Creativity as a set of communicating vessels or how Tana french happens from actress to writer and ends up being more recognized in her narrative side than in her interpretive side. Undoubtedly that, the artistic gift, can take unpredictable directions. Tana French knew that her thing was the artistic, the creative, only that she mistaken the main focus of the beginning.
Because the actress Tana French, when she was 34 years old back in 2007 and her career as an actress was lost among the mediocrity of so many actresses, surprised her with her first novel The Silence of the Forest. With it, he was a finalist in the Los Angeles Times novel contest. The curious thing about the matter could have stayed there, as something anecdotal, even funny... That an actress burst onto the literary scene had her point.
But it turned out that the following year, 2008, Tana wrote a novel again: On someone else's skin. And to everyone's surprise it turned out to be a great mystery novel that was made with awards throughout the United States in various competitions. the phenomenon Tana French was here to stay. It was no longer a sympathetic intrusion, or an uncomfortable interference for well-off authors of the genre and for obtuse critics unable to assume that anyone can be a good writer if they have the wood inside ...
And from that moment until a brilliant today in which the author is already approaching the 10 published novels, almost all of them translated into a multitude of languages, with that already consolidated vitola of a good writer of mistery novels or directly black.
Tana French's Top 3 Recommended Novels
Intrusion
A novel in which the profession acquired by the author ends up touching the perfect mystery work. Intruder is an awkward word. Feeling an intruder is even more so. Antoinette Conway joins the Dublin homicide squad as a detective.
But where he expected camaraderie and professional indoctrination, he finds occultism, harassment, and estrangement. She is a woman, perhaps it is only because of that, she has entered the male preserve and no one was waiting for her there. The first feeling we have when we start reading the book Intrusion is that in certain spaces we still find people of the worst kind, capable of making a vacuum for a partner.
Antoinette returns to represent us as the policewoman who begins to triumph in a multitude of crime novels of authors from all over the world. But in this case there is a special point of machismo that spoils the atmosphere of the story from the start.
That's why you immediately side with Antoinette. And perhaps that is what the author of this novel is looking for. Empathy with the unprotected also serves as an argument to feel more deeply about everything that is going to happen to the good and professional Antoinette. Because already in his first relevant case he has to show all his talents.
At first, the murder of a posh girl in her dream home seems like a typical case of gender violence. With this first line of investigation proposed, it seems that the detective begins to gain some friendships in the squad. But soon you will begin to sense that there is something else, details that point in another direction and that keep the reader in suspense.
Because the new scenarios proposed by the detective seem to make some of her colleagues uncomfortable. But the testimony of a friend of the victim states that this death is not gender-based violence, and Antoinee is not willing to falsely close the case.
Internal pressures, an unpredictable drift of the case, confusion and stress. Antoinette thinks at times that she may be losing her way, while at other times she realizes it completely.
She will have to fight against the increasing pressures and against madness, against herself, but she has firm principles and will leave her skin and her last breath if necessary to find out what is happening.
Scars
When I remember this novel, two anthological female characters of the current narrative of mystery, black novel or even horror occur to me. One is Carrie from Stephen King, the girl disowned by her high school classmates, the object of that teenage hatred that emerges unexpectedly like a bitter awakening to adulthood. The other is Lisbeth Salander, the intelligent girl of the millennium trilogy, capable, and yet crushed by circumstances, charged with fear and hatred ...
Both examples are related to the protagonist of this novel: Sophie. She, Sophie, is only 7 years old and has a brother unable to overcome the trauma of the loss of their older sister.
For Sophie's brother she is to blame for her sister not being with them. In fact, Sophie was not even born yet in the tragic moment, but fear is capable of focusing guilt where there are none ..., and if one stubbornly stubborn with them, it can end up turning into a monster. Only that Sophie, on the verge of being annulled by her brother, ends up finding a last spring where she can take strength to rise to the abominable accusations of her brother ...
The Explorer
The bucolic transformed into something infernal. Tana french he is carried away in this novel by that tendency of narrative counterpoints. A play of light and shadow that fits perfectly into a genre of suspense bordering on noir where precisely that of appearances and their sinister truths always convinces ...
Cal Hooper thought that retiring to a lost town in Ireland and dedicating himself to renovating a little house would be the great escape. After twenty-five years in the Chicago police force, and after a painful divorce, all he wants is to build a new life in a nice place where there is a good pub and nothing ever happens.
Until one fine day a boy from the town comes to see him to ask for his help. His brother has disappeared and no one seems to care, least of all the police. Cal wants nothing to do with any investigation, but something undefined prevents him from disengaging himself. It won't take long for Cal to discover that even the most idyllic village has secrets, people aren't always what they seem, and trouble can come knocking at your door.
The one who is the most brilliant writer of suspense of our day weaves a masterful story that takes your breath away from the beauty and intrigue that exudes, while reflecting on how we decide what is right and what is wrong in a world where Neither one nor the other is that simple, since what do we risk when we make a mistake?
Other recommended novels by Tana French ...
The silence of the forest
The novel with which Tana French emerged in the literary ocean. A novel that blatantly flirts with terror. The symbol of the forest with its darkness, its coldness and the legendary ways of life that once walked through small paths… And, let's face it, children are much of tempting fear to venture into it. Living near a forest is a great advantage in these polluted days.
In the urbanization attached to Knocknaree, near Dublin, children grow up breathing purified air, they can go out without fear of being abused or unknown people who would soon be detected in that urbanization.
And yet there is the forest inside, with its darkness and its mysteries. The narrative leads us to August 14, 1984, perhaps with the intention of empathizing with the childhood of others like the author herself, who found in the 80s a paradise of childhood and happiness.
That's why it was easier for me to think of the three boys: Jamie, Peter and Adam, as if it were myself… Only the boys don't come back. When the police find Adam in shock and spattered with blood, they know that something very serious is happening.
The truth may be revealed in all its harshness twenty years later, when Adam himself returns to close the nightmare of his childhood. He feels like a strong man, he's a detective and he knows how to find all the clues. But fear sometimes takes us back to childhood ...
On someone else's skin
The twists in the noir genre seem impossible at times. Since the perfect crime between the two strangers on a train was written, whoever else has looked for that surprising plot. Tana French contributes her grain of sand here with a confusion that gains strength as her development progresses.
Detective Cassie Maddox has been transferred out of the Dublin Homicide Squad, until an urgent phone call leads her back to a grisly crime scene.
To everyone's surprise, the victim looks identical to Cassie and is carrying identification with the name Alexandra Madison, an alias Cassie once used as an undercover cop. So, Cassie goes back to work undercover to find out not only who killed this young woman, but also who she really was. She will have to impersonate the murdered young woman to investigate the main suspects, four peculiar university students.
In Other People's Skin is a suspense story that explores the nature of identity and belonging.
