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A review by bookwyrm55
The Red Tree by Caitlín R. Kiernan
5.0
There are few things that terrify me more than the thought of my brain ceasing to function properly. I can imagine dozens of truly horrifying situations and experiences I might be forced to endure, but I know from simple moments where I can’t remember a name, or a word that I should be intimately familiar with, that if I had to question my own sanity, or worry that others were questioning it, I’d be off the ledge and free-falling pretty quickly.
In The Red Tree, Caitlin Kiernan delivers exactly that fear through the words and thoughts of her protagonist, Sarah Crowe. Sarah has left behind a life crippled by the suicide of her lover, whose name we never learn because when she writes about her, she calls her by another name. She has retreated to a small house in Rhode Island to write her next novel and get herself together. The author also manages to make you care that both of these things, in fact, happen. The author is not to be trusted.
Sarah finds that the previous tenant of her new retreat was an author – a parapsychologist researching the murky history surrounding a huge Red Oak tree. That tree stands within easy site of the windows of her new home, and the history is a crazy one filled with hints of ancient evil, sacrifice, and lycanthrope. That previous tenant committed suicide. There’s a lot of that in the novel. Sarah finds his manuscript hidden in a basement that is not exactly a basement…sometimes.
This is the point in a review I hate. I have a lot to say about this book, but a lot of what I’d like to say gives away too much. The point is, everything that happens to Sarah feels very real. You get an almost Lovecraftian sensation of worlds overlapping at some mystic portal. You can feel the ancient “ley lines” rippling beneath the foundations of the old house, and through the roots of the tree. The stories, the reports of strange happenings surrounding this arboreal menace throughout history, add to the sensation of other-worldliness, and strengthen either the reality of the events in the book – or the foundations of the insanity invading Sarah’s brain.
The thing is that there’s a very fine line involved in this story. It’s possible that it’s the story of an eroding mind, locked away and unable to cope with a string of events that began decades earlier when the protagonist witnessed a traumatic event. It’s also possible that it’s a detailed narration of one person’s encounter with unknown, unknowable forces. There may be a girl named Amanda, and another named Constance…or it might be a story written and typed by an author no longer in any type of contact with reality. It might be the rendering of insanity into words, created in solitude.
And at its core, that’s what this book is about. Solitude. Loneliness. Different characters deal with these issues throughout the novel, all through the filter of Sarah’s mind and the words she types. These words include a story she doesn’t even remember writing, and yet believes that she did write. We never know if she did, or did not, if the events in the story are real, or merely a version of some similar event in Sarah’s past – the relationship that drove her to isolation and despair – it’s impossible for the reader to tell.
The true terror is in the fact that, in the case of many things that either happen or do not happen during the course of the novel, the protagonist finds herself unable to separate one from the other. If it’s all happening, the world as she knows it is a lie. If it’s not happening, she’s going (or has already gone) insane. Even the source of that insanity – external from the oak tree or internal – is in question. As I said, the author is not to be trusted. The book, though? It’s amazing.
I’m not going to belabor a point that I have covered in the past, or that others have covered more eloquently. Genre fiction is littered with mediocrity. It’s much easier for an “okay” author to write weird fiction and get away with it. Following trends and writing to the cliché of the day is the norm. Caitlin Kiernan marches to the beat of her own drummer. She is literate, educated, and in touch with the levels of her mind that shift images to words with precision and power. This is not a “horror” novel, it’s a Caitlin Kiernan novel – and to my way of thinking that’s a much more precious thing. There are only a handful of authors of whom you’ll hear me say that.
I highly recommend this novel to anyone, but in particular to fans of Lovecraft or Ramsey Campbell, The characters are very real, but the world is surreal and untrustworthy enough that it might take multiple readings to get everything straight in your mind.
In The Red Tree, Caitlin Kiernan delivers exactly that fear through the words and thoughts of her protagonist, Sarah Crowe. Sarah has left behind a life crippled by the suicide of her lover, whose name we never learn because when she writes about her, she calls her by another name. She has retreated to a small house in Rhode Island to write her next novel and get herself together. The author also manages to make you care that both of these things, in fact, happen. The author is not to be trusted.
Sarah finds that the previous tenant of her new retreat was an author – a parapsychologist researching the murky history surrounding a huge Red Oak tree. That tree stands within easy site of the windows of her new home, and the history is a crazy one filled with hints of ancient evil, sacrifice, and lycanthrope. That previous tenant committed suicide. There’s a lot of that in the novel. Sarah finds his manuscript hidden in a basement that is not exactly a basement…sometimes.
This is the point in a review I hate. I have a lot to say about this book, but a lot of what I’d like to say gives away too much. The point is, everything that happens to Sarah feels very real. You get an almost Lovecraftian sensation of worlds overlapping at some mystic portal. You can feel the ancient “ley lines” rippling beneath the foundations of the old house, and through the roots of the tree. The stories, the reports of strange happenings surrounding this arboreal menace throughout history, add to the sensation of other-worldliness, and strengthen either the reality of the events in the book – or the foundations of the insanity invading Sarah’s brain.
The thing is that there’s a very fine line involved in this story. It’s possible that it’s the story of an eroding mind, locked away and unable to cope with a string of events that began decades earlier when the protagonist witnessed a traumatic event. It’s also possible that it’s a detailed narration of one person’s encounter with unknown, unknowable forces. There may be a girl named Amanda, and another named Constance…or it might be a story written and typed by an author no longer in any type of contact with reality. It might be the rendering of insanity into words, created in solitude.
And at its core, that’s what this book is about. Solitude. Loneliness. Different characters deal with these issues throughout the novel, all through the filter of Sarah’s mind and the words she types. These words include a story she doesn’t even remember writing, and yet believes that she did write. We never know if she did, or did not, if the events in the story are real, or merely a version of some similar event in Sarah’s past – the relationship that drove her to isolation and despair – it’s impossible for the reader to tell.
The true terror is in the fact that, in the case of many things that either happen or do not happen during the course of the novel, the protagonist finds herself unable to separate one from the other. If it’s all happening, the world as she knows it is a lie. If it’s not happening, she’s going (or has already gone) insane. Even the source of that insanity – external from the oak tree or internal – is in question. As I said, the author is not to be trusted. The book, though? It’s amazing.
I’m not going to belabor a point that I have covered in the past, or that others have covered more eloquently. Genre fiction is littered with mediocrity. It’s much easier for an “okay” author to write weird fiction and get away with it. Following trends and writing to the cliché of the day is the norm. Caitlin Kiernan marches to the beat of her own drummer. She is literate, educated, and in touch with the levels of her mind that shift images to words with precision and power. This is not a “horror” novel, it’s a Caitlin Kiernan novel – and to my way of thinking that’s a much more precious thing. There are only a handful of authors of whom you’ll hear me say that.
I highly recommend this novel to anyone, but in particular to fans of Lovecraft or Ramsey Campbell, The characters are very real, but the world is surreal and untrustworthy enough that it might take multiple readings to get everything straight in your mind.