Starred review from June 6, 2016
O'Farrell (The Vainishing Act of Esme Lennox) spins a magical story in her new novel. On the surface, the story is about the unlikely meeting of Daniel, an American, and Claudette, a French-English former actress; the life they make together; the lives they lived before that. and their struggle to hold things together in the face of a secret from Daniel's past. But this description, though accurate, doesn't convey the depth of perception and detail. O'Farrell offers not just backstory, but surround-story, using first-, second- and third-person points of view to depict Daniel and Claudette's children, Daniel's mother, Claudette's brother and his wife, an ex-lover or two, a former friend, a bewildered assistant, and a woman Daniel meets by chance in the Bolivian high plains (who has her own story of betrayal). Across the present and the recent and more distant pasts, in Donegal, Ireland; Brooklyn; London; Sussex, England; and points south and east, relationships start, end, and last. There is enough possibility and randomness for three books, yet the story never feels overstuffed, and when it ends, the reader is stunned and grateful, relieved that in the face of all that can go (and have gone) wrong, some things have come right.
Starred review from May 15, 2016
A reclusive French film star, her American linguist husband, and their exes, parents, siblings, and children from various marriages feature in a sophisticated story about love. In an interlocking series of narratives set from 1944 to 2016, in places ranging from Sussex to Goa to Brooklyn, with titles like "The Tired Mind Is a Stovetop," "How a Locksmith Must Feel," and "When All the Tiny Lights Begin to Be Extinguished," British novelist O'Farrell (Instructions for A Heat Wave, 2013, etc.) unfolds the history of Daniel Sullivan and Claudette Wells. After being discovered in her early 20s by a Swedish film director, Claudette became an international icon and obsession on the most extreme scale possible--until the day she disappeared so completely she was assumed dead. Actually, she was hiding at a remote location in Donegal, where unhappy Berkeley professor Daniel, in Ireland to collect his grandfather's ashes, finds her broken down by the side of the road. From that literal and figurative intersection--as the title says, "this must be the place"--the story shoots out in many directions, past and future. Almost every character struggles with some burdensome disability--stuttering, eczema, anorexia, agoraphobia, infertility--and yet all have a magnetic star quality courtesy of O'Farrell's excellent characterizations. The scenario is glamorous, the writing is stylish, the globe-trotting almost dizzying, but there's a satisfying core of untempered feeling as well. Here's Daniel, reunited with Claudette after a separation: "I don't think our language contains a word with sufficient largesse or capacity to express the euphoria I feel as I bury my face in her hair....What redemption there is in being loved: we are always our best selves when loved by another." Or sister-in-law Maeve, upon picking up her adopted daughter in Chengdu, China: "If she was a liquid, she would drink her; if she was a gas, she would breather her in; if she was a pill, she would down her; a dress, she would wear her; a plate, she would lick her clean." Juicy and cool, this could be O'Farrell's U.S. breakthrough book.
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Starred review from June 1, 2016
Can two fragile individuals weave a life together when their fractured pasts threaten to unravel the tapestry of their marriage, thread by single thread? Daniel and Claudette Sullivan are tortured souls who find each other in one of the most remote villages of Ireland. The relationship is in danger of coming undone when a crime Daniel is sure he committed casts a looming shadow. For her part, Claudette is fleeing from celluloid fame and hiding from her ex-husband when she finds succor in her marriage to Daniel. O'Farrell (Instructions for a Heatwave, 2013) tells an enchanting story through the points of view of a sizable assortment of characters as the plot moves back and forth in time. The chorus of voices and the constant time-frame switching occasionally threaten the clarity of the narrative, but the flawless language ( My life has been a series of elisions, cover-ups, dropped stitches in knitting ) and the attention to nuance override any flaws. One memorable chapter is devoted to a wedding in the Scottish countryside, a piece of writing so finely wrought, the novel is worth reading for this vignette alone. Even the slightly trite ending doesn't mar this compelling portrait of a marriage.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)
February 15, 2016
Winner of the Betty Trask, Somerset Maugham, and Costa Novel awards, O'Farrell surfaced most recently with Instructions for a Heatwave, a shimmering, pull-you-in tale of family dynamics that the new novel should match. On holiday in Ireland to escape the stress of a terrible custody battle, young American professor Daniel Sullivan meets and falls in love with celebrated actress Claudette, who has left behind her sex-symbol days for a quiet life in the country. They end up living blissfully together and have two children of their own, but a secret from Daniel's past won't stay put.
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