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A review by emperorcupcake
The Red Tree by Caitlín R. Kiernan
3.0
From the "don't judge a book by its cover" department... yikes, that looks like the heroine of a terrible 2000s teen horror movie, right down to the ubiquitous white tank top. That is not the vibe of this book AT ALL, it's about a 40something novelist, and this is definitely not for teens. It's like if a Stephen King book had a Dawson's Creek cover.
I loved the Rhode Island setting! I lived there for many years and being such a small state, you get to know everything by name even if you've never been there. So I recognized a lot of the towns and things in this book, even if I wasn't familiar with the area. This took me slightly longer to read than normal because I got so caught up in nostalgia, looking at things on Google maps, etc. There were some places I dearly wish I'd been when I lived there, such as the wildlife refuge with the mysterious cairns!
That said, this book was also a bit slow. The subject matter was interesting and of course I was completely immersed in the setting, but the writing style felt unnecessarily long. Different sort of voice, but it reminded me of the issue I had with "My Heart is a Chainsaw" where the narrator rambled on and kept going off on tangents. The style was intentional in both books, and I don't mind it to an extent but some of it could have been cut for brevity. It made an otherwise good story a bit of a slog. (or a bog. because Rhode Island)
I was still gonna give this a 3.5 or 4, but the ending kinda lost me. I don't mind unreliable narrators, and I think I understand what happened, I just would have liked a little more? I mean, less tangents, more meat. (so to speak. heh.) I'm still glad I read this and I definitely recommend it to Rhode Islanders!
I loved the Rhode Island setting! I lived there for many years and being such a small state, you get to know everything by name even if you've never been there. So I recognized a lot of the towns and things in this book, even if I wasn't familiar with the area. This took me slightly longer to read than normal because I got so caught up in nostalgia, looking at things on Google maps, etc. There were some places I dearly wish I'd been when I lived there, such as the wildlife refuge with the mysterious cairns!
That said, this book was also a bit slow. The subject matter was interesting and of course I was completely immersed in the setting, but the writing style felt unnecessarily long. Different sort of voice, but it reminded me of the issue I had with "My Heart is a Chainsaw" where the narrator rambled on and kept going off on tangents. The style was intentional in both books, and I don't mind it to an extent but some of it could have been cut for brevity. It made an otherwise good story a bit of a slog. (or a bog. because Rhode Island)
I was still gonna give this a 3.5 or 4, but the ending kinda lost me. I don't mind unreliable narrators, and I think I understand what happened, I just would have liked a little more? I mean, less tangents, more meat. (so to speak. heh.) I'm still glad I read this and I definitely recommend it to Rhode Islanders!