Undercover Doppelganger

The Likeness, Tana French

Tana French writes with such intensity, this is one of those rare books that is hard for me to separate from. Her characters are so present in their world, and with each other, that inanimate things feel alive to them, as though they are absorbing energy from the characters themselves. As the main character, detective Cassie Maddox, infiltrates a circle of friends (although “friends” doesn’t seem like a strong enough word to describe their relationship), going undercover as one of their own in order to solve a murder, she too finds herself drawn into their power and intimacy.

This book is not for the faint of heart. It’s very long, although google tells me it’s only 466 pages and should take about 6-7 hours to read, so maybe it just feels very long. But not long in a bad way.  The writing is vividly metaphorical that reading it takes more effort than just your typical weekend escape novel.

It’s interesting to see the level of intimacy that the 4 (or 5, depending on how you are counting) characters in the book have with one another. They comfortably share clothes and space and help themselves to each others’ food, drinks or cigarettes.  Thinking that this was a bit unusual, I started thinking about the intimacy level of various relationships that I see in my life and it was surprising.  My nieces are very comfortable with physical as well as emotional closeness, using each other, resting their legs or heads in each others’ laps and so on. Most of my close relationships do not extend to casual physical contact beyond hugging, however I do have a close group at work and we are extremely comfortable with physical contact, sharing food or drinking each other’s drinks. It just makes me wonder how this type of relationship evolves in some cases but not in others. If nothing else, I suspect this book will give you something to think about too.

Rating: borrow it. This probably won’t be a re-read for me.