The Blurb:

“The course of Frank Mackey’s life was set by one defining moment when he was nineteen. The moment his girlfriend, Rosie Daly, failed to turn up for their rendezvous in Faithful Place, failed to run away with him to London as they had planned. Frank never heard from her again. Twenty years on, Frank is still in Dublin, working as an undercover cop. He’s cut all ties with his dysfunctional family. Until his sister calls to say that Rosie’s suitcase has been found. Frank embarks on a journey into his past that demands he reevaluate everything he believes to be true.”

(Source: Amazon)

What I thought:

Having recently read and loved The Likeness, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on Faithful Place. I saved it to take on holiday with me as I just knew that I would be in for a treat and wanted something to look forward to round the pool. Yay me, I was right!

Frank Mackey works in the Undercover squad in Dublin’s police force. He is hard-working, ruthless and comes with the baggage of an ex-wife, and child whom he adores and a highly dysfunctional family that he hasn’t seen for over 20 years. Frank made an appearance in The Likness as Cassie’s boss in her undercover operation, but in Faithful Place he take centre stage.

The book opens with Frank waiting outside number 16 Faithful Place (the house at the end of the street he grew up in), at midnight, for his childhood sweetheart, Rosie. They have arranged to meet there, unbeknown to their two families, and already have ferry tickets booked for their new life in England. By 6am Frank knows that Rosie won’t show and he leaves Faithful Place and his family never to return until a phonecall from his sister shakes his comfortable existance and turns everything he thought he knew on its head. Rosie (the girl he thought had gone to England without him) may not have left him afterall: her suitcase has been found behind the fireplace in number 16, undisturbed since that night.

Frank is flung, reluctantly, back into the (un)welcoming arms of his family, which only serves to convince him that he was right to leave all those years ago. French has beautifully captured family dysfunction at its craziest and I read this book with the uncomfortable feeling of mild claustrophobia. Something that she also did extremely well was the dialogue: normally if authors write in partcularly broad accents, I can get irritated by it but in Faithful Place I actually found myself reading the whole thing with Irish accents in my head which felt so right and is praise indeed as that is one of my major pet peeves about books when done badly.

If I am to sum up this book as a work of fiction, not genre, then I could offer many superlatives to describe my thoughts of the narrative, sence of time and place etc. French has perfectly captured the dynamics of a family and a street that I am sure as hell glad I didn’t grow up in. The cast is three-dimensional, the narrative pitch-perfect and it was a joy to read.

If I was to sum up this book as a work of crime fiction, there I struggle slightly. Despite the blurb being about the discovery of a 20 year old suitcase and the re-examining of everything that people held true, it is not really a crime fiction book in my opinion. The front cover tells us of bodies buried in Faithful Place which is misleading: there is one body but that’s it. Although the plot does try to centre around this discovery, for me it never really felt gripping enough to be a crime thriller: there were no cliff-hangers and very little to guess at.

Having said that, I would still highly recommend this book. It is fantastically written and French certainly has a great ear for dialogue and eye for those details that make you empathise with the characters, likeable or not. A great read!

Have you read this yet? Have you read anything else by Tana French? What do you think to her books? I am a huge fan.

(This book was sent to me by Hodder & Stroughton – thank you!)