What does it do to someone, being a lucky little prick? What does it do to his sense of empathy, his awareness of the world around him? That's one of the many questions French explores in The Wych Elm. “You’re a lucky little prick, is what you are,” says Dec. It was the same at their private school, where Dec was a scholarship pupil and lived in fear of getting expelled for the same pranks that Toby just shrugged off. He points out that Toby was able to stay calm when he talked to his boss because, as someone living in a flat bought for him by his parents, he knew he’d be fine whatever happened. Why? “Because I’m a charmer,” says Toby, half joking, half not. But Toby has managed to talk his way into a second chance. When their boss found out about the deception, it could have been the end of Toby’s career. Toby works for an art gallery, where he recently found himself embroiled in a colleague’s attempt to present his own work as that of a mysterious anonymous working-class Dublin street artist. In the opening scene of Tana French’s superb new novel, a young man called Toby Hennessy is having a drink with two old friends.
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