Mystery Novelist Tana French (post 3): Is “First Lady of Irish Crime,” who was born in USA, a citizen of Ireland, USA, and Italy or only USA and Italy?

The review of Tana French’s seventh novel in today’s New York Times reminded me that I’d discussed her first novel, In the Woods, in two past posts. After rereading my posts, I googled reviews to see what others had said about that novel. Several of the reviews mentioned that she had dual citizenship in the USA and Italy; another review said she had dual citizenship in the USA and Ireland. Why the confusion?

Wikipedia says she was born in the USA, lived in various countries during her childhood, has lived in Ireland since she was 17 (now 45), and that Ireland is the setting of all her novels. It says her nationality is Irish and that “She has retained dual citizenship of the U.S. and Italy.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tana_French

Does this mean that she is a citizen of three countries (Ireland, USA, Italy) or that she is a citizen of two (USA and Italy), but identifies herself, and is thought of, as Irish? In any case, here are my two past posts:

November 5, 2016

“In the Woods” by Tana French has two mysteries: Primary mystery is never solved, and protagonist’s multiple personality amnesia is never resolved.

“In the Woods is a 2007 mystery novel by Tana French…The novel won…the 2008 Edgar Award for Best First Novel by an American Author, the 2008 Barry Award for Best First Novel, the 2008 Macavity Award for Best First Mystery Novel, and the 2008 Anthony Award for Best First Novel.

Primary Mystery

“Twenty-two years prior to the novel's events, twelve-year-old Adam [Ryan] and his two best friends failed to come home after playing in the familiar woods bordering their Irish housing estate. A search is organized and the Guard finds Adam shivering, clawing the bark of a nearby tree, with blood on his shoes and slash marks on his back. He is unable to tell them what happened or where his friends are. They are never found and his amnesia holds to the present day. He now goes by his middle name, Rob [Ryan], to avoid media attention and is a detective with the Garda Síochána's Murder Squad.

Secondary Mystery

“The plot of the novel circles around the murder of a twelve-year-old girl, Katy Devlin, whose case Rob and his partner Cassie Maddox are assigned to investigate. The body is found in the same woods where Rob's friends disappeared, at an archaeological dig site, and the coincidence is enough to make Rob nervous, though he insists to his partner that he is fine…” (1).

Primary Mystery Never Solved,

12-year Amnesia Never Resolved

Not only is the mystery of what happened to Adam/Rob Ryan’s two childhood friends never solved, but Ryan’s amnesia for the first twelve years of his life is never resolved. He recovers bits of memory of what happened in the woods when he was twelve, but even most of that is fading away, since those memories “no longer seemed to belong to me” (2, p. 419).

An example of his amnesia was his visit to a church, which somehow evoked a vague sense of familiarity, but “It took me awhile to realize that this was, in fact, for good reason: I had attended Mass here every Sunday for twelve years…” (2, p. 139). That is, he knew it was the church of the community in which he knew he had lived for his first twelve years, but he didn’t actually remember it.

This is like the amnesia described by Frank Conroy in his memoir Stop Time, in which he knows that a certain apartment building is where he had lived as a child until age eight, but he can’t remember having lived there (see past post).

Multiple Personality Type of Amnesia

Only a person with multiple personality could have amnesia for the first twelve years of his life. It suggests that his current personality is not his original personality, but is an alternate personality that took over after he came out of the woods.

Are there any other examples of his having a type of amnesia seen in multiple personality? Yes, at one point he (as an adult) “went for long walks…wondering through the city for hours in something like a trance [until he finally found himself somewhere] with no idea how I got there” (2, p. 174). This is a dissociative fugue, often seen in multiple personality (search “fugue” in this blog).

Unacknowledged Multiple Personality

Although the protagonist of this novel has types of amnesia seen in multiple personality, multiple personality, per se, is never mentioned by any character or narrator. So why is unrecognized, apparently unintentional, multiple personality in this novel? It is an hypothesis of this blog’s Multiple Identity Literary Theory that unacknowledged multiple personality in a novel may reflect the author’s own psychology. (Search “gratuitous multiple personality” in this blog.)

1. "In the Woods.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Woods

2. Tana French. In the Woods. New York, Penguin Books, 2007.

November 6, 2016

Tana French (post 2), Frank Conroy (post 7): In multiple personality, the person’s regular, host personality is usually NOT their original personality.

Since Tana French’s character had amnesia for the first twelve years of his life, and since Frank Conroy had amnesia for the first eight years of his life, I made the obvious inference that their regular personality was not their original personality. The memories of those earlier years were in the memory banks of various earlier personalities, including the original personality.

In a past post, I mentioned that the regular personality may not be the original personality (search “glossary original”), but here is more about it:

“Many multiples have a personality who is identified by the other personalities of the system as the ‘original’ personality from whom all others are derived. Kluft has defined the original personality as ‘the identity which developed just after birth and split off the first new personality in order to help the body survive a severe stress.’ Typically the original is not active and is often described as having been ‘put to sleep’ or otherwise incapacitated at some much earlier point because he or she was not able to cope with the trauma. The original usually does not surface until late in the course of therapy, after much of the trauma has been metabolized by therapeutic abreaction. The host personality is not the original personality in most patients” (1, p. 114).

The original personality is not special. It is often a relatively minor personality. It is NOT the real person. The real person is all the person’s personalities taken as a whole.

1. Frank W. Putnam MD. Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder. New York, The Guilford Press, 1989.