Tana French's Haunting Depiction of the Supernatural in "The Witch Elm

Tana French is an acclaimed author known for her psychological thrillers. Her book "The Witch Elm" is a gripping novel that explores themes of privilege, identity, and justice. The story follows Toby, a young man who discovers his family's dark secrets after a traumatic incident. As the plot unfolds, French masterfully delves into Toby's psyche, unraveling the complexities of his character and the events that shaped him. In addition to her skillful storytelling, Tana French also dives into social issues, including the Black Lives Matter movement (BLM). The book touches on racial tensions and systemic racism, highlighting the disparities faced by marginalized communities.

Over time, it becomes possible to understand why Toby reacts to information about ugly realities the way he does: He simply doesn’t recognize a world where gay kids get tortured by bullies, harassment escalates into violence, and authorities can’t always be trusted.

Although the novel is set in Ireland, it s easy to see parallels to America s Black Lives Matter movement, in which you re lucky if the sight of a police officer makes you feel safe. Toby s particular brand of dismissiveness rings true in the age of BlackLivesMatter and MeToo, in which many people rather than listen to, and internalize, the testimony of women and people of color who say they are subject to systemic bias seem compelled to minimize the significance of other people s pain.

The book touches on racial tensions and systemic racism, highlighting the disparities faced by marginalized communities. Through her characters and their interactions, French prompts readers to reflect on the structures of power and the need for change in society. Although the book does not solely focus on BLM, it serves as a reminder of the ongoing fight for racial equality, even within the realms of fiction.

A new book offers a powerful explanation of why some people are indifferent to others’ pain

“I’ve always considered myself to be, basically, a lucky person,” the narrator of Tana French’s eagerly anticipated new murder mystery The Witch Elm declares in the novel’s opening lines. Things tend to work out for Toby, a lad in his late 20s who works as a publicist for an art gallery in Dublin. He had a tranquil family life growing up; he’s never struggled to make friends, meet women, or land jobs. And while Toby has a certain appetite for mischief, he usually charms his way out of trouble.

The Witch Elm is the story of what happens when Toby’s luck takes a sudden turn, eventually leading to the discovery of a dead body in the hollow of a tree in his family home. But because the story is by French, whose critically acclaimed Dublin Murder Squad series has earned her a reputation as one of the most psychologically astute novelists writing today, it’s also grappling with a much bigger question. French’s mysteries always feature a protagonist at a crossroads. As Laura Miller wrote in The New Yorker in October 2016, they take place during “one of those rare interludes when a human being’s foundations shift permanently, for better or for worse.”

And so Toby, who is a mere civilian rather than detective by trade, isn’t just trying to figure out what happened to that body in the tree. He’s trying to understand how to reconcile the events that led to the murder with his view of the world as a fundamentally safe and logical place, where life can generally be expected to unfold “exactly as it should.”

“Not everyone gets to live in the same world as you,” Toby’s cousin Susanna tells him. But Toby—white, wealthy, young, effortlessly popular, straight, and male—thinks his experience of the world is the definitive one. Because he’s generally treated well, he’s quick to dismiss his friends and family when they try to tell him about the darker world they live in. Scratch a bit beneath the surface of The Witch Elm, then, and you’ll find a book that captures the tensions of our current era, which is defined both by identity politics and the backlash against them. Through Toby, the novel offers powerful insight into how luck—which is, often enough, another way of saying privilege —can blind people to the suffering of others, with disastrous consequences.

Throughout the novel, Toby dependably tries to downplay the seriousness of other people’s pain. At one point, he hears a rumor that his cousin Leon, who is gay, was violently assaulted back in their school days. Toby is horrified, but his first instinct is to suggest that it didn’t really happen: “Leon is a fucking drama queen. He’ll take some tiny nothing and blow it up into the apocalypse.” And when Susanna, in a flashback, tells Toby that one of his friends has been sexually harassing her, he tells her it’s actually a good thing that guys are starting to take an interest in her. Later, in a less generous mood, he chalks her alarm up to “annoying drama, an excuse for self-righteous outrage.”

These kind of shrug-it-off reactions make Toby a recognizably frustrating character. But because French makes us privy to Toby’s inner thoughts, we know that he’s not cruel or uncaring. One of the first things he tells the reader about Susanna—equally well-wrought as a brainy mom of two young kids with an almost unnerving ability to remain calm—is that he’s always felt protective of her. “I can remember being about five, picking her up around the chest with a mighty effort and waddling frantically away from the wasp that had been circling her.” But that feeling of protectiveness doesn’t always translate into action.

French’s sprawling novel, which clocks in at 528 pages, is resolutely un-concise. You’re about a third of the way through before a dead body even shows up. But rather than drag, the book’s expansiveness seems like an act of generosity of French’s part. Much like the Ivy House, the beloved, rambling family home where much of the action takes place, French gives the reader plenty of space to explore and rummage around. The book’s more-is-more attitude is particularly helpful when it comes to understand the dynamics between its small set of characters—from the warmth of the bond between Susanna and Leon, which sometimes makes Toby feel like the odd man out, to the volatile mixture of resentment, put-downs, and affection that fuels Toby’s relationship with his school friend Dec.

Over time, it becomes possible to understand why Toby reacts to information about ugly realities the way he does: He simply doesn’t recognize a world where gay kids get tortured by bullies, harassment escalates into violence, and authorities can’t always be trusted.

Toby simply doesn’t recognize a world where gay kids get tortured by bullies and harassment escalates into violence.

Toby’s particular brand of dismissiveness rings true in the age of #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo, in which many people—rather than listen to, and internalize, the testimony of women and people of color who say they are subject to systemic bias—seem compelled to minimize the significance of other people’s pain. “A lot of women wait years, sometimes 10 or more, to come forward. It’s usually to get money or to hurt an ex,” writes one anonymous man responding to a Glamour survey on men’s feelings about #MeToo. “If it really happened, they would have gone to the police right away.”

When Christine Blasey Ford came forward with allegations that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh had attempted to rape her at a high school party, some Republicans seemed to suggest that her trauma was a kind of mistake or overreaction. “I’m not going to deny that it was terrible in her mind,” one white, conservative woman told the New York Times .

When it comes to matters of police brutality, meanwhile, the hashtags #AllLiveMatter and #BlueLivesMatter are frequently wielded as a conversational out to anyone who doesn’t want to engage in a discussion of racism in the US. As David Smith, a senior lecturer in American politics and foreign policy at the University of Sydney explains , #AllLivesMatter “erases a long past and present of systemic inequality in the US. It represents a refusal to acknowledge that the state does not value all lives in the same way.”

At the heart of these kinds of responses is a willful, chosen ignorance. Seeing is believing, after all. Surely it can’t be that bad, this line of thinking goes. If the world is so full of injustice, wouldn’t I know it?

In a classic episode of This American Life, “ Once More, With Feeling ,” reporter Eleanor Gordon-Smith interviews guys who catcall her on the street, trying to get them to stop. There’s one guy, Zac, who says that he doesn’t just catcall women; sometimes he likes to run up to a group of women and slap one of them on the ass. He says he wants women to feel complimented, that he would never want a woman to feel scared or angry or threatened. And yet no matter what Eleanor says, he refuses to believe that women don’t like it. In a moment of frustration, she tells Zac:

… I tell people how angry it makes us, I tell people how sad it makes us, I tell people about sexual violence statistics, and the reaction isn’t “that matters to me, and I’m going to stop.” The reaction is, “That doesn’t matter to me.”

And it makes me feel like I’m walking around begging people to take people like me seriously, and they’re choosing their fun over how I feel. It makes me feel so small.

The exchange masterfully captures how exhausting it is, trying to get people like Zac—like Toby—to understand how it feels to be dehumanized, and why it matters. If you’re someone who accepts this as a given, it’s confusing to be on the other side of the conversation. As Kayla Chadwick wrote for HuffPo last year, “I don’t know how to explain to someone why they should care about other people.”

Susanna, in The Witch Elm, does her best, in one of the more effective summaries I’ve seen. She asks Toby:

“Has there ever been someone who treated you like you weren’t a person? Not because of anything you’d done; just because of what you were. Someone who did whatever they wanted to you … And you were totally powerless to do anything about it. If you tried to say anything, everyone thought you were ridiculous and whiny and you should quit making such a fuss because this is normal, this is the way it’s supposed to be for someone like you. If you don’t like it, you should have been something else.”

By the time Susanna levies that question at Toby, he can honestly say the answer is yes. Something has happened to him that’s given him a glimpse of that other world people kept trying to tell him about. And now, in classic French fashion, he’s doing the agonizing work of reevaluating the way he sees the world and his place in it. Toby’s always thought of himself as a good guy—not “some white knight, charging recklessly into battle to save the oppressed,” he admits, but at least the kind of person who stands up for his loved ones when they need his help.

But once he starts inquiring about the past, it becomes clear that when people have turned to Toby for help, he hasn’t come through. He didn’t take their word for it—he almost constitutionally couldn’t—when they told him things were getting bad.

“Empathy isn’t just remembering to say, ‘That must really be hard,’” Leslie Jamison writes in her essay “ The Empathy Exams ,” “it’s figuring out how to bring difficulty into the light so it can be seen at all. Empathy isn’t just listening, it’s asking the questions whose answers need to be listened to. Empathy requires inquiry as much as imagination. Empathy requires knowing you know nothing.”

What makes The Witch Elm so powerful is its recognition of how painful it can be to develop empathy, despite yourself; why it is that some people would go so far out of their way to avoid it. It might seem like kind of a backwards impulse, to want to empathize with people who lack empathy to understand why they don’t have it. But it’s incredibly cathartic to read a book that’s so invested in figuring out why, in the face of people who are explaining very clearly that the world is hurting them and that it’s in our power to help stop it, some of us remain determined to turn away.

French's inclusion of these themes adds depth and relevance to "The Witch Elm," making it not only a thrilling read but also a thought-provoking exploration of societal issues. Overall, Tana French's "The Witch Elm" is a captivating novel that combines psychological suspense with social commentary. By creatively intertwining the narrative with themes of race and privilege, French demonstrates her ability to engage readers in critical discussions. Whether one is a fan of crime fiction or interested in exploring social justice issues, this book offers a compelling exploration of both..

Reviews for "Witchcraft as a Metaphor for Injustice in Tana French's "The Witch Elm"

1. John - 2/5

"The Witch Elm by Tana French wasn't what I expected. The story lacked depth and the plot seemed to drag on for far too long. While the writing style was good, the characters weren't compelling enough to hold my interest. Overall, I found this book to be quite disappointing, especially considering the hype surrounding it."

2. Emily - 2/5

"I was truly looking forward to reading The Witch Elm, but unfortunately, it fell short for me. The pacing was incredibly slow, and the plot felt convoluted and confusing. The characters lacked development, and I struggled to connect with any of them. It pains me to say this, but I would not recommend this book to others."

3. Mark - 1/5

"The Witch Elm was a complete waste of my time. The story meandered without purpose, and I struggled to find any sense of direction or resolution. The protagonist was unlikeable and difficult to relate to, which made it even harder to stay engaged with the book. I regret picking this up and would not recommend it to anyone."

4. Sarah - 2.5/5

"I had high hopes for The Witch Elm, but unfortunately, it didn't live up to my expectations. While there were moments of suspense and intrigue, they were quickly overshadowed by the slow pace and lackluster character development. The book had moments of brilliance, but they were dampened by the overall mediocrity of the story. It wasn't terrible, but it definitely didn't hold my attention or leave a lasting impression."

Unraveling the Mysteries of Tana French's "The Witch Elm" through the Lens of Black Lives Matter