giving him hives.” I have always wanted to write a story set in such a community, but have been unable to because I am woefully literal minded and don’t pick up on cues. I would never survive in Ardnakelty.

There is a small amount of preaching about climate change, but it’s only mentioned directly once that I remember and does not overwhelm the story. This tale takes place during an unusually hot and dry summer in Ardnakelty, which puts everyone on edge. In this way, the weather contributes to the theme and even drives the plot a little bit.

Finally, one thing I forgot to mention on my GoodReads review is that French deserves props for being able to capture the way men think and talk. Cal is the main POV character, and he’s just the quintessential male, both in the way he thinks, how he handles and solves things, and how he banters with the people in the village and deflect questions and comments and barbs when he needs to. This book kind of reminds me of She’s Come Undone, which was the opposite in that it was a well-written book with a female POV character, written by a man.