The story sounded appealing enough. A marriage that is about to end. A traumatic past. A ghost of another person who haunts one of the main characters. And O’Farrell as the director of the orchestra. I jumped in without thinking twice.

O’Farrell’s style plus my head equals bliss. The language slays me. I’ve said this with each of O’Farrell’s books and I’ll say it again: There is something about the way she writes that matches the chemicals in my brain and the blood in my veins. I read her sentences, I feel good. Plain and simple. I like the cadence of her language. It’s sophisticated. She does this thing with commas, where she gives you long sentences with cool lists, except they’re not all numbered and fact-ful and left-brained like your typical list. These sentences describe, of course, but they flow, they exude, they gently and swiftly pull together a bunch of thoughts that she has sneakily planted in my head. I’m getting too heady and weird. The only thing you need to remember is that her language does me in.I made some tea....settled in, and was ‘really’ thankful to ALL THE OTHER READERS WHO CAME BEFORE ME..... Principal photography began on 16 August 2010 in Dublin, Ireland. [4] In September, production moved to Michigan where filming took place in Bad Axe, Ubly, Kinde [8] and Sterling Heights. [9] Filming in New Mexico began in October and took place in Bingham, Alamogordo, Carrizozo, Eagle Nest, Red River and Questa. [6] Post-production took place in Rome. [6] I want to feel the edge. It’s funny that the other two O’Farrell books I read had a lot of suspense, because neither one was a thriller. Still, with both of them I was on the edge of my seat most of the time. This book didn’t have suspense, and I missed sitting on the edge. 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 pulling a gun on anyone who ventures up their driveway. Claudette was once the most glamorous and infamous woman in cinema before she staged her own disappearance and retreated to blissful seclusion in an Irish farmhouse. Across the pond, Philip French at The Observer hastens to sing the film’s praises, calling it “irritatingly eccentric” and writing that the film’s conclusion “is as misguided, and nearly as offensive, as the concentration camp sequences of Life Is Beautiful, the movie that brought Oscars to Sorrentino’s compatriot Roberto Benigni. Along the way there are occasional arresting images, but they prove minor compensations.”

a b c "Governor Bill Richardson announces This Must Be The Place Is Shooting in New Mexico" (Press release). New Mexico Film Office. October 30, 2010. Archived from the original on October 30, 2010 . Retrieved October 30, 2010. Weissberg, Jay (2011-05-20). "This Must Be the Place". Variety. Archived from the original on 2011-05-27 . Retrieved 2011-05-20. Daniel has his own history of running away. There's the college girlfriend grieving after an abortion who he left behind in England to return for his father's funeral in New York, and the two kids in California he loses after his divorce. And now, years after marrying Claudette and fathering two more kids, he's off-course again. All provided power supplies will comply with the required standards for the country they are being delivered to. E.G. CE for Europe, UL for the USA etc. The writing is vivid and colourful, the narrative involving and I became attached to the main characters. Ultimately the novel became extremely poignant.

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He thinks of his grief over his sister as an entity that is horribly and painfully attached to him, the way a jellyfish might adhere to your skin or a goitre or an abscess. He pictures it as viscid, amorphous, spiked, hideous to behold. He finds it unbelievable that no one else can see it. Don’t mind that, he would say, it’s just my grief. Please ignore it and carry on with what you were saying” is another example. A ONE OF A KIND NOVEL! A saga of sorts ...but very unique crafting. I’ll definitely read more books by Maggie O’Farrell. Daniel heads off to New York, to his (not at all beloved) father’s 90th birthday party, makes an unplanned detour to California see the son and daughter from whom he has been kept for nine years by a vindictive ex-wife, then detours again to Sussex. What he learns there has such a profound effect on him, it threatens to derail the best thing in his life. 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! This is an ambitious novel - 28 sprawling chapters told by multiple narrators from locations as far-flung as India and Bolivia. Some of these characters I loved. The plight of Daniel's son Niall broke my heart on more than one occasion. Born with a chronic skin disease, he is a caring and thoughtful person who endures more than his fair share of suffering (I've since learned that Maggie O'Farrell's own daughter is affected by a similar ailment, which she wrote poignantly about here). Rosalind is another memorable and likable individual - she imparts some valuable marriage advice to Daniel when he needs it most. Other characters I felt did not deserve their own chapter. Others still I believe we did not learn enough about (Daniel's daughter Phoebe for example).

Maggie O’Farrell’s globe-trotting seventh novel opens in 2010 with Daniel Sullivan, an American linguistics professor in Donegal. Spreading outward from Ireland and reaching into every character’s past and future, this has all O’Farrell’s trademark insight into family and romantic relationships, as well as her gorgeous prose and precise imagery. The disparate locations and the title suggest our nomadic modern condition. It’s the widest scope she has attempted yet; that’s both a good and a bad thing. I did wonder if there were a few too many characters and plot threads. The second fateful encounter is described halfway through the book. It's New York, 1944 - long before Daniel has been born. His mother Teresa, a librarian, is already engaged to his father but on the subway one evening she bumps into Johnny Demarco, a handsome Italian-American gentleman. Their chemistry is undeniable, they both feel it. A few days later, he comes to the building where she works to tell her that he searched every library in Brooklyn to find her. Before he can go on she lets him know that she has promised herself to another. Years pass and they meet again on a ferry - Teresa has a young Daniel with her. Johnny tells her that he thinks about her every day, that he wished he'd grabbed her that afternoon at the library and never let her go. Teresa nods. "We made our choices and we have to live with them," she says. She will play that first subway meeting over in her head almost every day of her life and think about Johnny even on her deathbed. The film was an Italian-majority production with co-producers in France and Ireland. Principal photography began in August, 2010. Filming took place in Ireland and Italy, as well as the states of Michigan, New Mexico, and New York. The film was in competition at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. Movie companies shoot scenes in Sterling Heights". City of Sterling Heights, MI. September 23, 2010. Archived from the original on October 30, 2010 . Retrieved October 30, 2010. This place is taking the alt and comp meds / whole foods baton from the recently closed Iona shop (thanks to long standing Anthropop presence Heidi for that!), it is really worth a visit.a b Hinds, Julie (September 22, 2010). "Musician David Byrne in Detroit to work on film's music". Detroit Free Press. Gannett Company. Archived from the original on February 2, 2014 . Retrieved October 30, 2010.

Loads of characters with character. Complex, unique, robust, vivid—a little list of traits that tell you why I love the characters. I don’t know how in the world O’Farrell creates these guys. I feel like I know them, even the minor ones, and I feel what they are feeling. Daniel and Claudette are flawed for sure (especially Daniel), but I still was drawn to both of them. There are numerous kids and they all are fascinating—strong, loveable, smart, with challenges—and there isn’t an ounce of sap (often authors can’t help throwing in some syrup whenever there are kids). I noticed that she modeled one great kid character after her own daughter, who has a medical condition that she describes in her memoir, I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death. This connection made the character even richer. O’Farrell squints, looks inside people’s heads, and spews out all of her psychological insight. The way O’Farrell weaves everyone’s lives together is nothing short of brilliant. This Must Be The Place by Maggie O’Farrell is a type of book I always enjoy i.e. a saga that spans different time periods and geographical locations. A novel that touches on contemporary themes but is, at its heart, an intelligent examination of human relationships. A novel that is also frequently funny.Reading this author reminds me of exercise; where concentration and focus are key, but the reward is great! I was happy to keep my dictionary nearby. Her technique whereupon each chapter abruptly tangents off on another, seemingly unrelated strand, was challenging, in that I’d been caught up in what had just transpired! However, the author does indeed deliver as the plot unfolds, drawing the reader in more deeply with each departure. Only a writer of extraordinary skill could carry this off. a b c d e f "Interview: Paolo Sorrentino Talks 'This Must Be The Place' | The Irish Film & Television Network". www.iftn.ie . Retrieved 2019-02-15. What follows is somewhat chaotic, but only in the sense that life can be chaotic when measured by the day-to-day frenzies that threaten every time the television is turned on, or one drives on a road traveled by others to a job with more frustrations than can be counted. It’s just life in all its messiness, glory and frustrations.