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Book Review: The Red Tree by Caitlín R. Kiernan
Title: The Red Tree
Author: Caitlín R. Kiernan (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
greygirlbeast)
Published: New York: Roc, 2009
Rating: 5 of 5
Page Count: 380
Total Page Count: 84,806
Text Number: 243
Read Because: fan of the author, given to me by Lyz (sisterite)
Short Review: Author Sarah Crowe flees Atlanta and the end of her recent relationship for an old farmhouse in rural Rhode Island. There she discovers a manuscript written by the house's previous tenant, which chronicles the long and haunting history of a massive red oak growing on the property. As Sarah's own obsession with the red tree grows, she records her experiences in a journal, published posthumously by her former book editor. Kiernan is a master storyteller with a unique voice and a superb handle on the balance between atmosphere, horror, and psychological underpinning. A densely multilayered narrative rich with dream imagery, The Red Tree may be her best book yet. It's haunting, beautiful, terrifying, and absolutely superb. I highly recommend it.
This is a palimpsest of a book where narratives are built within, and rest upon, other narratives. It's also a peon to writing—to the creative process as both a source of and a means of interpreting anxiety. The onion-layered narratives and plentiful literary allusions create a densely multi-layered book. It has a constantly evolving, expanding plot which, combined with Kiernan's superb grasp of pacing and suspense, creates a compelling, page-turning story; the literary allusions, journal-styled narrative, and the dream imagery that gives the horror life create rich emotional and psychological depth. Kiernan is an outright skillful writer, with a lyrical voice, rich imagery, and a willingness to leave a bit of mystery in order to maintain suspense and rouse the reader's imagination and thought. The Red Tree is the rare sort of book which is at once dreamlike yet compulsively readable and—like Poe, Lovecraft, and the other sources that inspire it—finds psychological and emotional depth through horror.
The Red Tree may leave too much unsaid: too much of the horror left for the reader to imagine, and—partly necessitated by the "posthumous" narrative—lingering questions as the book ends. But better a little too much mystery than a glut of unrealistic explanation, and this only fault isn't enough to detract from an incredible book. I find it easy to write critical book reviews, because identifying weaknesses is a rewardingly concrete, if subjective, task. Reviewing wonderful books is harder, in part because it's so difficult to pin down the factor that makes a book truly exceptional. Not its unique voice, strong narrative, or brilliant sense of horror as exhibited here, but its more insubstantial something that makes it greater than the sum of these parts. In my eyes all of Kiernan's work has that factor, but perhaps The Red Tree most of all. Only time will tell, but I believe this has become my favorite of Kiernan's works. It's an absorbing, thoughtful, frightening read, richly atmospheric and haunting in its dreamlike imagery, and exceptional in a sense that I can't quite pin down. I recommend it with complete enthusiasm—as an introduction to Kiernan, and as a new favorite for her longtime fans.
Review posted here on Amazon.com.
My dearsisterite: There could be no better gift. Not only was this book from an author I love, a book that I wanted to read, a book that I didn't own, it turned out to be wonderful. My thoughts are all up in my review of course, but they don't quite convey the way that I curled into inside book and huddled there, absorbed, inundated, awed. I stayed up hours past dawn to finish it. It's odd that a book which is so honestly frightening—there was one scene, the recollection of a dream a woman sitting on a tire swing, where I had to put the book down for a moment and take a slow deep breath—can still hold you to it not just in fear but in love, in appreciation of its haunting beauty.
I wax poetic. What I mean to say is: Thank you. It's a wonderful book. I loved it, I will treasure it, and I imagine I'll reread it often. You chose well.
Author: Caitlín R. Kiernan (
greygirlbeast)Published: New York: Roc, 2009
Rating: 5 of 5
Page Count: 380
Total Page Count: 84,806
Text Number: 243
Read Because: fan of the author, given to me by Lyz (
sisterite)Short Review: Author Sarah Crowe flees Atlanta and the end of her recent relationship for an old farmhouse in rural Rhode Island. There she discovers a manuscript written by the house's previous tenant, which chronicles the long and haunting history of a massive red oak growing on the property. As Sarah's own obsession with the red tree grows, she records her experiences in a journal, published posthumously by her former book editor. Kiernan is a master storyteller with a unique voice and a superb handle on the balance between atmosphere, horror, and psychological underpinning. A densely multilayered narrative rich with dream imagery, The Red Tree may be her best book yet. It's haunting, beautiful, terrifying, and absolutely superb. I highly recommend it.
This is a palimpsest of a book where narratives are built within, and rest upon, other narratives. It's also a peon to writing—to the creative process as both a source of and a means of interpreting anxiety. The onion-layered narratives and plentiful literary allusions create a densely multi-layered book. It has a constantly evolving, expanding plot which, combined with Kiernan's superb grasp of pacing and suspense, creates a compelling, page-turning story; the literary allusions, journal-styled narrative, and the dream imagery that gives the horror life create rich emotional and psychological depth. Kiernan is an outright skillful writer, with a lyrical voice, rich imagery, and a willingness to leave a bit of mystery in order to maintain suspense and rouse the reader's imagination and thought. The Red Tree is the rare sort of book which is at once dreamlike yet compulsively readable and—like Poe, Lovecraft, and the other sources that inspire it—finds psychological and emotional depth through horror.
The Red Tree may leave too much unsaid: too much of the horror left for the reader to imagine, and—partly necessitated by the "posthumous" narrative—lingering questions as the book ends. But better a little too much mystery than a glut of unrealistic explanation, and this only fault isn't enough to detract from an incredible book. I find it easy to write critical book reviews, because identifying weaknesses is a rewardingly concrete, if subjective, task. Reviewing wonderful books is harder, in part because it's so difficult to pin down the factor that makes a book truly exceptional. Not its unique voice, strong narrative, or brilliant sense of horror as exhibited here, but its more insubstantial something that makes it greater than the sum of these parts. In my eyes all of Kiernan's work has that factor, but perhaps The Red Tree most of all. Only time will tell, but I believe this has become my favorite of Kiernan's works. It's an absorbing, thoughtful, frightening read, richly atmospheric and haunting in its dreamlike imagery, and exceptional in a sense that I can't quite pin down. I recommend it with complete enthusiasm—as an introduction to Kiernan, and as a new favorite for her longtime fans.
Review posted here on Amazon.com.
My dear
sisterite: There could be no better gift. Not only was this book from an author I love, a book that I wanted to read, a book that I didn't own, it turned out to be wonderful. My thoughts are all up in my review of course, but they don't quite convey the way that I curled into inside book and huddled there, absorbed, inundated, awed. I stayed up hours past dawn to finish it. It's odd that a book which is so honestly frightening—there was one scene, the recollection of a dream a woman sitting on a tire swing, where I had to put the book down for a moment and take a slow deep breath—can still hold you to it not just in fear but in love, in appreciation of its haunting beauty.I wax poetic. What I mean to say is: Thank you. It's a wonderful book. I loved it, I will treasure it, and I imagine I'll reread it often. You chose well.
It's another oft-cited, so-called weakness of my writing, by the way. All the dream sequences. The "reliance" on dream sequences, and, some of the stuff I've seen said, you'd think I'd invented the blasted things. [....] And I am appalled at authors and critics alike who brand the use of dreams in fiction as a "cheat," used only by writers who cannot "figure out," in a waking narrative, some other means of of saying what he or she has to say.
This attitude denies so much of ... yes, I have digressed, and I am on my goddamned soapbox. But, honestly, honestly ... I have lost track of the times readers have complained that they couldn't follow the ‘story' because they weren't clear what was "really happening" and what was "only" a dream. Right now, from where I fucking sit, it's all a dream, marked by varying depress of lucidity.
[...] Whatever. I did NOT sit down here to complain about readers who cannot be bothered to be literate. Yeats said (and this one I know from memory, so let it stand as my sleep-addled defense, if any defense is needed):I have spread my dreams beneath your feet;
Tread softy because you tread on my dreams.