Review of This Must Be The Place

by Maggie O’Farrell

PUBLISHED in 2016, This Must Be the Place is the 7th novel by award-winning author Maggie O’Farrell. The story follows Daniel Sullivan, a Linguistics Professor with a complex past, and Claudette Wells, an actress who disappeared at the height of her fame and moved to a remote farmhouse in Ireland, where the pair meet and attempt to leave their troubled pasts behind. Nonetheless, their old identities can never be entirely forgotten, and are unveiled to the reader by an ensemble of unexpected narrators, jumping between time periods and locations.

In the novel, O’Farrell confronts themes of identity, connection, and relationships.