This Must Be the Place

if you like alternative music this album is for you it has ever thing from beautiful melody's to igg pop and lord im coming by gavin friday is beautifully haunting and of course spiegel i'm spiegel by daniel hope and simon mulligan is mesmerising happiness is beautiful track too and the famous david byrne is in the album a lot too all round good album.highly highly recommend!!!

I loved the beautiful precise language of this book. Maggie O'Farrell's vocabulary is astonishing and apt. The story moves at a perfect pace, and the switch between time, person and place makes it very interesting. Thanks for the good read, I can't wait to try her other books.

Loved the style of writing-lots of characters and moving pieces that you had to put together. Had to pay attention to details of time. Experiences in book were relateable- several layered love stories

Surely this is the book Maggie O’Farrell was meant to write. I’ve read and enjoyed Instructions for a Heatwave, The Hand That First Held Mine, and The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox. But THIS book…oh, this book.

The hub of it is Daniel Sullivan, a damaged American linguist professor, who chances upon a reclusive film star Claudette Wells and her son – a stutterer – while collecting his grandfather’s ashes in Ireland. Not unlike the book Olive Kitteridge, the book proceeds in chapters of interlocking stories; we meet his children, her son, the children they have together, her brother and his wife, her ex, and so forth.

Just about every person we meet is burdened with an onerous challenge. His older son is tortured by eczema; her son emotionally suffers from stuttering. There is infertility, anorexia, symbiosis, alcoholism…yet in a great feat of writing, the characters rise above their condition rather than be defined by it.

These are misplaced and lost characters, searching for their authentic place within themselves. Their searching leads to external travels and internal jaunts (at one point, Daniel thinks, “I am not going to drop myself down, like a speleologist, into those holes and caverns and start digging around,” but of course, he does.) They are searching: for love, for connection, for identity, for affirmation, for understanding. Eventually, they will learn a simple life lesson: “We must pursue what’s in front of us, not what we can’t have or what we have lost. We must grasp what we can reach and hold on, fast.”

I won’t go into the specifics of plot, except to say that the plot organically unfolds in the most satisfying manner. As a reader, I believed in and cared about every single one of these characters. The writing is accessible and elegant. I do believe that most, if not all, chapters could stand alone as short stories, yet the whole is so much greater than the sum of its parts. At times, I marveled how Maggie O’Farrell could capture an emotion – a complex thought – in just a few well-chosen words.

Maggie O’Farrell, to my mind, was always a good writer. With this book, I do believe she’s a great one.

This is one of the most thoughtful, literate books I've read in a long time. The story of a man, Daniel Sullivan, reveals both the good and the bad sides of him, the joys and sorrows and what motivates him. The story is divided into chapters narrated by many different people who have impacted his life in so many ways. The book also skips throughout time from 1944 to 2016 but is quite easy to follow. What emerges is a well developed story of a man.

When Daniel meets Claudette he has one major failed relationship and a failed marriage behind him. He is the father of two children who he rarely sees because of his ex-wife's actions. Claudette is a famous actress who has fled the limelight and is in hiding in rural Donegal, Ireland. She has a son with a stuttering problem. The two fall in love and have two children together. It sounds like a chick lit book but it's not. It's so much more.

Daniel is a linguist and loves words. He loves how they're used and why people select and use the words they do. He teaches in colleges and lectures as a guest speaker. The love of words is apparent throughout the book. The language is resonate and nuanced. It was just pure pleasure.

I first heard of this author when I was on a trip to Bigger, Scotland where she was doing a reading. Always a fine author, she has grown and developed as an author and this is, by far, her best yet. This is a book for people who love a good story told in a delightful, different way. It's a standout.

This is a sprawling novel with a host of characters and locations, but at its core its the story of the marriage. Daniel is an American linguist who meets Claudette while travelling in Ireland. Claudette is an Oscar-winning actress who, unable to cope with fame, broke away from her life and found a remote corner of Ireland to hide away in. For a time they are happy, but Daniel has unresolved issues from a previous relationship that threaten to spill into their present lives.

Maggie O'Farrell's books often feature layered plots, but here she has exceeded herself in terms of scope and also technique. Chapters jump forward and back in time, from 1944 to 2016, as we focus on different people in Daniel and Claudette's lives. One chapter is presented as notes from an auction of Claudette's belongings while another is the transcript of an interview. For the most part the focus is on their family members but occasionally we are introduced to peripheral characters. Somehow it works. The sum of the parts comes together in one glorious whole.

Reading this book, I was sure that I'd be rating it five stars, but somewhere towards the end I realised that something - for me - was missing. Maybe it was the fact that we never learn the specifics of where things went wrong between Daniel and Claudette. We intuit it, we understand what happened, but it's never explicitly laid out for us. Or maybe it's because, in focusing on so many characters, we don't develop a sufficiently strong relationship with the central pair. I realised at some point that I didn't quite care enough about Daniel and Claudette and that Claudette had never really come alive for me. While I fell heavily for some of the peripheral characters and I very much enjoyed the journey that the book took me on, it ended up being a book I really liked and admired rather than one that I truly loved.

Loved, loved this book, gobbled it down in one long, glorious weekend. Bought the book blind on vacation (one of the few the store carried not in French) and was happily blindsided by the characters, structure and plot. Seems to me from reading the reviews just now that to have this experience you must be drawn in by Daniel Sullivan from the first words.

If you read the first scene and your interest remains more in Claudette, the wild setting, intriguing plot or good reviews, you are likely to remain ambivalent because at its heart, this is about a passionate, intensely flawed man coming to pieces when facing his reckoning.

If you love him by then, you’re in the swirl of it w his family, rooting for him, resenting his self-absorption, missing his steadying presence, praying he’ll get his s*** together. If not, if you have a bad reaction to Daniel by this point you’ll feel a bit bullied.

All the rest is interesting. Claudette is epic, the kids are all cool and engaging. The tragedies are emotional, almost everyday normal in contrast to the larger than life background. I wondered about some viewpoints missing, of those Daniel hates, but trust O’Farrell that their static bias wouldn’t help us understand the flow of the story.

The slivers of viewpoints in time come together much like the house in Donegal, a work in progress made suddenly beautiful, after some magical tipping point.

In my mind, I know what scene this is but you should discover it for yourself.

As many other reviewers have stated, this is a character-driven book with a great deal of jumping between time periods and characters to build the story-line. While I traditionally eat this kind of thing up and love the slowly building pressure to try to understand how all this relates, this one didn't jump into the "I love it" category for me.

There was just too much back and forth to the point it was difficult to piece things together - particularly as it related to the when of things. It seems more disjointed rather than well-constructed. The characters are largely well-developed with a nice balance between the two main people. The writer excels at the sense of place and with many different locales throughout, this is a definite positive.

I mostly enjoyed reading this book and felt myself drawn back to it, but it wasn't outstanding. I finished it about a week ago and when i put it down, I was finished. I didn't find myself reflecting back on it or remembering much about what happened. It is good, it is way above the average summer-time book, but doesn't fall into the category of "great."

I wish I could adequately describe how brilliantly Maggie O'Farrell portrays relationships - these love stories. I was first introduced to Maggie O'Farrell's writing in [book:The Hand That First Held Mine|6939939] and I was taken at first page and then all over again when I read [book:The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox|250729]. There is something about how this woman open her novels , something about the writing that draws me in and then her characters and their stories take over my life for a few days.

What was different with this book for me, at first was that I didn't connect with the characters right away - a married couple , Daniel , living in a secluded house in Donegal, Ireland with his wife , Claudette and their children . The narratives alternate between them at first but then there are multiple narrators in different places - New York , London , San Francisco, India, and more , at different times and not in chronological order. Somehow I wasn't confused . I got what was happening when and where but I felt at a distance for a while from these characters . At some point , I think it was from the narrative of Daniel's daughter Phoebe, from his first marriage , onwards that I felt that same intimate, in their thoughts , connection that I felt with characters in other books by O'Farrell . The shifting from past to present felt familiar because it is similar to shifts in time the aforementioned books. It is a technique that affords the reader the ability to stay in the present with the characters while giving us insight into how they got here. But it's more than just the shifting times. There are characters other than Daniel and Claudette that I connected with - their children, but it isn't really their stories . It's how and when they are a part of Daniel and Claudette's past that divulges more and more about them that makes these chapters meaningful. Through all of the time shifts and changes in narrators, you end up with in depth character studies which touch your emotions as well as your intellect.

These complex characters make for complex relationships and this is what made them feel so much like real people and real things in our lives . This is about a couple , about their pasts and the secrets they carry, about remorse, about personal crises , about coping with grief , about how all of this shapes who they are as individuals and who they are together . They are not perfect and there is plenty about them not to like, but yet I couldn't help caring about these two essentially good people and their children . Maggie O'Farrell is a master at creating stories that will keep you feeling and thinking throughout. Highly recommended!

I am grateful to Knopf and FirstToRead program for the opportunity to read this ARC and especially to Maggie O'Farrell who has become one of my favorite authors .

5 stars

This Must Be the Place was a fantastic read. I loved the story line, the characters and the resolution of the various story lines at the end. O’Farrell’s writing is absolutely stunning, and I was sad when the book ended. At times heartbreaking and at times funny, This Must Be the Place is definitely a must read.

I did not have the patience to persevere through the kaleidoscope of this novel. Barely halfway through, during an interval that takes place in 1986, I slammed the book shut and decided to return it for the next person on the waiting list at my town library. Yes, all great stories have a beginning, middle and end, and not necessarily in that order, but the effort required to patch together both time and place in this narrative was more than I could maintain. I've been a longtime fan of O'Farrell's fiction, and do admire much of the writing that got me midway through the book, but cared nothing about these characters or the way their story unfolds in such convoluted and tedious fashion.

When this novel opens, American-born Daniel Sullivan is living in Ireland and working as a linguistics professor and taking a second stab at marriage and fatherhood with a rather extraordinary partner: a very, very reclusive former film star, Claudette Wells, who makes Garbo look like a gregarious extrovert. Suddenly, he learns of the long-ago death of a girlfriend he had in his days as a graduate student in England, and what he discovers and the way Claudette responds triggers a series of events that shake and threaten to shatter the life he has (re)constructed for himself.

Maggie O'Farrell has chosen a distinctive way to approach this story, darting back and forth in time, and moving from one character's perspective to another. We get adult and childhood views from Niall, Daniel's son from his first marriage; the perspective of Lucas, Claudette's brother, and Maeve, his wife. There is a snippet from an auction catalog of memorabilia from Claudette's acting days, and a segment written from the point of view the counselor at a boarding school that her son by a previous relationship, Ari, attends. It's an almost pointillist approach to composing what is, essentially, the story of a relationship and a marriage: all the dots, when you finish the book and stand back from the narrative, form a rounded picture, even if at times you feel that you're whirling around aimlessly while you're in the midst of it all.

It's an interesting experiment, and O'Farrell knows how to weave together a great story. That said, I didn't find all the myriad voices equally compelling, all of the time. Inevitably, some were more convincing than others, and some were stronger some of the time. Others simply blurred together and felt like additional, unnecessary ornamentation. My biggest problem with the novel, however, and the reason that I can't round this up to five stars, was my problem with Claudette's character. Why was Daniel so drawn to such an eccentric reclusive celebrity, beyond her beauty? O'Farrell never made me understand that, or, for that matter, enabled me to grasp just what traumatized her about being a celebrity and caused her reclusiveness, beyond the very basics (evil paparazzi; it should all be about the work, etc.) Being unable to grasp Claudette's appeal, or at least to find her an engaging character, left me unable to appreciate a key part of the novel.

That said, O'Farrell has pulled off a technical tour de force, and explores human emotions -- especially loss and loneliness -- eloquently. Definitely recommended. 4.5 stars.

Loved this book! I especially liked how you saw the central story from a variety of perspectives (loved the assistant's take). Daniel may have been a ratter as a youth but he buckled down- his interaction with his kids was wonderful. His sensitivity to Ari and Niall's struggles was wonderful. I had less of a sense of his relationship with Marithe, who was, of course, quite young during this. Claudette is fascinating. All in all, this was a very enjoyable read. Keep a close eye or you might miss something.

What a fantastic writer! I absolutely adored everything about this novel. O'Farrell writes with an absolute honesty about families and all their flaws and problems that just makes me love her. I love the structure of this novel: alternating places, narrative style, and characters, giving unique glimpses into a family from so many perspectives you start to truly know them. O'Farrell's characters are so real, I do wish I knew them. Highly recommend.

The dazzling new novel from bestselling, award-winning author Maggie O'Farrell, This Must be the Place crosses time zones and continents to reveal an extraordinary portrait of a marriage.

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.

--My thoughts. A deep book. Timelines and voices are all over the place, but once you get used to it, you don't even think twice. I ended up loving the storyline, I just gave it four stars because I was a bit miffed about the depression I felt while reading it. Is this all there really is? At times I loved the characters and at times they were maddening. Have you ever felt that way?

O'Farrell has a way with words that you come to appreciate which I adore, but at times it drove me crazy! Definitely something new for me which I think was nice, but I felt a bit like it could have been smoothed out.

The ending left me wanting something, just something. I think it was how life is sometimes though, marriage is rough.

3.5 stars. The story of a marriage, made interesting by the suspense of the bit-by-bit reveals through shifting timeframes and narrative perspectives. The characters are a bit cliched (man-child husband, passive-aggressive wife) but the emotional story is told well. Overall, a satisfying family saga.

Glancing at the reviews here at the store so far for this book, I feel like I've stumbled upon a Maggie O'Farrell fan club get-together, and I don't belong. It's not that I found no redeeming qualities in the story, but it jumped around so much that I didn't even know at times who I was reading about. Did I encounter those characters before in the book? Claudette, her career, her hiding out, her personality, all left me cold, too. I felt nothing about her until the very last chapter. I liked the last chapter. I also liked all the chapters about the children. In addition, Daniel was interesting part of the time. At other times, though, his life was nothing but a dull blur to me. Thus, three stars, and let me quietly and quickly slip away. This may be the place, but it really isn't the place for me.

I enjoyed this book a lot. It has excellent writing, interesting characters, and fun locales. It's a little choppy because of the alternating narrators per chapter, but I think O'Farrell does a masterful job of weaving it all together, and I think her artistic talent/skills worked to make it cohesive.

There are some mysterioso elements that worked well to keep my interest. The young angsty love part, which came dangerlously close to being too familiar / stereotypical, ended up being crafted with enough flair to keep it real.

There were a few too many children with interesting names for me to keep up with, but that's a small complaint. I'm looking forward to reading more of O'Farrell's works.

I loved this book, found it brilliant, enormously touching, marvelously complex. I have one question: has anyone else noticed the discrepancy in the manner of the death of one of the characters? (I don't want to say which one, for fear of spoiling the narrative for others). But, in one place the death is described as being the result of a car accident, and in another as being the result of a criminal act.

This has quickly become one of my favorite books! It is well-written and the characters are thoughtfully constructed. I highly recommend this book, and am anxious to read other books by Maggie O'Farrell.