Book Review - Tana French's The Likeness
The Likeness by Tana French
Published by: Penguin Books
Publication Date: July 17th, 2008
Format: Paperback, 496 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy
Detective Cassie Maddox has left the Murder squad. It became too fraught and messy. Instead she's simplifying her life, she's dating Sam O’Neill and has transferred to Domestic Violence. Everything is falling into a nice new routine, until her old life comes back to haunt her. Before Murder Cassie was undercover as a University of Dublin student called Lexie Madison. The way that ended is actually how she got her gig in Murder. But Lexie is unexpectedly about to return. Sam has been called to a crime scene and he contacts Cassie freaking out, because despite talking to her on the phone he is convinced he is looking at her dead body. Cassie's doppelganger is found dead outside the town of Glenskehy. What's more, her ID says she's Lexie Madison. This girl, whomever she was, used the fake Lexie identity to slip into a new life at Trinity and was getting a PhD in English ironically writing about women who wrote under other identities. She was living at Whitethorn House in Glenskehy with four of her classmates in some idealized literary commune where they spent their spare time fixing up the house and avoiding the locals. This is an unprecedented opportunity. The police can have "Lexie" make a remarkable recovery and send Cassie into Lexie's life. Her killer is either a local or in the house! Which means there are four prime suspects, Daniel March, inanimate object as narrator in early medieval epic poetry, Justin Mannering, sacred and profane love in Renaissance literature, Rafe Hyland, the malcontent in Jacobean drama, and Abby Stone, the social class in Victorian literature. Cassie just has to be this "new" Lexie, get in and get out. The only problem is, once there, it's so nice leaving her own messy life behind that maybe she'd rather stay with these four people who like to live out of time.
After reading the first Dublin Murder Squad book I wrote off Tana French. There are too many books and authors out there I just had to go with my initial impression. This was what everyone was raving about? I was mystified. This wasn't a clever mystery with an unreliable narrator, it was a straightforward mystery with an asshole narrator. Therefore I dove into the STARZ adaptation thinking perhaps they could improve upon the source material. And during the opening credits is when I learned the show was based on the first two books in the series... and the OCD completest in me made me stop the show and pick up The Likeness. I know what I had said, but the OCD took over. So right here I would like to thank Dublin Murders, that perfectly cast, horrifically adapted, surprisingly not yet cancelled series for making me pick up The Likeness, as perfect a book as In the Woods was imperfect. It's rare for me to say I never want a book to end, but I never wanted this book to end. I wanted to move into the pages, I wanted to become a member of that Whitethorn House literary cabal. I wanted to spend nights with Abby making historically accurate clothes for creepy dolls found in the house. I wanted to be a part of something but apart from reality. I wanted this life Cassie was inhabiting almost more than Cassie herself wanted it. This book was just filled with literary goodness, especially Brideshead Revisited references! Oh how I want to go back, oh how I want to live in this book. It's just gorgeous and Gothic and timeless and timely and perfection.
Sarah Phelps does it again! And no, this isn't a good thing. She's taken amazing source material and altered it to fit her own narrative, and this makes the series not work. What's more it pisses me off. But I can't be entirely mad at this series for one reason, it made me read Tana French's second "Dublin Murder Squad" book, The Likeness, and I adored it. The backstory to this is that prior to the series starting I wanted to read the first book in the series, In the Woods, and was left unimpressed with a hatred of Rob. He's not an unreliable narrator, he's just an ass, OK people? I thought the series was only based on the first book so having finished Rob's story and started the show and after just watching the opening credits I realized, no, it's the first two books. So I stopped watching the series and picked up The Likeness. Fast forward, I've devoured the book and am ready to pick up the series again. Given that these books happen in order for a reason I thought the first half of the season would be Rob's story and the second half would be Cassie's. But no. Sarah Phelps doesn't work like that, Sarah Phelps thinks she's better than the books. Instead they were happening simultaneously, so when Cassie is undercover and should be dealing with the implosion of her and Rob and her abortion and how that mirrors the woman she's impersonating, she's just dealing with finding out she's pregnant, oh and scum because she cheated on her boyfriend in this version. No! This doesn't work. There is supposed to be cause and effect not whatever this is. And again, this is a stellar cast, everyone was so well cast, I can see them as the characters as Tana French wrote them, not as Sarah Phelps did. Can I request a do over with the same cast but a different writer?
