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"Daniel Sullivan, a young American professor reeling from a failed marriage and a brutal custody battle, is on holiday in Ireland when he falls in love with Claudette, a world famous sexual icon and actress who fled fame for a reclusive life in a rural village. Together, they make an idyllic life in the country, raising two more children in blissful seclusion until a secret from Daniel's past threatens to destroy their meticulously constructed and fiercely protected home. What follows is a journey through Daniel's many lives told in his voice and the voices of those who have made him the man he is: the American son and daughter he has not seen for many years; the family he has made with Claudette; and irrepressible, irreverent Claudette herself. Shot through with humor and wisdom, This Must Be the Place is a powerful rumination on the nature of identity, and the complexities of loyalty and devotion a gripping story of an extraordinary family and an extraordinary love"--… (more)
I do enjoy Maggie O’Farrell’s writing. She has a talent for drawing you into her characters and their worlds. This novel bounces back and forth in time and with different characters and ones that may appear just once but they are all connected cleverly with Claudette, the reclusive film star, and Daniel, the American linguist who meets her on a rural Irish road. ( )
This book is beautifully written. It's lyrical and poetic, and flipping to a new page is like sinking into a literary cloud. O'Farrell is an incredible writer, with an enviable mastery of language.
And yet despite the stellar writing, I found the book incredibly slow, and very dull. I was enthralled by Daniel and Claudette's story--their relationship is utterly fascinating--but the plot meanders, offering little slice of life vignettes from the point of view of everyone from Claudette's brother to Claudette's ex husband's assistant. And with every introduction of a new viewpoint character -- some of whom never show up again -- I lost a little more interest in the story, until I found it incredibly difficult to pick the book back up again after setting it down.
I struggled to finish, and the last couple of hundred pages were painful to wade through. Convoluted and tedious, this is one book I wish I'd never picked up. ( )
I did. I loved this book! It was powerful, heart-tending, very painful part of the time, held a complex web of people - a family unlike nearly any imaginable - and was very creative and insightful. I will read more by this author. ( )
Daniel Sullivan y Claudette Wells son una pareja atípica: él es de Nueva York y tiene dos hijos en California pero vive en la campiña irlandesa; ella es una estrella de cine que, en un momento dado, decidió cambiar los rodajes por la vida en el campo, la fama por el anonimato. Ambos son razonablemente felices.
Sin embargo, esta idílica vida, trabajosamente construida entre los dos, se tambaleará cuando Daniel conozca una inesperada noticia sobre una mujer con la que había perdido el contacto veinte años atrás. Este hallazgo desencadenará una serie de acontecimientos que pondrán a prueba la fortaleza de su matrimonio. ( )
Information from the Catalan Common Knowledge. Edit to localize it to your language.
El món està boig, més del que ens pensem, és incorregiblement plural. Louis MacNeice, "Snow"
Dedication
Information from the Catalan Common Knowledge. Edit to localize it to your language.
Al Vilmos
First words
Information from the Catalan Common Knowledge. Edit to localize it to your language.
Hi ha un home. Està dret al graó del darrere, cargolant un cigarret. El dia és típicament inestable, el jardí exuberant i resplendent, les branques pesant sota la pluja que encara cau. Hi ha un home i l'home sóc jo.
Quotations
There is the sensation that a window somewhere has blown open or a single domino has fallen against another, causing a cascade. A tide has rushed forward, then pulled back out, and whatever was beneath it is altered forever. (p. 14)
I was a fish not so much out of water but way up the shore and over the beach road. (p. 28)
The itch, the discomfort, the rash, the inflammation, the redness, the maddening, distracting ailment: this is not him. It is not who he is. There is him and there is his condition. They are two entities, forced to live in one body. (p. 51)
He gives me a smile and he looks so happy to see me, his eyes traveling all over my face, and a sudden wave of something crashes over me and I can't tell if it's happiness or sadness. It kind of feels like both. (p. 69)
Backlit in green, the embryos had hovered above them, like notions, like deities: vast, beautiful, terrifying. (p. 169)
My first thought is: no, it can't be him, this is some nondescript middle-aged man with a shirt and tie and male-pattern baldness. My second thought is, yes, it is him, it has to be him. My third, and most uncomfortable, realization is that when he lays eyes on me he will undoubtedly go through the same mental process. (p. 187)
A heron standing on coat-hanger legs in the reeds turns its face toward them, then away, as if to say, I never saw you. (p. 210)
What redemption there is in being loved: we are always our best selves when loved by another. Nothing can replace this. (p. 274)
It's the precarious membrane between this, two people in a cafe, deciding their fate, and the beyond, the oblivion, the nothingness that they will, in time, have to face. (p. 282)
She is tired, down to her bones, soaked right through, like a rag, with exhaustion but she is simultaneously filled with an effervescent glee, an irrepressibe thrill. (p. 341)
"I have a theory", she says, looking far ahead, at where salt meets sky, "that marriages end not because of something you did say but because of something you didn't. All you have to do now is work out what it is." (p. 351)
Last words
- Vaig cap a dins - diu; s'aixeca i em frega la cara amb la vora de la jaqueta-. Véns? -Sí -dic-. Vinc.
"Daniel Sullivan, a young American professor reeling from a failed marriage and a brutal custody battle, is on holiday in Ireland when he falls in love with Claudette, a world famous sexual icon and actress who fled fame for a reclusive life in a rural village. Together, they make an idyllic life in the country, raising two more children in blissful seclusion until a secret from Daniel's past threatens to destroy their meticulously constructed and fiercely protected home. What follows is a journey through Daniel's many lives told in his voice and the voices of those who have made him the man he is: the American son and daughter he has not seen for many years; the family he has made with Claudette; and irrepressible, irreverent Claudette herself. Shot through with humor and wisdom, This Must Be the Place is a powerful rumination on the nature of identity, and the complexities of loyalty and devotion a gripping story of an extraordinary family and an extraordinary love"--
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Wikipedia in English
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