The King in the Tree: Three Novellas

All the over the top praise the other reviewers have given this work is justified. One can't help but to gush over it. Liked all the stories - each one got increasingly better. Extraordinary use of the famous Millhauser love triangles (sometimes quadrangles) - every story utilizes this technique. The best thing about Millhauser is that he understands this about the nature of love (and lust and hate): it is rarely a neat and tidy relationship between two people. Rather, it is almost always a complex web of interactions, contextualized between the lover and the object of the lover's desire, who usually only obtains that status when compared against another love or lover! Deep stuff, huh? Deep stuff that Millhauser portrays perfectly in this collection. Not to mention the beautiful, fluid langauge. Not to mention the lush imagry. Not to mention the interesting pacing ..... It could go on and on. Anyway, get this book, because after you read it you'll feel glad to be alive simply for the experience of discovering a fine work such as this one.

I LOVE Steven Millhauser. I own almost all his books--read them one after the other, within the span of weeks. His only flaw in my mind is slow-pacing, but my eye didn't skip over anything in King in the Tree!! I read the Tristan and Ysolt story word by word--something I never do.

This dazzling collection should be of interest to all lovers of Interstitial Fiction, for Millhauser is a master at blending different genres -- myth, fantasy, surrealism, historical fiction and Romance, contemporary realism, horror -- into elegant, innovative, and utterly gripping stories. He is, quite simply, one of the best writers of our day -- and this collection of three stunning novellas is not to be missed.

Anyone who has had the pleasure of taking a journey between the two covers of a Millhauser book will approach this selection of three novellas with particular glee. Steven Millahuser has revived the glory of Romance Novels and yet has done so with his unique skill and vision. He has an obvious love for the Grand Epics of the past and here he delves deeply into the tale of Don Juan, transporting the Spanish lothario into the prim and measured world of England, finding a startlingly altered view of love among the proper Brits. His retelling of the legend of Tristan and Ysolt (Isolde) is even more beautiful than the versions we know so well. His explorations of all the agonies of love's commitments overlay the exquisite longings in this tale of chivalry, fidelity, and passion. It is impossible to read this novella without hearing Wagner's lush 'Liebestod' ringing through the air.Millhauser is at his finest in the first of the three marvelously written and conceived novellas in this colection. In what appears to be a simple tour of a house that is on the market he manages to tell us of a marriage troubled, doomed and revenged in a simply eloquent monologue by the surviving wife. How much of this tale is purely cerebral, the workings of a mind gone mad, and how much is the actual distillation of revenge on the perpetrator of a failed marriage and death of a husband is left to us to determine.Millhauser writes with elegant and eloquent prose, asking us to linger over his pages the way we might linger over a painting in a museum walk. And indeed his stories are written as though derived or inspired from just such experiences. Stunning writing this!