The Red Tree

Author Sarah Crowe flees Atlanta and the end of her recent relationship for an old farmhouse in rural Rhode Island. There she discovers a manuscript written by the house's previous tenant, which chronicles the long and haunting history of a massive red oak growing on the property. As Sarah's own obsession with the red tree grows, she records her experiences in a journal, published posthumously by her former book editor. Kiernan is a master storyteller with a unique voice and a superb handle on the balance between atmosphere, horror, and psychological underpinning. A densely multilayered narrative rich with dream imagery, The Red Tree may be her best book yet. It's haunting, beautiful, terrifying, and absolutely superb. I highly recommend it. This is a palimpsest of a book where narratives are built within, and rest upon, other narratives. It's also a peon to writing--to the creative process as both a source of and a means of interpreting anxiety. The onion-layered narratives and plentiful literary allusions create a densely multi-layered book. It has a constantly evolving, expanding plot which, combined with Kiernan's superb grasp of pacing and suspense, creates a compelling, page-turning story; the literary allusions, journal-styled narrative, and the dream imagery that gives the horror life create rich emotional and psychological depth. Kiernan is an outright skillful writer, with a lyrical voice, rich imagery, and a willingness to leave a bit of mystery in order to maintain suspense and rouse the reader's imagination and thought. The Red Tree is the rare sort of book which is at once dreamlike yet compulsively readable and--like Poe, Lovecraft, and the other sources that inspire it--finds psychological and emotional depth through horror. The Red Tree may leave too much unsaid: too much of the horror left for the reader to imagine, and--partly necessitated by the "posthumous" narrative--lingering questions as the book ends. But better a little too much mystery than a glut of unrealistic explanation, and this only fault isn't enough to detract from an incredible book. I find it easy to write critical book reviews, because identifying weaknesses is a rewardingly concrete, if subjective, task. Reviewing wonderful books is harder, in part because it's so difficult to pin down the factor that makes a book truly exceptional. Not its unique voice, strong narrative, or brilliant sense of horror as exhibited here, but its more insubstantial something that makes it greater than the sum of these parts. In my eyes all of Kiernan's work has that factor, but perhaps The Red Tree most of all. Only time will tell, but I believe this has become my favorite of Kiernan's works. It's an absorbing, thoughtful, frightening read, richly atmospheric and haunting in its dreamlike imagery, and exceptional in a sense that I can't quite pin down. I recommend it with complete enthusiasm--as an introduction to Kiernan, and as a new favorite for her longtime fans.

The Red Tree is one of the best books I've read all year, and I've already been itching to go back to it and let it play with my head some more. I'm not quite sure what I was expecting when I started it, but what I read wasn't what I was expecting, and then it was better than what I expected. It's a jagged, rattling, hurtful book, and incredibly atmospheric. The horror is creeping and primal, almost inarticulable. People and paintings and animal bones appear and disappear; proportions and distances are warped; the brittle, chain-smoking protagonists labor under constant, sapping heat and suffer from surreal nightmares. At the same time, the emotions underlying it are so real: reading the book feels like holding an artifact of life, a snarled-up package of fury and self-hatred and despair. Yeah, it's not the happiest book to read, but its painful authenticity is a large part of what makes it so compelling. There are no pretensions to darkness or the Gothic here, just a lifetime's worth of the real thing. After all, protagonist Sarah Crowe is a clear analogue of Kiernan herself: she's a black-tempered writer of obscure dark fantasy who lives in Rhode Island, and she struggles with writer's block and a seizure disorder. In Sarah's case, she leaves the South to escape the memories of her failed relationship with an artist named Amanda, who committed suicide. Once in New England, she settles into an ancient farm house whose property is marked by a red oak of incredible age and size. Unsurprisingly, she develops a morbid fascination with the mythology surrounding the tree - in particular a half-finished manuscript left by the house's last tenant in the basement - at the same time that a painter named Constance moves in upstairs. Cue much petty sniping, frustrated desire, and poorly concealed, creeping obsession. The narrative is bookended by notes from Sarah Crowe's editor, and the main text comprises Sarah's irregular journal entries and her transcripts of historical accounts of the tree - as well as an older short story of Kiernan's, which here becomes a short story of Sarah's, except that she can't remember ever having written it. Metatextual mindscrewing ahoy! The entire set-up, this intricate weaving of text upon text upon text, is rife with possibilities for slips of the tongue (or typewriter), errors, confabulations, convenient or inadvertent omissions. What is scarier, anyway - at least to those of us who don't live on properties with possibly haunted vegetation - the idea that a demonic oak tree is making you forget things, or the idea that you yourself are simply incapable of remembering everything, of apprehending the whole of your experience? What are we missing when we blink, when we fall asleep, when we wake up and can only remember half of a dream that seemed painfully urgent, when we walk into the kitchen and can't remember what we went there for? Sarah's seizures also play into the underlying anxiety about these little oblivions: t

I love horror and I love writers who don't talk down to their readers (I love footnotes and needing a dictionary!). I also appreciate not being hand-fed all the details so everything is neatly wrapped up for me. Ms. Kiernan delivers all of this and more in her latest book. She places us inside the head of Sarah Crowe, a writer seeking solitude after trouble in her personal life only to find more trouble in her chosen "hiding place". Sarah's thoughts and dreams are clearly drawn for us, no matter how confusing and contradictory they may be and how many details, we learn at the end, are NOT given to us. The characters are real, flawed, hurting and one can't help but care about them or at least be drawn into their stories. It is clear that H.P. Lovecraft is a strong influence but the world and the terrors are wholly Ms Kiernan's. I think this is her best work yet and look forward to reading material of hers I haven't yet read. Technically, I have to say her writing is as fine as Harlan Ellison's and Jacqueline Carey's (Kushiel's Dart). She draws very clear pictures of people and events, elicits strong emotional responses and doesn't waste a word in the process. The Red Tree additional thoughts: I've read it twice and thought about it and have read many other reviews and comments and have a few more things to say. I think that a lot of people use the word 'horror' as a blanket term for darker uncomfortable feelings. Ms Kiernan has stated that she did not set out to write this as a 'horror story' but that she is seeing a lot of people calling it that. People like labels and I don't think there is one for a story that contains some frightening things but isn't at the core about them. Part of my fear was from the basement in that house; I've known a few musky dark lovecraftian spaces like that and I could SMELL it. Part of my fear was shared from Sarah's; both from the situation and that she could not define it, understand it, label it precisely. Fear of the unknown. Things happening that can't be explained or remembered. Some of the feelings this book drew out of me were fear and confusion and sadness as well as the general emotional disturbance that something is happening 'off-page' that is directing the action. I wouldn't label this particular volume as "horror" even though I started my initial review by stating I love horror. I do, but not all. For me, the characters and story (whether there's a real plot or not) are the important thing. Am I pulled into their lives? Do I react emotionally when something happens to them? Do I want to find out what happens to them in later pages? Is the writing good enough to hold me there when I'm feeling scared/disturbed/upset by what's happening on the pages? The best example of this, for me, is Dan Simmons' Song of Kali. Very frightening/unsettling/dark... and there are levels/facets to each thing so X happens and you're scared, but for about 5 different reasons. I couldn't put it down; I HAD to fi

I read The Red Tree in one sitting because I was simultaneously enthralled and too petrified to look away. Kiernan's story reached out from those pages and grabbed me by the throat, and I followed anxiously behind her protagonist Sarah Crowe as she unearthed fragments of revelation about the Red Oak looming in her backyard. It's just plain good narrative and good writing, and it's also the creepiest thing I've read all year. This is not your average horror novel. If you like your monsters cliché and your plot points obvious, please look elsewhere. This is a canvas of subtle images, in which the really, really terrible things are only intimated. Which, of course, is the reason it's so scary. Kiernan's nightmares are all the more effective because they never resolve into one solid entity you can categorize long enough to lock in the closet or sweep under the bed. Instead, the vague feeling of dread creeping down your spine is intensified by a host of doubts. It's a rare author who can get both her characters and her readers to doubt what their eyes have seen (or read), but Kiernan manages it with seeming effortlessness. There was no reason to be afraid by page 50. Not knowing, as we do almost immediately, that Sarah Crowe's account is being published posthumously by a (fictitious) editor. Not by the conventions of horror novels that either plod tediously toward some obvious shocker or trot out the gore as early as possible. But I was. And it was a sublime fear, the sort of fear that leaves you with traces of awe instead of just the desire to barricade yourself in. I wanted to watch her world crumble. This is also not your average Gothic novel. If you prefer archaisms stolen from Dracula and characters stolen from bad Anne Rice fanfic, you won't like the frank elegance of Kiernan's prose. Her characters are real people (well...for some definition of "people"--I'm not giving anything away) who smoke and swear and deal badly with fear. And along with that, the dreams she describes are real dreams. You will actually feel like you are dreaming--the same surreal logic and warped symbolism permeate the novel. It's a rare thing, to stand inside other people's dreams, and rarer still to survive their nightmares. I would unequivocally recommend doing both through The Red Tree--and unequivocally recommend doing so with the lights on.

I'm going to be honest. I'm a devoted fan of Caitlin R. Kiernan's writing. I first read her chapbook "Candles for Elizabeth" in September of 1999 and her first novel, Silk, that December. I put her novels in other people's hands for many years as a bookseller and most of them came back to the store and thanked me. If you like dark fantasy set in the present day, with a sense of how the deep past lurks underneath everything we do, Kiernan's one of the best writers alive. Unlike her other books, this is a new stand-alone novel. Her others link loosely, sharing a world and some characters--but this story is the place to start if you've always wanted to read her. It's also an evolution. Kiernan's stunningly brilliant and singular vision blew my doors off. I'm at the point where I'm offering to buy friends copies because I'm so excited that one of my favorite writers has written something this amazing. This really is the book of her career so far. I've always been in awe of her, but this novel is so deep, stirring and fascinating that it's the one that I didn't know she had in her. Often, when I revere a person's writing, they do something different but as brilliant as what they've done previously and I'll think, "I knew they had it in them." The experience of reading The Red Tree was: I had no idea anyone, ever, could do something like this. The writer Sarah Crowe wants out. She left the grind of Atlanta and a shattered relationship to be by herself in a house away from it all in Rhode Island. She finds a half-finished manuscript written by someone who became obsessed by the giant red oak out back. The tree has a dark history and Sarah becomes obsessed too. It's a vivid account of how she is haunted by that oak tree. All I can say is that you might end up checking the backs of your closets for leaves from that oak.