The unexpected Nobel decision has the literary world in a tizzy
Kerri Miller's Must-Read
"The Trespasser"by Tana French
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I’m not sure why I have the patience for Tana French.
Although I like crime fiction, I’ve never been a big fan of the police procedural. French is the queen of the cop-shop: Her novels bring you along on every forensic discovery, witness interview and suspect stakeout. It's exactly the kind of thing I thought I didn't like.
There’s also the fact that there are times I get hung up on the sheer Irishness of her writing. The words “gaff” and “gaffer” seem to stand in for all kinds of things. Here’s a sentence I had to read more than once: “No gaffer wants this on his squad, wants the sniping in corners and the gray poison smog hanging over the squad room. Any gaffer in the world would be wondering, by now, how he could get rid of me.” Hey, Tana: How about a footnote or two for the Americans here?!
But every time Tana French publishes a new novel, I find myself enmeshed in the mystery of who, how and why. Maybe Patrick Anderson of the Washington Post nailed it when he wrote this recently of “The Trespasser”: “...it’s time to recognize that French’s work renders absurd the lingering distinction between genre and literary fiction — the notion that although crime novels might be better plotted and more readable, only literary fiction, supposedly blessed with superior writing, characterizations and intellectual firepower, deserves the respect of serious readers.”
Right. I’m a serious reader and “The Trespasser” is simply great literature: compellingly complex characters, sophisticated plotting and a deeply engrossing look at a crime from the inside out.
Bottom line? I’ll read anything Tana French writes.
-K.M.
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