A thriller that is sheer entertainment (if you ignore the severe violence against women). I truly love the Character Lisbeth and I am looking forward to reading the second instalment soon.

Not high literature but fun! Recommended to fans of Gone Girl etc.

Waitress just caught me crying 😢 in the restaurant finishing this - how embarrassing:)

Not my favourite production of this classic - it was far too sweet.
This is not to be confused with my review of the book itself, which is still five stars.

“Her hair was in a wavy chin length tumble instead of two thick childhood plaits or the graceless teenage flop, and her old bony plainness had settled into something arresting in its serene aura of permanence, its implication that she would look much the same in twenty years, or fifty; but having babies had softened her long legged angularity only a little, she was wearing faded jeans and almost no makeup, and she still sat the way she had as a kid, cross legged and unselfconscious.”

The press release I got with this book quotes Stephen King as stating “Terrific - terrifying, amazing and the prose is incandescent”

To take his quote part I will begin by agreeing with the prose being radiant (there is a death scene with seeds falling on a body that cries to be filmed by a director with vision). If you like the quote above, you should know that it is the opening description, taken from page 112, of one of the more central characters; if you like it you will get on with Tana’s style very well. If you are okay with the opening description of a central character not happening for over 100 pages - you are going to love her writing:)

Tana French writes verbose slow burners of books, populated by middle-class Dubs and Cultchie (Irish country) detectives that are too smart for their own or anyone else’s good. The plot is secondary to characters, who are nearly always hopelessly flawed and living the life of young urban professionals in Dublin that involves too much drink and some social drug taking.

Going back to Mr. King’s quote is it terrifying? Not in the sense of one of his novels no. But in a very real sense yes. We have a central character with a really rather realistically described brain injury, that causes memory loss and a change in personality. The central protagonist is suddenly flung into a world where one of his school friends may have been murdered by someone close to him, a family member or even by his memory lapsed self. But nothing not even murder is quite as upsetting to him as his own loss of identity.

“The thing is, I suppose,” he said, “that one gets into the habit of being oneself. It takes some great upheaval to crack that shell and force us to discover what else might be underneath” 

Anybody expecting a plot-driven crime novel is going to be sorely disappointed with this one (and most of Tana’s work). It’s an introspection of what makes our characters, the effects on our lives of brain injuries, brain tumors and making the decision to kill someone. You know everyday life like! :)

Still a piece of work that I strongly recommend to fans of slow-burning literary fiction who enjoy a twist of murder and mayhem to the side.

“‘So you see,' she said, ‘you have to be like Switzerland. Do you understand me? You have to hold yourself together and be courageous, stay separate and strong. Then, you will have the right kind of life.”

The first book I finished in 2018 and my first Rose Remain though not my last.

Forgive me if I have this wrong (as I don’t actually know anything about classical music) but I imagine that this book is written in three parts to reflect the three movements of a Sonata. Each part/movement has its own themes.

Part one is post WWII and is about Gustav’s childhood friendship with Anton. It’s fundamentally about growing up in a neutral world where there appears to be no hate but no love either. “He fell over frequently, but he never cried, though the ice was hard, the hardest surface his bones had ever met. He taught himself to laugh instead. Laughing was a bit like crying. It was a strange convulsion; it just came from a different bit of your mind. The trick was to move the crying out of that bit and let the laughter in. And so he'd pick himself up and carry on, laughing.”


Part two happen just prior to a during WWII. It tells of Gustav’s parents and is about sex, passion, fear, doing the right thing and holding onto to love where you can find it.

Part three is about the 1990s and is about all of the surviving generations growing old. These are mostly broken people who in turn live broken lives but do the best they can and occasionally find love. “Gustav waited. He wondered whether he wanted to know the thing she was about to tell him, or whether it wasn't better for certain knowledge to remain hidden, so that the mind could conjure its own stories from out of the past, stories it could bear to live with, stories which, in time, took on their own reality and seemed to become true.”

Overall the story is Gustav’s journey in search of love and happiness.

This one is recommended to those who can follow a quiet introverted character who holds himself together like Switzerland. So like Switzerland Gustav cannot embrace his friends or face his enemies and as a consequence really doesn’t do much with his life except to feel and live it deeply.

I listened to this on audio and would really like to recommend the narrator Mark Meadows.

Review to follow but I liked the ending! Two years later and I realize I never wrote this! Quelle surprise!


So mostly I remember that yes they were bleedin' Liars and that I did guess the twist but got to love that ending. Loved it!

Must read me some more Maitland.

130 pages in and I am abandoning it. Neither the Mother nor the Child is a convincingly portrayed character. Same for their relationship.


Some of the prose describing life from the Child's perspective is visually pleasing, bringing it from a 2 to a 3 star - but I am not enjoying this at all and life is too short.