Sarah Crowe left Atlanta—and the remnants of a tumultuous relationship—to live in an old house in rural Rhode Island. Within its walls she discovers an unfinished manuscript written by the house’s former tenant—an anthropologist obsessed with the ancient oak growing on a desolate corner of the property. Tied to local legends of supernatural magic, as well as documented accidents and murders, … murders, the gnarled tree takes root in Sarah’s imagination, prompting her to write her own account of its unsavory history.
And as the oak continues to possess her dreams and nearly almost all her waking thoughts, Sarah risks her health and her sanity to unearth a revelation planted centuries ago…
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“I know the ugly faces the moon makes when it thinks no one is watching.”
This book.. I liked it..but it was very…different. Let’s start with the easiest to talk about, the characters. They are not very likable people. Sarah and Constance are very argumentative and snarky (in a bad way).
The journal entry format, I liked that and found it made the book go by faster. !! There is something in the editor’s preface that I consider a huge spoiler. Unfortunately, I did not know about this and read it first as it’s at the start of the book. As soon as I read it, I stopped and went to the chapter 1. I went back and read it after I finished. Be sure to read the foot notes. They clear up some things.
Ok, now the story. Sarah retreats to this house in Rhode Island after her lover (Amanda) commits suicide. She plans on getting some writing done and healing. While exploring, she finds an unfinished manuscript from the previous renter, Dr. Charles Harvey. He was researching the local folklore and legend about a red oak tree on the property. I loved the history of the tree! Those parts were great. One day, the landlord calls and tells her he has rented out the attic. Enter Constance. She’s an artist as well (painting) and unlike Sarah, she knows about the legend of the tree. After Constance arrival, it’s all mixed up. It gets harder and harder for Sarah (and us) to make sense of what’s going on. What is real and just a dream. The line between the two is blurred. The descent into chaos just gets more and more bizarre until the end. I liked the ending. Like I said, I went back and read the editor’s preface here.
So yeah, this was an odd one but I liked it. If your not a fan of unreliability and blurred realities, you may want to skip this one.
While there are few answers and even fewer conclusions to be drawn from The Red Tree, it is still a damned fine read, one distinguished as much by the voices as the embedded narratives. What Caitlín R. Kiernan has crafted here is a story of stories within stories, each of which adds to the overall mystery and the sense of creeping dread, all without ever leading us any closer to a climax.
The first of those embedded narratives is the preface from Sarah Crowe’s editor, really sets the stage here – and, if you’re paying attention, should establish expectations as well. Sharon teases a bit of the urban legend mystery of the Wright Farm, but then tells us she saw no evidence of vandals or curiosity seekers and felt no sense of the supernatural. She also teases us with the mystery of the basement, which “seems, to me, to lie very much at the heart of the matter,” and which she “very much wanted” to explore but forgot to bring a flashlight . . . except she also tells us she is “not the least bit ashamed to admit you couldn’t have paid me enough to make that descent alone.” The more we read of Sarah’s story, and the more we come to know (and wonder) about that basement, the more perplexing Sharon’s apparent contradictions become.
Sharon then goes on to describe the Red Tree itself in almost whimsical fashion, describing dozens of tiny ceramic figures (which Sarah never mentions) that give it a “shrine or reliquary” feel. Again, the more we read of both Sarah’s story and Harvey’s manuscript, the more bewildering the very nature of the tree becomes. It is a preface that raises so many questions, and which almost seems to have been deliberately written to cast doubt on Sarah’s story, rather than properly introduce it.
The next narrative layer is the manuscript left behind by Charles L. Harvey, with the discovery of a single page in an old typewriter leading Sarah to a basement search for the rest of it. It’s basically research notes, a collection of the urban legends surrounding the Red Tree and the Wright Farm, and it is absolutely fascinating in its depth and breadth of information. There are murders and suicides, monsters and hauntings, and more than enough information to make for a fascinating tale all on its own. What’s weird about it, however, is how clinical and factual is all reads, compared to what we’ve been told of his fate and what Sarah tells us of the feelings it evokes.
A much shorter but absolutely pivotal embedded narrative is Sarah’s autobiographical story, Pony, which she does not remember writing. The circumstances of its introduction are almost as exciting as the story itself, connecting both to Sarah’s grief over her lost girlfriend and to her increasingly erratic and unreliable behavior. It is a fascinating piece of fiction, erotic and melancholy at the same time, with a weird twist that seems to push fetish into fear.
That leaves us with the most important embedded narrative, of course, Sarah’s journal – written on the same onionskin paper on the same old fashioned typewriter as Harvey’s manuscript. It is here where the real magic of the story is found, with Sarah’s voice – self-aware, argumentative, and frustrated – drawing us deep into her experiences. What could otherwise have been an exasperating tale is elevated to something hypnotic and unsettling by both her candor and her seeming unreliability. Despite the introduction of Constance halfway through, a woman who seems to share in the bizarre experiences of the Wright Farm and who is perhaps even more haunted and unsettled by the Red Tree, all we know is what Sarah writes, and she herself admits to not always being honest or straightforward about her feelings.
As a story, it is entirely fascinating, constantly hooking us with the creepier details of becoming lost in time and space, of feeling haunted, and of being driven to the brink of madness. The Red Tree itself becomes something of mythic proportions, and the short journey of a few hundred yards between it and the Wright House grows into an epic trial. The mystery of the basement, hand-hewn and larger than the house, is legitimately terrifying, and the mystery of the attic (particularly at the end) is perhaps even more perplexing. There are so many questions raised, so many mysteries teased, that we should be angry and frustrated by the lack of answers . . . and, yet, it seems entirely appropriate that the book should end without them.
In many ways, this is a character study more than anything else, an exploration of Sarah Crowe’s journey through the stages of grief, with a focus on the shock and denial, pain and grief, anger and bargaining, and depression. The more we learn of her past and her relationship with Amanda, about her seizures and her writer’s block, the more we want to know. We want to understand this woman and find some way to wrap our head around her emotions as much as we want to rationalize her experiences.
I thought I had a grasp on The Red Tree when I turned the final page, but the more I thought about it, the less certain I felt. Similarly, I thought for sure I’d found my way to those answers in going back over it and writing my review, but the more I tried connecting the dots, the more I realized there are too many spiraling circles and not nearly enough straight lines. This was not the book I expected. In fact, it was the kind of book I would have said I have no patience for. So why did I enjoy it so much? Why have I come away from it with such deep appreciation for Kiernan and her craft? I honestly couldn’t tell you, but I know I’ll be reading more.