The Likeness By Tana French

466 pp., Penguin Books, 2008

ISBN 978-0-14-311562-5 (pbk)

Here's another smasher from Tana French. I’m ready to declare this one of my favorite books of the year, and it’s only January.  

Cover, U.S. 

The Likeness takes the form of a procedural crime novel, but as Salon’s reviewer points out, “the hypnotic prose and eerie atmosphere conspire to make this ostensible mystery novel much, much more than it appears to be.” 

As for the plot: a young woman, Lexie Madison, is murdered. The police decide to tell the world she survived the attack so that detective Cassie Maddox can investigate undercover by impersonating Lexie. It’s a ruse made possible because the two are nearly identical in appearance.

Yes, at first glance it’s a barely credible premise. I kept expecting it to collapse, but the author does a fine job of making it realistic, in part because she introduces some interesting conflicts. Investigator Cassie becomes immersed in her fake Lexie identity. Boundaries blur between her real and undercover lives.She forms deep bonds with the dead girl’s four housemates, all graduate students at Trinity College (the one in Dublin, not Hartford). They are the closest of friends, 

Cover, U.K.

 happy in their self-contained world. So is Cassie, once she infiltrates it.  Her infatuation with her new friends and the adrenaline rush of the assignment complicates matters and endangers Cassie as well: 

“That hard black stone of fear had dissolved… turned into something sweet and lemon-colored and wildly intoxicating.” (p. 106)

French has chosen her characters' names with care. Note the parallel construction of the two girls's names: Cassie/Lexie and Maddox/Madison, a clever way of linking the two characters. Raphael, known as Rafe, is a rake, a drunk, a seducer and all-around loose cannon. They live in Whitethorn House, a thorn in the side of rebellious Irish in the nearby village because of the house's Anglo-Irish history.      

For this reader, the murder mystery aspect became purely secondary once I reached the point where the victim’s four friends are introduced. Each of them are carefully drawn, fully realized characters. I found myself wishing I was part of their circle. 

This book has something to say about the value of friendship and the price that has to be paid for all things, including deception and truth. Cassie confronts Abbie, one of the former friends during the book's excellent epilogue. With deception revealed and the friends dispersed, the sense of loss is piercing: 

"Something had gone out of her skin: a luminosity, a resilience....I wanted to tell her that being loved is a talent too, that it takes as much guts and as much work as loving; that some people, for whatever reason, never learn the knack." (p. 460)

As in other books, French  takes the opportunity to point out the creeping materialization and vulgarization of Irish culture, the price paid for the economic bubble of the last decade: 

"We have sushi bars and SUVs, but people our age can't afford homes in the city where they grew up, so centuries-old communities are disintegrating like sand castles." (p. 335)

This is a perceptive and elegant writer. I wonder if she'll ever choose to break free from the mystery thriller genre she chose with her first novel, In the Woods. It worked for J. K. Rowling. In the meantime, I can’t wait to read her next two novels, which I've already purchased: Faithful Place and Broken Harbor. 

Links:

Salon 2008 Book Awards review
New York Times review
My review of The Secret Place by Tana French

Author Tana French's website