S&S Book Club: Tana French’s The Searcher
Lida & Jen chat about Jen’s pick: Tana French’s The Searcher
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Why Jen Picked It
I’m in awe of Tana French. She writes about topics I often shy away from – families broken apart by drugs, disillusioned cops, and more than a few bodies of dead children – but I can’t stop reading her books. She takes me to dark places and out the other side to an impossibly hopeful conclusion. Until The Searcher, her books have all been part of the Dublin Murder Squad series, which avoids the trap of becoming a predictable police procedural series by shifting the focus of each book, so a secondary character from one title becomes the hero of the next. It reminds the reader everyone has their own story to tell, and that there are two sides to every argument.
But The Searcher isn’t in that series. There’s no official investigation to follow and no dead body. Instead, it reads more like a Western, following an outsider settling into a small town who gets drawn into helping a child searching for a missing relative. That premise is a classic because it works so well. In this case, it’s a former Chicago cop who’s trying to come to terms with his past in small-town Ireland, which has been ravaged by drugs and the exodus to bigger cities. French’s writing is quietly beautiful, the characters are heartbreakingly real, and her theme of morality in a complex world makes for a constantly shifting landscape of good guy and bad guy, right and wrong.
What Lida Thought
The Searcher is a book I’ve been hearing about for a while, but probably would not have read if Jen hadn’t suggested it. I’m so glad she did. It’s been a long time since I’ve dived into a novel that was so atmospheric (that one word ran through my head throughout this read) and so saturated with beautiful descriptions. “The air is rich as fruitcake, like you should do more with it than just breathe it; bite off a big mouthful, maybe, or rub handfuls of it over your face." Ms. French threw in an unexpected twist and built the suspense slowly making the reader hang on expectantly for more. The characters were so artfully created that it was easy to regard each one with a good dose of understanding and in most cases, a great deal of sympathy. Definitely worth reading.
