Sneak Peek: Tana French Podcast

Jo Reed: Well, one of the most memorable scenes of The Search, I think, takes place at the pub, where Cal, our American protagonist, is drinking poteen or moonshine with the local lads and on one hand, it’s this singing, warm, friendly Irish bar storytelling scene but Cal is also reading the subtext, which is really quite different.

Tana French: Oh, yeah. Look, it’s Ireland. Some of the most crucial things always take place in the pub and also, one of the things that for whatever reasons, which I think may be rooted in a colonial past, the Irish are very good at subtext. It’s one of the national talents. Things are often expressed very indirectly and especially in small towns, the things people say to you and the things that are going on underneath may be very, very different and you have to learn how to read the codes and how to crack the cyphers in order to understand what’s being said to you and of course, Cal is brand new here. He doesn’t know any of the codes, any of the cyphers. He’s feeling his way in the dark trying to pick them up as he goes along and in this scene in the pub, where they are all off their faces on poteen that somebody made somewhere up in the mountains in his own illegal still, he’s trying-- he’s aware that something very crucial is being said to him, that he’s being warned in some way, but he’s not fluent enough in this language of code and subtext to pick up on the nuances of what exactly is he being warned against and he’s trying to figure out what it is and trying to not put a foot wrong and all he can really work out is that it is on the one hand a warning, but it’s on the other hand, an offer. You can be accepted here. You can be welcome here, but you need to follow the rules, but we’re not necessarily going to tell you what they are.