Reviews with content warning for Colonisation - The People in the Trees

Reviews tagging 'Colonisation'

The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara

119 reviews

emmap_1109's review against another edition

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adventurous dark slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

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noragoudie's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

I have been so SO conflicted about what to give this book. Firstly, let me clarify that Hanya Yanagihara is a masterful writer. Her prose is unlike anything else I have read, and the book has a lot of important critique to make about scientific exploitation. However, after also reading "A Little Life" I have concluded that I cannot support Yanagihara in good conscience, because all of her books involve trauma befalling gay male characters; they center around their relationships in ways that feel exploitative and totally wrong. If I were exclusively rating the execution and prose of this book it would be a five, but I am not okay with the torture that Yanagihara consistently puts gay men through in her books, and I think it wrongfully fetishizes people's lives; in short, it is excessive.

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heynonnynonnie's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Why did I wait so long to read this book? I received this as a gift years ago when a family member bought it off my slapdash wishlist of books. Even though I've been reading a lot of books recently, I so rarely feel spellbound by one. I'm often looking for a story that I stay up all night to read, but so rarely am I treated to a story that presents so many philosophical questions that I have to take breaks to ponder them. This book rarely left my mind in the weeks it took me to finish it. I'm still parsing through some of my thoughts so here's a collection of fairly unedited thoughts:

My favorite aspect of the book is the character and story progression that is advanced by what all narrators are pointedly ignoring. The author has purposefully written a narrator with little to no empathy, who is then validated by his friend and editor who pops in with many footnotes which provide additional detail, clarification, and often validation. Norton as a main character can be a narcissist, a snob, and unempathetic. All fairly common characteristics for a main characters dealing with the theme of moral relativism, but what's fascinating to read is how Norton is so rarely rebuked, how often he is praised, how linearly pleasing his perspective is, and how readily we can accept his viewpoint if we're not careful. How it takes just one other corroborating, credible source to bolster such a person. There are parts of the story where I am dyinggggggg that no one is pointing out the obvious and desperately reading page after page because I wanted to see him rebuked. For me it's a fun game of keep-away as the narrator sweeps his problems and messes under the rug while the fictional editor points out what lovely details said rug possesses. But rug aside, that's how so many of us actually learn about non-western cultures. There's so much western bias in foundational academic work that it's a constant game of trying to parse through an author's unconscious biases to attempt to unearth useful data. Hanya Yanagihara has recreated that same experience of constantly questioning what is true in this book, and I'm endlessly delighted (and morally mortified) by it.
This game shows up in small details, how Norton stops using U'ivan words and replaces them with his created English counterparts. His initial lack of interest in learning U'ivan despite being on the island and only learning the language once he is in the States and in the lab (where it is artificial and under his control). Norton's tendency to muddle different cultures in a kind of hodgepodge orientalism. Rather than describe a new experience for what it is, he has a tendency to liken it to his idea of what another culture is like, despite not having experienced that culture either. His constant claims of being intellectually curious and how dull everyone else is, despite every single side character having some facet of marginalization and him reducing each person to how well they do their job or how attractive/important their approval is to getting him what he wants. There's just so many examples of how terrible Norton is that it's laughable when a new one crops up. Of course, OF COURSE! he would have this thought.
I'm reluctant to recommend this book. Not only does it feature a charming but morally repugnant narrator who commits a number of atrocities, but I'm not sure everyone will find something meaningful in it because it is an exploration in moral relativism. While I'm of the opinion that the author is cleverly hiding the moral atrocities by averting us away from them (like how a magician keeps your eye away from the hole in the illusion), I can't help but wonder how purposefully writing such a character is different or more meaningful than accidentally writing one? Is it better to have a character who is knowingly written to behave like an unknowingly racist character than to have the unintentionally racist one? For me, I live for books that don't blantly ask these kinds of questions but create an atmosphere that lets the reader raise questions and slowly turn the nuances over in their head. I read this book slowly over several weeks because it brought up so many interesting questions and layered themes that I had to sit with before I was ready to continue. That's not always a fun experience for other readers especially when reading a series of disturbing atrocities.
An assortment of other detractors: the beginning. It's far too long. It takes nearly 300 pages to get to the plot in the blurb. The book has a few pacing issues that could be resolved by skipping a good chunk of Norton's childhood and post-grad studies. But that section is incredibly reminiscent of Steinbeck's style, and I'm reluctant to par it down. The third act has a very different tone and pace than the rest of the book. On one hand, I can see this as the illusion fading as the reader becomes more and more disenchanted. On the other hand, I still think it could be written in a way that makes that more clear. I'm a little sad that there's not more discussion on the different cultures on U'ivu. Norton's perspective limits that, and while it is very much the point it's still a little disappointing, but many of the footnotes do provide additional color outside of Norton's perspective.

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