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The Red Tree Caitlin R Kiernan Books

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The Red Tree Caitlin R Kiernan Books

This hurt to read, not because it was bad, but because it was so, so good.

Some stories carry weight because they stir our emotions, some are examples of the artist at the top of their game, and some simply know how plot and characters work and demonstrate that. With "The Red Tree", Kiernan shows that she can do all three. It is so sad and complex and difficult and impure and true that I almost wished it was written poorly so I could've dismissed it, put it down, and avoided this emotional journey but I am a new person because of it. I feel like reading this book is walking through fire.

I was especially pleased to read a novel with such female emphasis and interest that managed to be neither a pornographic caricature or an unreasonably lofty ideal. These are real people, for better or worse.

I've been a fan of Aunt Beast for some time but with this novel as well as "The Drowning Girl", she really blew herself out of the water.


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The Red Tree Caitlin R Kiernan Books Reviews

Caitlin R. Kiernan, surely one of America's finest (and darkest) writers, returns with "The Red Tree"; and she's coming from a new direction. Using first-person narration for the first time insofar as I know, she's created what's apparently a semi-autobiographical novel, and she distances it from herself by tagging it as a novel by Sarah Crowe and Charles L. Harvey. And if you're worried that her use of the first person will render her prose less shimmering, poetic, and impressionistic than in her previous works, well--I'm here to dispel those worries. Her prose glows. It glows darkly, but it glows.

The novel's also the author's first middle-aged novel. She spun into the literary world more than a decade ago with "Silk," and with its grunge milieu and the unforgettable Spyder it's very much the work of a young woman. And in that and her subsequent novels, she created a cast of characters she kept returning to. None of them appear here, although Lewis Carroll's poem "The Lobster Quadrille," as usual, puts in an appearance.

The author, now in early middle age, appears to have shifted her concerns and seems here to be looking back to see how she got to this point in her life, and maybe she's wondering where she's going next. It could be this novel's just a marker along her road to . . . where?

Anyway, what Ms. Kiernan's brought forth here is remarkable enough. She sets out to upset you, and succeeds perfectly. Her stand-in twice-removed for herself, Sarah Crowe, is the lonely writer's-blocked author who moves to Lovecraft country from the south after the death of her lover "Amanda," and the late Charles Harvey is the creator of a partially complete manuscript Sarah finds in the spooktastic basement of the house she's rented (he was the previous tenant).

The structure of the tale is cleverly laid out in the "preface" supposedly written by Sarah's editor. Her firm is publishing, in lieu of a contracted novel, Sarah's journal. In that preface she reveals that Sarah's died and that her death has been ruled a suicide. The journal--batted out on a mechanical typewriter Sarah finds in the basement (it dates back to the early 1940s) tells the tale of the last few months of Sarah's life, including her dreams and her encounters with her housemate Constance, interwoven with portions of Charles's ms., also left incomplete at his death. The Red Tree of the title is a red oak only 75 yards from the house . . . or is it?

It's gripping and scary, and subject to different interpretations. And maybe when you've finished you'll scour your place to make certain that no red oak leaves have mysteriously gained entry. And you probably won't be taking shelter under a red oak anytime soon.
There are no spoilers in this review.

For Halloween last year, Dan gave me my first Caitlin Kiernan book, Threshold. I enjoyed it, so when I got my credit card rewards this month, I bought another Kiernan novel. I pretty much chose it at random. So here comes my review of The Red Tree!

It's a good thing that Dan warned me to expect very Lovecraftian reads. The Red Tree, like Threshold, will not deliver answers or even ever tell the reader what the hell was going on. We're just along for the scary ride. Understanding and expecting that makes Kiernan a much better read.

The characters (or maybe that should be singular) didn't really hit home for me, even though the main one was an author. She's a very bitter, very pessimistic woman... not unlike myself, really, but not the parts I really like to read about.

However, that leads me into perhaps the most interesting part of The Red Tree - the writing. The novel is written as a journal kept by the author. It's introduced by her fictional editor, who has a cold, dry style. This leads into the author's own voice. Then she finds another manuscript in the basement and enters pages from it, all written in a scholar's voice. The scholar, in turn, references and quotes older, more folksy and archaic texts.

It's interesting to read and must have been a challenge to write. As the author loses her mind, the different styles bleed together, making it hard to differentiate who is writing and adding very well to the sense of growing insanity. Well done!

It was creepy and a good read, full of eerie tension and surprisingly frighting imagery. I feel I must warn readers, however, that The Red Tree is a bit sexually explicit. The sex scenes are short and don't go into protracted detail, but Kiernan pulls no punches.
This hurt to read, not because it was bad, but because it was so, so good.

Some stories carry weight because they stir our emotions, some are examples of the artist at the top of their game, and some simply know how plot and characters work and demonstrate that. With "The Red Tree", Kiernan shows that she can do all three. It is so sad and complex and difficult and impure and true that I almost wished it was written poorly so I could've dismissed it, put it down, and avoided this emotional journey but I am a new person because of it. I feel like reading this book is walking through fire.

I was especially pleased to read a novel with such female emphasis and interest that managed to be neither a pornographic caricature or an unreasonably lofty ideal. These are real people, for better or worse.

I've been a fan of Aunt Beast for some time but with this novel as well as "The Drowning Girl", she really blew herself out of the water.