The Likeness by Tana French

The Likeness by Tana French
Published July 2008 by Penguin Publishing Group
Source: purchased this one in 2012 - thanks to the price tag which shows the year, I know exactly how long this one was sitting on my shelves

Publisher's Summary:
Six months after the events of In the Woods, Detective Cassie Maddox is still recovering, Transferred out of Dublin's Murder squad at her own request, she vows never to return. That is, until her boyfriend, Detective Sam O'Neill, calls her one beautiful spring morning, urgently asking her to come to a murder scene in the small town of Glenskehy. It isn't until Cassie sees the body that she understands Sam's insistence.

The dead girl is Cassie's double, and she carries ID identifying her as Alexandra Madison, an alias Cassie herself used years ago when she worked undercover. The question becomes not only who killed this girl, but who was this girl. Frank Mackey, Cassie's former undercover boss, sees the opportunity of a lifetime. Having played Lexie Madison once before, Cassie is in the perfect position to take her place. The police will tell the media and Lexie's four housemates that the stab wound wasn't fatal. And Cassie will go on living Lexie's life until the killer is lured out to finish off the job.

It's a brilliant idea, until Cassie finds herself more emotionally involved in Lexie's life than she anticipated. Sharing the charming ramshackle old Whitethorn House with Lexie's strange, tight-knit group of university friends, Cassie is slowly seduced by the victim's way of life, by the thought of working on a murder investigation again, and by the mystery of the victim herself. As Cassie nears the truth about what happened to Lexie Madison and who she really was, the lines between professional and personal, work and play, reality and fantasy become desperately tangled, and Cassie moves closer to losing herself forever.


My Thoughts:
The summary says that Cassie was "slowly seduced by the victim's way of life" but it seemed to me that it happened much more quickly than that. Before Cassie had even stepped foot in Whitethorn House, she was drawn to Lexie's housemates and the bond they appeared to have. Cassie hungers for a family, having been orphaned as a young girl, and the chance to be a part of the family Lexie's friends have created is too much to resist. But her actions are equally the fault of the relationship she has with Frank Mackey. Although their goal would appear to be the same, both hold back vital pieces of potential evidence. The result is almost catastrophic.

This is the fourth book I've read by Tana French and, as with the other three, I'm impressed by French's ability to set a mood, to convey the language of Ireland, and to weave a complex mystery. I'm most impressed, once again, by French's characters and their relationships. They are complex, nuanced, and well-developed. Most of all, they are incredibly real.

I had a couple of quibbles with the story itself which had, primarily to do with places where logic seemed to have failed. For example, Lexie went for a walk every night late at night. When Cassie steps in as Lexie, she picks this up so as to stay in character. My issue with this was twofold - why would her roommates, her best friends, allow her to go off alone down the very lanes where she had been attacked? and why would Cassie and Frank think it was a good idea for her to put herself in that kind of danger nightly without immediate backup? French puts this down to being something that Lexie would have done regardless of what happened. I didn't buy it.

I can't remember the last time I picked up the next book in a series immediately after having finished the previous one, but that's exactly what I did with this book. I found it to be both a good idea and a less than ideal one. The characters from the previous book are all fresh - it's easy to recall their characteristics and mannerisms. Unfortunately, it also means that you don't need any of the refreshing details that authors include to bring new readers up to speed and, as they did here for me, they can get in the way of the current storyline.

And yet...I loved it. I loved getting into Cassie's head and watching the relationship with the roommates develop. And I loved that, after the success of her previous book, French did not fall into the trap of following the same pattern here. The ending was both unexpected and perfect.

Life: It Goes On

And on, and on....I feel like a broken record when I talk about what's going on in my personal life. This week, work was just as crazy! Thank goodness I got some girlfriend time on Friday night to relax and laugh and catch up. If you leave around here, we went to Block 16 and would all highly recommend it!

Miss H is set to stay where she's at until the end of October so that buys me some time to get things done around here to make her move home easier. One of her roommates has moved out so we did move her from her very tiny room in her current house into the biggest room and she was a happy girl to finally have some breathing room there.

This Week I'm:

Mini-me (second from left) and
part of his cheering section

Listening To: Mini-me read some of his poetry at the 10th anniversary celebration at the College of Communications, Fine Arts and Media at the University. They selected one person or group to represent each area of study; we were so proud that he was selected to represent the English department.

Watching: Football, football, and baseball. Not much else except some HGTV reruns.

Reading: Just finished The Likeness today. That was a fun ride! Tonight I'm starting Randy Sue Meyer's Accidents of Marriage. Which I was supposed to have reviewed last Monday. Yeah, I'm definitely off my game right now!

Making: BLT salad, red velvet cake (yes, again), naked pasta with just picked tomato and basil, and sweet pickles.

Planning: The rearranging of the house will continue. My living room sofa has now been moved to my bedroom, my bedroom bookshelves were moved to another room, Mini-him's sofa is temporarily in set up in my living room but it's much too big there so it will, this week, get moved to our family room. Then we start rearranging tv's/entertainment centers. There is not enough alcohol in this house to keep me sedated.

Now what to do about that cedar
chest that's floating around in my
bedroom now?

Grateful for: A plan. There's still a lot of work to be done but at least I do have that plan I was craving last week!

Enjoying: A farewell dinner for my nephew who is moving to Dallas next weekend. Now I'll finally be able to convince The Big Guy to come to Dallas so I can meet some of my blogging friends!

Feeling: A little cranky. Miss H was talking about getting a punching bag when she moves back home and I might just encourage that. It would be so nice to just go down and punch out my stress!

Looking forward to: A three-day weekend. Trying to figure out if I should try to add an extra day onto it.

Lit: Uniquely Portable Magic - Great Last Lines

Much is made of the famous first lines in literary history - those lines that pull a reader in and perfectly set up the novel. But what about last lines? Those lines that you are left with, a line that might make or break a reader's opinion about all of the sentences that have proceeded it? Turns out, there are quite a lot of them and some are truly brilliant. And many of them are found in children's books. 

"Are there any questions?"

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaseless into the past."

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

"It is a far, far better thing I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

"After all, tomorrow is another day."

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

"But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest, a little boy and his Bear will always be playing."

The House At Pooh Corner by A. A. Milne

"Yes," I said. "Isn't it pretty to think so?"

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

"Max stepped into his private boat and waved goodbye and sailed back over a year and in and out of weeks and through a day and into the night of his very own room where he found his supper waiting for him - and it was still warm."

Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

"This is not a full circle. It's Life carrying on. It's the next book we all take. It's the choice we make to get on with it."

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller

"A LAST NOTE FROM YOUR NARRATOR. I am haunted by humans."

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

"The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but it was already impossible to say which was which."

Animal Farm by George Orwell

Some Luck by Jane Smiley

Some Luck by Jane Smiley
Published October 2014 by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Source: purchased this one for my Nook

Publisher's Summary:
On their farm in Denby, Iowa, Rosanna and Walter Langdon abide by time-honored values that they pass on to their five wildly different children: from Frank, the handsome, willful first born, and Joe, whose love of animals and the land sustains him, to Claire, who earns a special place in her father’s heart.

Each chapter in Some Luck covers a single year, beginning in 1920, as American soldiers like Walter return home from World War I, and going up through the early 1950s, with the country on the cusp of enormous social and economic change. As the Langdons branch out from Iowa to both coasts of America, the personal and the historical merge seamlessly: one moment electricity is just beginning to power the farm, and the next a son is volunteering to fight the Nazis; later still, a girl you’d seen growing up now has a little girl of her own, and you discover that your laughter and your admiration for all these lives are mixing with tears.

My Thoughts:
This word came up the other night when my book club was talking about this book, "minutiae." Well, that pretty much sums it up. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Just a warning.

This is mostly a very quiet book, full of the details that make up a life and reveal it in depth. Which is unusual to find in a book that spans thirty years. If you're a person that gives up on a book after 50 pages, there's the very real chance that this one isn't for you. It's all about connecting with the Langdon family and given that a good chunk of the first part of the book is told from the point of view of infants with not much happening, it's hard to get into.

In fact, if I hadn't been committed to reading it for book club, I'm not sure I would have stuck with it. In the end, I'm not sure how much I liked it. Smiley does do a wonderful job of taking her readers deeply into life on a Midwest farm in the first half of the last century. Seriously, I'm not sure what made women marry farmers then. Except that, of course, all of their family lived on farms nearby, as did both Rosanna's and Walter's families and that made for an interesting three-generation dynamic.

Two things that threw me: from the beginning, it seemed that the story was about the entire Langdon family and yet, very often, it felt like it was a book about Frank and the people around him. Which brought me to the second issue - when Frank went off to World War II, we went with him to Africa and then Italy where he served as a sniper. It seemed to me it would have been more in keeping with the rest of the book to have stayed with the family, to have seen how the war affected those left at home.

This is the first book of a planned trilogy. I'm not sure where Smiley will be going with the next book, if she'll be following Frank or one of his siblings or picking up with one of the other characters. I don't very much, though, that I'll read it even though I'd give this one a three star rating assuming I rated books here.

Life: It Goes On

Second verse, same as the first - Miss H has started moving things home this week. We're still not sure exactly when she will be completely moved back but she has filled my dining room twice this week with things that we had to sort and repack before they went back upstairs.

It's not so much the having them move back home that's the problem (although I am going to miss having a guest room!). It's the not knowing how long they're staying (so, not knowing how settled we need to get them). I NEED A PLAN, PEOPLE!!! Yeah, it might be starting to get to me.


This Week I'm:

Listening To: Still On Beauty. Must say, now that we're shoulder deep into an infidelity story line, I'm not loving it as much.

Watching: The Big Guy's been out of town this past week so the television's been off quite a bit. Miss H has been around quite a lot so when the television's been on, we've watched baseball. Lots of baseball. Including the movie Fever Pitch with Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore. Of course, I'm also watching as much preseason football as I can.

Reading: Well, Bout of Books was a bust. I did finish Some Luck but have hardly made a dent in The Likeness. I thought it was going to be a quiet week with a lot of alone time. I was wrong.

Making: We kept it pretty simple this week since I was never sure how many I was cooking for any night - one, two, or three. Today, though, I took advantage of zucchini a coworker brought in to make a couple of loaves of zucchini bread and a batch of savory zucchini bars.

Planning: This week continue to be about putting things in order and doing some rearranging so we are ready when Miss H's furniture comes home. And trying to find a home for that sectional which is still piled up in my living room.

Grateful for: Good news for my mom this week, health wise. A girl worries about her mommy, you know?

Enjoying: Alcohol, not gonna lie. A glass of wine here, a bottle of beer there, a cocktail now and then. It's keeping me from going crazy with all of this upheaval!

Feeling: Like I need a girls night. Yeah, I know I just had book club this week but I need my besties - we haven't all been together in much too long.

Looking forward to: This! Thirteen days and counting!