This Must Be The Place by Maggie O'Farrell
Publisher: Tinder Press
Release date: 17 May 2016
Rating: *****
Back cover blurb: Meet Daniel Sullivan, a man with a complicated life. A New Yorker living in the wilds of Ireland, he has children he never sees in California, a father he loathes in Brooklyn and a wife, Claudette, who is a reclusive ex-film star given to shooting at anyone who ventures up their driveway. He is also about to find out something about a woman he lost touch with twenty years ago, and this discovery will send him off-course, far away from wife and home. Will his love for Claudette be enough to bring him back? Maggie O'Farrell's seventh novel is a dazzling, intimate epic about who we leave behind and who we become as we search for our place in the world.
This Must Be The Place is the wonderful tale of a brilliant, but flawed man with a hugely complicated life.
Daniel Sullivan lives with his reclusive ex movie star wife, Claudette Wells and their two young children in the wilds of Ireland. It is a world away from his home "town" New York, his adulteress ex-wife and two older children that he never sees.
Whilst on the way to the airport for a flight home to see his father (whom he cannot stand) for his 90th birthday, Daniel learns something he always suspected about an individual from his past. There is little he can do about it at that time, but the question is, should he do anything about it at all?
As Daniel battles with these decisions, we are taken on a journey via multiple narrators through different times in both Daniel's and Claudette's lives and those around them. We learn how they first met, how Claudette became the recluse that she is now, and so much more.
The characters we are introduced to along the way are so very real and believable that you feel compelled to care about them, no matter how they behave.
This Must Be The Place is ultimately a novel about the complexities of marriage and familial relationships, and the decisions that we all must face in order to make the most of our lives. It is a beautifully written novel and I think Maggie O'Farrell's best novel to date.
I don't want to say too much more about the plot, as I don't want to give away anything else about this wonderful novel. You must read it and experience it for yourselves.
It is sure to be one of the books of 2016.
This Must Be The Place is available from May 2016.
You can pre-order it now via Amazon online and Tinder Press.
Great review! I look forward to reading this book!
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