![]() When a full skeleton-not as ancient as it should be-is discovered in the centuries-old elm at the back of the yard, his last vestiges of stability are shattered.Īs detectives excavate the garden, Toby must confront the ghost of his formerly golden self. ![]() Bruised, befuddled, and no longer protected by his own belief in a world that has his best interests at heart, Toby retreats to the family estate, ostensibly to look after his ailing Uncle Hugo, but also to recuperate. They take his car, his TV, and, following a punch to the ribs and a few booted kicks to the head, most of his memory as well. It’s the discovery of a secret within the deep clench of an elm tree, and the elm’s subsequent destruction, that mark the point of no return in Tana French’s latest mystery, The Witch Elm.Ĭelebrating a narrowly missed disaster at work, Toby Hennessy- twenty-eight years old, white, middle-class, and smugly normative- stumbles home after a boozy night, only to intercept a pair of burglars making off with his Xbox. ![]() ![]() ![]() At the gates of the Underworld, wrote Virgil, rises an elm “of vast extent,” spreading its “branches and aged arms, around which false dreams cling and attach themselves beneath each leaf.” Here Aeneas plucks the golden bough and wins access to the shadowy realm, where those who have been lost stand in judgment of those who have survived.įor a dream to be revealed as false, there must be a rupture. ![]()
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