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A review by mamimitanaka
The Red Tree by Caitlín R. Kiernan
5.0
About as layered a work of genre fiction as you're going to get...pretty much as near-infinitely interpretable as a Lynch film, as heart-on-sleeve [in a good way] as anything you'd get out of a work this openly indebted to its vastly diverse influences, and still as chilling and upsetting in what it implies and leaves out as much as it shows. I'd go as far as to say that a second read of this is even darker than the first, the second experience for me netted more interest in the realism than the supernatural flourishes...Kiernan never shows their hand precisely, because that would defeat the point, but there's always a sense that there's something much more sinister in a real world context going on here than stories of demonic possession and haunted wildlife. Sarah is clearly running from a violent past, one in which she has potentially been both victim and perpetrator at different times, and the direct inability to take what she says at face value [by her own frequent admission] makes it nearly impossible to deduce her guilt or innocence. The novel takes psychological horror to its extremities, Sarah is essentially gaslighting herself as much as the reader; we're made to inhabit this frightful interior space because the journalistic approach gives no recourse to escape the brain of this very volatile, really quite nasty human being. Staying in the headspace of Sarah this long and this intensely is of course a bold move that will alienate many, but the time spent with her allows for empathy and intimacy that a more detached perspective wouldn't necessarily be able to conjure. This is a character study before it is anything else, and it really pays off.
This novel has always reminded me of "The Blair Witch Project" [which is not surprising considering Kiernan directly cites it as an influence], but the similarities are a lot more about the postmodern application of ideas than the surface level "haunted woodlands" atmosphere that I didn't recognize initially...Sarah and Heather are pretty similar protagonists in the sense that they both filter and understand their deteriorating situations through the use of physical mediums and specifically the Objects in which they filter them, Heather's being the camera and Sarah's being the typewriter specifically. Both utilize the specifics of their mediums to great effect, with the physical object not just being a means of narrative convenience but an extremely important cornerstone of how the characters understand and compartmentalize the narrative on their own terms, and as a result it makes both works feel like they exist independently of an audience because the integration of one's own individual perspective is so carefully crafted in a meta sense. In other words, just like "The Blair Witch Project", "The Red Tree" actually does feel like it could have been someone's journal discovered after their death, intended for no one else's eyes but the writer. Which is also even more metatextually effective, because this novel is clearly autobiographical for Kiernan, who is essentially splurging this very confessional and dark fairy-tale metaphor for her own life to be read and analyzed by nerds like me.
And ofc as a textural work it's just great, Kiernan is clearly incredibly well-read and the diverse bag of influences and references they pull from never feel like they're overplayed or cloying because their central authorial voice is always clear and full of movement and purpose, even when the narrative for all intents and purposes moves at a snail's pace due to most of it being in Sarah's [and by extension Kiernan's] mind. The meta elements, Sarah's character and her obsessions, and the nested story structure allows for an exploration of tons of disparate ideas and avenues of thought, and the rug is never pulled out from under the reader in an undermining way considering Sarah is always transparent that what she says is not the full truth, but just as transparent in that she truly believes she isn't lying either. So you can read it as the story of real, Lovecraftian hauntings, or the story of a woman's mind disintegrating, or the story of cult murder and conspiracy and criminal activity, and then some; no potential explanation takes less or more precedent than the other. It makes the novel inherently rereadable and assures longevity for anyone who is willing to sit with it and accept the narrative deceit on the terms established.
So yeah, along with "The Fisherman" [also kinda a similar novel] this is another one of those genre reads I was worried would cool on me the second time around but only ended up enriching itself and revealing its deeper secrets to me even further. Would definitely recommend this to anyone interested in postmodernism when applied in a genre context, but also would recommend it to anyone invested in character studies because it works just fine on both those levels and then some. Plus Kiernan can fucking write, they're not going on these long and labyrinthine prose poems, but they absolutely understand how the human voice and cadence translates into a written context better than most writers of dialogue I've ever encountered. So yeah this book is a big W and the cover sucks, read it in spite of that because it's worth the investment!
This novel has always reminded me of "The Blair Witch Project" [which is not surprising considering Kiernan directly cites it as an influence], but the similarities are a lot more about the postmodern application of ideas than the surface level "haunted woodlands" atmosphere that I didn't recognize initially...Sarah and Heather are pretty similar protagonists in the sense that they both filter and understand their deteriorating situations through the use of physical mediums and specifically the Objects in which they filter them, Heather's being the camera and Sarah's being the typewriter specifically. Both utilize the specifics of their mediums to great effect, with the physical object not just being a means of narrative convenience but an extremely important cornerstone of how the characters understand and compartmentalize the narrative on their own terms, and as a result it makes both works feel like they exist independently of an audience because the integration of one's own individual perspective is so carefully crafted in a meta sense. In other words, just like "The Blair Witch Project", "The Red Tree" actually does feel like it could have been someone's journal discovered after their death, intended for no one else's eyes but the writer. Which is also even more metatextually effective, because this novel is clearly autobiographical for Kiernan, who is essentially splurging this very confessional and dark fairy-tale metaphor for her own life to be read and analyzed by nerds like me.
And ofc as a textural work it's just great, Kiernan is clearly incredibly well-read and the diverse bag of influences and references they pull from never feel like they're overplayed or cloying because their central authorial voice is always clear and full of movement and purpose, even when the narrative for all intents and purposes moves at a snail's pace due to most of it being in Sarah's [and by extension Kiernan's] mind. The meta elements, Sarah's character and her obsessions, and the nested story structure allows for an exploration of tons of disparate ideas and avenues of thought, and the rug is never pulled out from under the reader in an undermining way considering Sarah is always transparent that what she says is not the full truth, but just as transparent in that she truly believes she isn't lying either. So you can read it as the story of real, Lovecraftian hauntings, or the story of a woman's mind disintegrating, or the story of cult murder and conspiracy and criminal activity, and then some; no potential explanation takes less or more precedent than the other. It makes the novel inherently rereadable and assures longevity for anyone who is willing to sit with it and accept the narrative deceit on the terms established.
So yeah, along with "The Fisherman" [also kinda a similar novel] this is another one of those genre reads I was worried would cool on me the second time around but only ended up enriching itself and revealing its deeper secrets to me even further. Would definitely recommend this to anyone interested in postmodernism when applied in a genre context, but also would recommend it to anyone invested in character studies because it works just fine on both those levels and then some. Plus Kiernan can fucking write, they're not going on these long and labyrinthine prose poems, but they absolutely understand how the human voice and cadence translates into a written context better than most writers of dialogue I've ever encountered. So yeah this book is a big W and the cover sucks, read it in spite of that because it's worth the investment!