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How to think you’ve murdered someone and get away with it.
Susan and Valerie discuss The Witch Elm by Tana French — a mystery about memory, privilege, and a dead kid in a tree. Also: unreliable narrators, cousin solidarity, hoodie string murder, and what makes a book worth finishing.
Show notes:
- Pumpkin and Bean is a rejected podcast name. My Mom used to call me ‘Pumpkin’, I used to call Valerie ‘Bean’. We’ve often wondered, “Why vegetables?”
The Witch Elm
The City We Became
- The taxonomy of crime
- Breaking and Entering: Unlawfully enters a building or structure.
- Burglary: Breaks into a house to steal — no one’s home.
- Aggravated Burglary: Breaks into a house, someone is home — they’re carrying a weapon.
- Robbery: Someone is home, and the burglar threatens them with violence to get valuables.
- Aggravated Assault (or Aggravated Robbery): Burglar stabs or shoots the resident while escaping.
- The novel draws inspiration from a real-life news article about four boys who discovered a skeleton in a Wych Elm in 1943, leading to the graffiti “Who put Bella in the Witch Elm?” -so you can indeed, fit a whole body in a Witch Elm, however, the 1943 body in the witch elm was a 5 foot lady.
The Invisible Man
- Autoerotic Asphyxiation – asphyxia that results from intentionally strangling oneself while masturbating, in an attempt to heighten sexual pleasure by limiting the oxygen supply to the brain.
Books with unreliable narrators
Gone Girl
Kill the Next One