This must be the place

Review by New York Times Review

TWO REMARKABLE POEMS written in the latter half of the 20 th century - Wislawa Szymborska's "Could Have" and Jane Kenyon's "Otherwise" - address the shadow Iife that presses itself against us in every living moment. "It could have happened. / It had to happen"; so begins the Szymborska. "I got out of bed / on two strong legs. / It might have been / otherwise," is the opening of Kenyon's. The poets remind us that our lives are at the mercy of near misses, catastrophes averted. We make our peace with this present danger - or we don't. We embrace those we love more ferociously knowing we're not in control of their fates, or ours - or we don't. The Northern Irish novelist Maggie O'Farrell is consumed with this shadow life in her transfixing "I Am I Am I Am," a memoir that trains its fierce intelligence on her 17 near-death experiences. O'Farrell is acutely aware that her inner and outer worlds have been shaped at least as powerfully by what didn't happen as what did. In chapters with titles like "Neck," "Lungs," "Cranium" and "Bloodstream," inscripted above intricate black-and-white drawings of the body part in question, Farrell cuts through swaths of her life, using this anatomical structure to great effect as she builds tension and portent. At age 18, she encounters a stranger on a deserted country path and senses "the urge for violence radiating off the man, like heat off a stone." She evades him thanks to her preternatural instinct for danger, but her police report carries little weight. Soon thereafter he murders a different young woman. "It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that I think about her, if not every day then most days," writes the adult O'Farrell, the would-be victim who has survived to tell the tale. "I am aware of her life, which was cut off, curtailed, snipped short, whereas mine, for whatever reason, was allowed to run on." This awareness - of time, luck, fate and "the feeling of having pulled my head, one more time, out of the noose" - drives O'Farrell's story. She reminds us that we all live a hairbreadth from death. At times she shifts skillfully from first- to secondperson narration as if to implore the reader to understand that there is no protection, nor order, nor safety. Not for her, not for us. In brief chapters that can stand alone but create a resounding effect when read together, she recounts a near drowning, a violent mugging, a terrifying childbirth, a plunging jetliner. The midlife writer also describes her youthful risk-taking: Her own mother tells her, these days, that she was "a nightmare to rear." This maternal admonition gains a piercing resonance as the wild child becomes a mother herself, and "I Am I Am I Am" is at its strongest when she describes the intensity of her love and sense of responsibility for her own three children, and her fear of unwittingly putting them in harm's way. Her daughter is born with an immune-system disorder and an array of terrifying allergies. Anaphylaxis, O'Farrell tells us, means "without protection." The little girl who once sought danger has grown into a parent who lives "in a state of high alert." If I have a quibble with this book, it's that there are a few spots where O'Farrell's wise and lyrical voice veers toward the didactic, including footnotes and journalistic asides that distract from the deep emotional resonance. In the end, this memoir is a mystical howl, a thrumming, piercing reminder of how very closely we all exist alongside what could have happened, but didn't. DANI SHAPIRO is the author, most recently, of "Hourglass."

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [April 8, 2018]

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Review by Booklist Review

*Starred Review* 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.--Apte, Poornima Copyright 2016 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

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. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

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Review by Library Journal Review

Recently divorced and unhappy about his separation from his two children, American linguist Daniel Sullivan is ready for a new start. Driving around Donegal, Ireland, in search of his grandfather's remains, he happens upon a young boy with a stutter. That Daniel is able to offer him some relief from his condition leads to a meeting with the boy's mother, Claudette Wells, a reclusive Hollywood legend, who mysteriously disappeared from public view years earlier. A marriage and two more children later, Daniel's life spirals out of control again after he catches part of a radio conversation with a long-ago girlfriend whose early death he may have caused. Seeking answers, he allows his life to fall apart for the second time. Verdict As the narrative moves effortlessly around in time and unfolds from multiple viewpoints (even the cameo roles are compelling), Daniel's backstory comes patchily into focus. Fans of O'Farrell's previous novels, such as The Hand That First Held Mine and Instructions for a Heatwave, can look forward to this fine new offering from a gifted storyteller. [See Prepub Alert, 1/25/16.]-Barbara Love, formerly with Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont. © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

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 possibleuntil 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 intersectionas 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 disabilitystuttering, eczema, anorexia, agoraphobia, infertilityand 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. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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This Must Be the Place Maggie O'Farrell The Strangest Feeling in My Legs Daniel Donegal, 2010 There is a man. He's standing on the back step, rolling a cigarette. The day is typically unstable, the garden lush and shining, the branches weighty with still-falling rain.  There is a man and the man is me. I am at the back door, tobacco tin in hand, and I am watching something in the trees, a figure, standing at the perimeter of the garden, where the aspens crowd in at the fence. Another man. He's carrying a pair of binoculars and a camera. A -bird--watcher, I am telling myself as I pull the frail paper along my tongue, you get them in these parts. But at the same time I'm thinking, -Really? -Bird--watching, this far up the valley? I'm also thinking, Where is my daughter, the baby, my wife? How quickly could I reach them, if I needed to? My heart cranks into high gear, -thud--thudding against my ribs. I squint into the white sky. I am about to step out into the garden. I want the guy to know I've seen him, to see me seeing him. I want him to register my size, my former -track--and--field--star physique (slackening and loosening a little, these days, admittedly). I want him to run the odds, me versus him, through his head. He's not to know I've never been in a fight in my life and intend it to stay that way. I want him to feel what I used to feel before my father disciplined me: I am on to you, he would say, with a pointing finger, directed first at his chest, then mine. I am on to you, I want to yell while I fumble to pocket my cigarette and lighter. The guy is looking in the direction of the house. I see the tinder spark of sun on a lens and a movement of his arm that could be the brushing away of a hair across the forehead or the depression of a camera shutter. Two things happen very fast. The dog--a whiskery, leggy, slightly arthritic wolfhound, usually given to sleeping by the stove-- streaks out of the door, past my legs, and into the garden, emitting a volley of low barks, and a woman comes around the side of the house. She has the baby on her back, she is wearing the kind of sou'wester hood usually sported by North Sea fishermen, and she is holding a shotgun. She is also my wife. The latter fact I still have trouble adjusting to, not only because the idea of this creature ever agreeing to marry me is highly improbable, but also because she pulls unexpected shit like this all the time. "Jesus, honey," I gasp, and I am momentarily distracted by how shrill my voice is. "Unmanly" -doesn't cover it. I sound as if I'm admonishing her for an -ill--judged choice in soft furnishings or for wearing pumps that clash with her purse. She ignores my high-pitched intervention--who can blame her?--and fires into the air. Once, twice. If, like me, you've never heard a gun report at close range, let me tell you the noise is an ear shattering explosion. Magnesium-hued lights go off inside your head; your ears ring with the three-bar high note of an aria; your sinuses fill with tar. The sound ricochets off the side of the house, off the flank of the mountain, then back again: a huge aural tennis ball bouncing about the valley. I realize that while I'm ducking, cringing, covering my head, the baby is strangely unmoved. He's still sucking his thumb, head leaning against the spread of his mother's hair. Almost as if he's used to this. Almost as if he's heard it all before. I straighten up. I take my hands off my ears. Far away, a figure is sprinting through the undergrowth. My wife turns around. She cracks the gun in the crook of her arm. She whistles for the dog. "Ha," she says to me before she vanishes back around the side of the house. "That'll show him." My wife, I should tell you, is crazy. Not in a requiring-medication-and-wards-and-men-in-white-coats sense although I sometimes wonder if there may have been times in her past--but in a subtle, more socially acceptable, less ostentatious way. She -doesn't think like other people. She believes that to pull a gun on someone lurking, in all likelihood entirely innocently, at our perimeter fence is not only permissible but indeed the right thing to do. Here are the bare facts about the woman I married: --She's crazy, as I might have mentioned. --She's a recluse. She's apparently willing to pull a gun on anyone threatening to uncover her hiding place. I dart, insomuch as a man of my size can dart, through the house to catch her. I'm going to have this out with her. She can't keep a gun in a house where there are small children. She just can't. I'm repeating this to myself as I pass through the house, planning to begin my protestations with it. But as I come through the front door, it's as if I'm entering another world. Instead of the gray drizzle at the back, a dazzling, primrose-tinted sun fills the front garden, which gleams and sparks as if hewn from jewels. My daughter is leaping over a rope that her mother is -turning. My wife who, just a moment ago, was a dark, forbidding figure with a gun, a long gray coat, and a hat like Death's hood, she has shucked off the sou'wester and transmogrified back to her usual incarnation. The baby is crawling on the grass, knees wet with rain, the bloom of an iris clutched in his fist, chattering to himself in a satisfied, guttural growl. It's as if I've stepped into another time frame entirely, as if I'm in one of those folktales where you think you've been asleep for an hour or so, but you wake to find you've been away a lifetime, that all your loved ones and everything you've ever known are dead and gone. Did I -really just walk in from the other side of the house, or did I fall asleep for a hundred years? I shake off this notion. The gun business needs to be dealt with right now. "Since when," I demand, "do we own a firearm?" My wife raises her head and meets my eye with a challenging, flinty look, the skipping rope coming to a stop in her hand. "We don't," she says. "It's mine." A typical parry from her. She appears to answer the question without answering it at all. She picks on the element that isn't the subject of the question. The essence of sidestepping. I rally. I've had more than enough practice. "Since when do you own a firearm?" She shrugs a shoulder, bare, I notice, and tanned to a soft gold, bisected by a thin white strap. I feel a momentary automatic mobilization deep inside my underwear--strange how this doesn't change with age for men, that we're all of us but a membrane away from our inner teenage selves--but I pull my attention back to the discussion. She's not going to get away with this. "Since now," she says. "What's a fire arm?" my daughter asks, splitting the word in two, her small, heart-shaped face tilted up to look at her mother. "It's an Americanism," my wife says. "It means 'gun.' " "Oh, the gun," says my sweet Marithe, six years old, equal parts pixie, angel, and sylph. She turns to me. "Father Christmas brought Donal a new one, so he said Maman could have his old one." This utterance renders me, for a moment, speechless. Donal is an -ill--scented homunculus who farms the land farther down the valley. He--and his wife, I'd imagine--have what you might call a problem with anger management. Somewhat trigger-happy, Donal. He shoots everything on sight: squirrels, rabbits, foxes, -hill walkers (just kidding). "What is going on?" I say. "You're keeping a firearm in the house and--" " 'Gun,' Daddy. Say 'gun.' " "--a gun, without telling me? Without discussing it with me? Don't you see how dangerous that is? What if one of the children--" My wife turns, her hem swishing through the wet grass. "Isn't it nearly time to leave for your train?" Excerpted from This Must Be the Place by Maggie O'Farrell All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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