Faithful Place or “Unhappy in Their Own Way”

French, Tana.  Faithful Place. New York: Viking, 2010.

When Tolstoy wrote his classic opening sentence for Anna Karenina it is as if he were a fly on the wall of the Mackay household on Faithful Place in Dublin, Ireland. (“All happy families are like one another; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”)  In 1985 Frank Mackay was wildly in love with Rose Daly and she wildly in love with him. They planned to “get out of Dodge” to escape the suffocating realm of their respective families and go to England and begin life together. But Rosie fails to meet Frank at the appointed place. He finds only a note from Rosie saying she’s left without him.  Confused and heartbroken he too leaves home for a life of his own as an undercover cop in Dublin.

For twenty-two years he successfully eschews the emotional buzz saws and drill bits of his volatile family. Then his sister calls with news that Rosie’s suitcase had been found at the place they were to rendezvous before leaving on their journey. Frank had spent those years imaging Rosie having a good life without him. He’d married, had a daughter, and was now divorced. The discovery of the suitcase destroys everything he imagined about Rosie and pitches Frank back into the vortex of his estranged family where he faces a caustic, ubiquitous cocktail of  snipping, sneering, jeering, and bitter attacks that permeate that family. Tensions and fears ratchet up notch by bloody notch after Rosie’s body is found.

Tana French’s gift is drawing you into this horrible household through her pitch-perfect dialog within and without the family.  She gradually and deftly folds back the layers of their resentment, pain, hate and at times, their love.  She riveted me to the story because I needed to understand what made these characters tick. Readers of Frank McCourt’s memoir, Angela’s Ashes, will find a similar landscape in French’s Faithful Place.

French also serves up satisfying police politics as Frank, told to stay away from the investigation, can’t help but look for the truth, and recruits a young detective to help him.

This first-rate crime story delves into how the human heart, while yearning for freedom and love, is still able to commit sins that haunt, and haunt, and haunt.  French not only knows that human heart intimately, she also knows how to reveal its beats in richly literate language and flawless plotting.  And that is what makes this story so believable and honest.  You may be able to close the final pages of the book, but the story of Frankie and Rosie will find a place in your heart and mind.

I am in awe of French’s talent and am excited about reading her other books. I will read her first novel In the Woods next (It won an Edgar Award!). And Faithful Place has been nominated for a Best Novel Edgar this year;  see all the nominees here.  French’s second novel is called The Likeness.

I can only hope she is faithfully working on number four.

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A shout-out to my dear friend Linda in Iowa City, Iowa USA,  for recommending this book to me!  Of the many books we have shared over these many years, this is one of the best!

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