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A review by naokamiya
The Red Tree by Caitlín R. Kiernan
5.0
CW:
Holy shit this was immensely fucking engrossing from the very first page to the very end and probably has finally solidified Kiernan as one of my favorite authors. My familiarity with their work has til now been entirely in short story format, but I've long considered them to be one of the most original and skilled contemporary prose stylists in the weird fiction genre based on the quality of their shorts alone; if anything is to be gleamed from "The Red Tree", it's that Kiernan's writing may flourish even more in novel format. This is intellectually and philosophically stimulating, cleverly constructed and detailed with the eye of a poet, and unexpectedly for me (as I very rarely expect to be frightened by horror, despite my love for the genre), genuinely fucking chilling. There is a goldmine of thematic and textural material to be mined from here, far more than I could possibly fit into a review after only a single reading, and this is a work that seems designed to reward rereads. But, regardless, here goes. (Also, spoilers abound; I find it difficult to talk about what I love about this book without discussing it in detail. I will try to keep actual story spoilers to a minimum, but with this kind of work it may prove difficult.)
The narrative of "The Red Tree" is built on several layers of metatextual deceit. At the beginning of the novel we experience the narration of a documentarian who investigates the death of Sarah Crowe, a speculative fiction novelist who had moved up to New England from Atlanta and rented a house on a storied property in rural Rhode Island known as the Wight Farm, where she would eventually commit suicide (congruent with a string of suicides related to former occupants of the home, dating back centuries). Said (unnamed) documentarian archives Sarah Crowe's diary stretching from the beginning of her short-lived stay at the home to the final entry before her death, and it is within these journal entries where we learn about Sarah as a person and the bizarre, inexplicable events preceding her suicide. Another layer to the foundation occurs in Sarah's entries proper, revolving around her discovery of an unfinished manuscript by the home's most recent tenant (also dead), which contains references to the mysterious red oak several yards into the property which has supposedly been the site of hysteria and allegedly preternatural intrigue for generations. Said manuscript is filled with references to historical events, excerpts from fictional and non-fictional works pertaining in some way to the folklore, citations existent and nonexistent, etc. Sarah occasionally pitches in to write down excerpts from the manuscript, and sometimes adds her own editor's notes, to contextualize further her experiences on the property and her life.
These are, of course, seasoned attributes of metafictional works, and seeing as clever and sharply conceived as its inclusion is, on its own this would make for an interesting novel. But there are further layers of metatext and narrative disorientation at work here, ones that go beyond sheer literary form. For one thing, Sarah admits very early on that she has no aversion to embellishment and that she will make things up or leave things out depending on what she is trying to express/contextualize, and that she is like anyone in that she cannot reasonably expect her memory to be faultless when recounting events. In addition to this, she's in an extremely bad spot in her life (as one could assume via her suicide), between the recent death of her girlfriend (with whom she had a volatile, toxic relationship), lack of connections and isolation, and a novel that just isn't getting written. Alone, this could be enough to make one wonder at the legitimacy of the disturbing supernatural experiences she has on the Wight Farm; the extent of how much of it is real and how much is a Sarah filling in the blanks with fantasy.
But going even further, there's also Sarah's fiction, and her status as a struggling novelist in general, to take into account. We know that Sarah is intimately familiar with New England and its local histories, traditions, and folklore, and also of the writers of its locale such as Lovecraft, whom she takes inspiration from in her writing, including many other classic authors of "weird fiction" (Machen is also mentioned several times as are others). The supernatural experiences she describes are distinctly odd and distinctly New England, suffused with that sense of regional awe and disquiet that comes in its wilderness and local legends. She even transcribes a short story she has written (unknowingly; you will know what that means in the book's context) into her diary, and in this story-in-a-story we can see where her literary influences lie. In context of Sarah's admittance to embellishment and exaggeration, are the unexplainable events detailed in her journal, is she deliberately creating a constructed fiction to act as some way to explain and give weight to her inner demons? Or is it all really happening, albeit with some lies and half-truths, and there's really no way to get an accurate map on what the real story of Sarah Crowe is, by the very nature of not only an unreliable narrator but, as Sarah posits at one point in the book, the very presence of any first person narrator?
But it gets even deeper than that (and it's only as I'm writing this do the "Alice in Wonderland" quotes at one point in the novel make a bit more sense). There's no doubt that, in some senses, the character of Sarah Crowe is autobiographical - the deep New England knowledge and the interest in archaeology and geography, the studenthood of Lovecraft and weird fiction, the struggles with the writing process - all things that Kiernan has talked about both personally and can be inferred through their previous works of fiction. The short story Sarah transcribes, "Pony", is itself a work Kiernan had written years before (and includes many of their recognizable trademarks) and included as part of this novel's metanarrative (and there's also a nod to Kiernan's anthology "The Ammonite Violin", which here is also written by Sarah and which she briefly finds a copy of in the local library). So is Sarah Crowe, in fact, Caitlin R. Kiernan? Is Kiernan constructing a layered story of fiction-on-fiction to come to terms with their writer's block and other issues? Very rarely do I find it acceptable to psychoanalyze artists (in fact I often find it repugnant), but here Kiernan is seemingly inviting this psychoanalysis, if not necessarily for others to do so as much as for theirself to do so. There's no doubting that, the more the layers of this novel are unraveled (in lieu of this I like the repeated mentions that the typewriter paper Sarah uses to write the diary is "onionskin", just as an aside), that this is a highly personal work and at least partially based on the author's own life. Reality and fiction weave over and into each other in a languid pattern of deceit and uncertainty, from the may-or-may-not-be reality of the supernatural phenomena to a metatext stretching as far as to include the real life of the author themselves. Reality is as fluid as fiction and in more senses than we realize, they may even be completely inseparable.
And even setting aside all that, regardless of how one personally interprets the reality or unreality of the events in the novel, I have to emphasize what I said in the beginning that this book, for me at least, is seriously fucking creepy. The supernatural events, however much is fabricated or however much is truthful, are illustrated with an unbelievable amount of sinister unknowability and dread, and add that to the paranoia of uncertainty and not knowing what to believe as well as Kiernan's incredible talent for poetic detail, and the imagery in this novel becomes seriously fucking powerful at establishing itself. The atmosphere of isolated, backwoods New England, in the vein of all the best stylists of weird fiction and all the best northeastern folk tales, is conjured masterfully by Kiernan's pen; the wilderness and its mysteries are chilling, beckoning Sarah and the reader to discover just what may or may not lie just beyond the bounds of perception. I got chills - actual goosebumps - at multiple scenes throughout this book, just because Kiernan is so skilled at tension and mining the fear out of the unknown, and every bizarre encounter in the book has so much weight that, if Sarah is completely fabricating it, she is doing an incredibly convincing job, where it's so vivid I myself would go "she can't be making this up". One scene in particular, involving a childhood memory of Sarah's involving an inexplicable encounter in the woods at a lake, seriously made it hard for me to sleep when I read it in the early hours of the morning before the sun had fully risen. I don't think I've ever read a novel that's made me as jumpy as this one and it's a very rare treat where I can come across a work of fiction that actually gets under my skin, especially one that does so with as much layers to that disquiet that this one provides.
This is one of the most engaging full length weird fiction novels I have thus far encountered and it has absolutely cemented my vague plans to read everything Kiernan has released. There's even more I want to say here from the poignant and empathetic grappling with Sarah's mental health, her vividly detailed relationships, and Kiernan's captivating lyrical prose style, but I think I'm going to save those discussions for further readings of this novel, because this book absolutely invites them, and this by a longshot won't be the only time I engage with this. I also suppose I have to mention the cover art, which is terrible, but I assume in no way Kiernan's decision, so I will just say this: ignore the misleading cover and engage with this for what it is, because this is some of the most vivacious and intelligent weird fiction you're ever going to find. Read it, read it, read it, and then read everything Kiernan has ever written, because they are at the absolute top of the line in contemporary speculative fiction.
"We speak in whimsy, or to children, and it all appears so uncomplicated, no matter how outlandish or monstrous a given scene may be. Me, I can't even seem to manage the tongue of madness without constant recourse to the perspective of reason, though I know it's long since ceased to be pertinent to my situation and circumstances."
Spoiler
suicideHoly shit this was immensely fucking engrossing from the very first page to the very end and probably has finally solidified Kiernan as one of my favorite authors. My familiarity with their work has til now been entirely in short story format, but I've long considered them to be one of the most original and skilled contemporary prose stylists in the weird fiction genre based on the quality of their shorts alone; if anything is to be gleamed from "The Red Tree", it's that Kiernan's writing may flourish even more in novel format. This is intellectually and philosophically stimulating, cleverly constructed and detailed with the eye of a poet, and unexpectedly for me (as I very rarely expect to be frightened by horror, despite my love for the genre), genuinely fucking chilling. There is a goldmine of thematic and textural material to be mined from here, far more than I could possibly fit into a review after only a single reading, and this is a work that seems designed to reward rereads. But, regardless, here goes. (Also, spoilers abound; I find it difficult to talk about what I love about this book without discussing it in detail. I will try to keep actual story spoilers to a minimum, but with this kind of work it may prove difficult.)
The narrative of "The Red Tree" is built on several layers of metatextual deceit. At the beginning of the novel we experience the narration of a documentarian who investigates the death of Sarah Crowe, a speculative fiction novelist who had moved up to New England from Atlanta and rented a house on a storied property in rural Rhode Island known as the Wight Farm, where she would eventually commit suicide (congruent with a string of suicides related to former occupants of the home, dating back centuries). Said (unnamed) documentarian archives Sarah Crowe's diary stretching from the beginning of her short-lived stay at the home to the final entry before her death, and it is within these journal entries where we learn about Sarah as a person and the bizarre, inexplicable events preceding her suicide. Another layer to the foundation occurs in Sarah's entries proper, revolving around her discovery of an unfinished manuscript by the home's most recent tenant (also dead), which contains references to the mysterious red oak several yards into the property which has supposedly been the site of hysteria and allegedly preternatural intrigue for generations. Said manuscript is filled with references to historical events, excerpts from fictional and non-fictional works pertaining in some way to the folklore, citations existent and nonexistent, etc. Sarah occasionally pitches in to write down excerpts from the manuscript, and sometimes adds her own editor's notes, to contextualize further her experiences on the property and her life.
These are, of course, seasoned attributes of metafictional works, and seeing as clever and sharply conceived as its inclusion is, on its own this would make for an interesting novel. But there are further layers of metatext and narrative disorientation at work here, ones that go beyond sheer literary form. For one thing, Sarah admits very early on that she has no aversion to embellishment and that she will make things up or leave things out depending on what she is trying to express/contextualize, and that she is like anyone in that she cannot reasonably expect her memory to be faultless when recounting events. In addition to this, she's in an extremely bad spot in her life (as one could assume via her suicide), between the recent death of her girlfriend (with whom she had a volatile, toxic relationship), lack of connections and isolation, and a novel that just isn't getting written. Alone, this could be enough to make one wonder at the legitimacy of the disturbing supernatural experiences she has on the Wight Farm; the extent of how much of it is real and how much is a Sarah filling in the blanks with fantasy.
But going even further, there's also Sarah's fiction, and her status as a struggling novelist in general, to take into account. We know that Sarah is intimately familiar with New England and its local histories, traditions, and folklore, and also of the writers of its locale such as Lovecraft, whom she takes inspiration from in her writing, including many other classic authors of "weird fiction" (Machen is also mentioned several times as are others). The supernatural experiences she describes are distinctly odd and distinctly New England, suffused with that sense of regional awe and disquiet that comes in its wilderness and local legends. She even transcribes a short story she has written (unknowingly; you will know what that means in the book's context) into her diary, and in this story-in-a-story we can see where her literary influences lie. In context of Sarah's admittance to embellishment and exaggeration, are the unexplainable events detailed in her journal, is she deliberately creating a constructed fiction to act as some way to explain and give weight to her inner demons? Or is it all really happening, albeit with some lies and half-truths, and there's really no way to get an accurate map on what the real story of Sarah Crowe is, by the very nature of not only an unreliable narrator but, as Sarah posits at one point in the book, the very presence of any first person narrator?
But it gets even deeper than that (and it's only as I'm writing this do the "Alice in Wonderland" quotes at one point in the novel make a bit more sense). There's no doubt that, in some senses, the character of Sarah Crowe is autobiographical - the deep New England knowledge and the interest in archaeology and geography, the studenthood of Lovecraft and weird fiction, the struggles with the writing process - all things that Kiernan has talked about both personally and can be inferred through their previous works of fiction. The short story Sarah transcribes, "Pony", is itself a work Kiernan had written years before (and includes many of their recognizable trademarks) and included as part of this novel's metanarrative (and there's also a nod to Kiernan's anthology "The Ammonite Violin", which here is also written by Sarah and which she briefly finds a copy of in the local library). So is Sarah Crowe, in fact, Caitlin R. Kiernan? Is Kiernan constructing a layered story of fiction-on-fiction to come to terms with their writer's block and other issues? Very rarely do I find it acceptable to psychoanalyze artists (in fact I often find it repugnant), but here Kiernan is seemingly inviting this psychoanalysis, if not necessarily for others to do so as much as for theirself to do so. There's no doubting that, the more the layers of this novel are unraveled (in lieu of this I like the repeated mentions that the typewriter paper Sarah uses to write the diary is "onionskin", just as an aside), that this is a highly personal work and at least partially based on the author's own life. Reality and fiction weave over and into each other in a languid pattern of deceit and uncertainty, from the may-or-may-not-be reality of the supernatural phenomena to a metatext stretching as far as to include the real life of the author themselves. Reality is as fluid as fiction and in more senses than we realize, they may even be completely inseparable.
And even setting aside all that, regardless of how one personally interprets the reality or unreality of the events in the novel, I have to emphasize what I said in the beginning that this book, for me at least, is seriously fucking creepy. The supernatural events, however much is fabricated or however much is truthful, are illustrated with an unbelievable amount of sinister unknowability and dread, and add that to the paranoia of uncertainty and not knowing what to believe as well as Kiernan's incredible talent for poetic detail, and the imagery in this novel becomes seriously fucking powerful at establishing itself. The atmosphere of isolated, backwoods New England, in the vein of all the best stylists of weird fiction and all the best northeastern folk tales, is conjured masterfully by Kiernan's pen; the wilderness and its mysteries are chilling, beckoning Sarah and the reader to discover just what may or may not lie just beyond the bounds of perception. I got chills - actual goosebumps - at multiple scenes throughout this book, just because Kiernan is so skilled at tension and mining the fear out of the unknown, and every bizarre encounter in the book has so much weight that, if Sarah is completely fabricating it, she is doing an incredibly convincing job, where it's so vivid I myself would go "she can't be making this up". One scene in particular, involving a childhood memory of Sarah's involving an inexplicable encounter in the woods at a lake, seriously made it hard for me to sleep when I read it in the early hours of the morning before the sun had fully risen. I don't think I've ever read a novel that's made me as jumpy as this one and it's a very rare treat where I can come across a work of fiction that actually gets under my skin, especially one that does so with as much layers to that disquiet that this one provides.
This is one of the most engaging full length weird fiction novels I have thus far encountered and it has absolutely cemented my vague plans to read everything Kiernan has released. There's even more I want to say here from the poignant and empathetic grappling with Sarah's mental health, her vividly detailed relationships, and Kiernan's captivating lyrical prose style, but I think I'm going to save those discussions for further readings of this novel, because this book absolutely invites them, and this by a longshot won't be the only time I engage with this. I also suppose I have to mention the cover art, which is terrible, but I assume in no way Kiernan's decision, so I will just say this: ignore the misleading cover and engage with this for what it is, because this is some of the most vivacious and intelligent weird fiction you're ever going to find. Read it, read it, read it, and then read everything Kiernan has ever written, because they are at the absolute top of the line in contemporary speculative fiction.
"We speak in whimsy, or to children, and it all appears so uncomplicated, no matter how outlandish or monstrous a given scene may be. Me, I can't even seem to manage the tongue of madness without constant recourse to the perspective of reason, though I know it's long since ceased to be pertinent to my situation and circumstances."