The White Man in the Tree and Other Stories

Truth is stranger than fiction. Not always. When penned by Mark Kurlansky both are equally extraordinary. Not satisfied with being a Caribbean reporter for the Chicago Tribune, he became a successful non-fiction writer (COD and THE BASQUE HISTORY OF THE WORLD). Now, with THE WHITE MAN IN THE TREE, it's fiction and very obvious that he is equally at ease in the imagination, and also very much at home in the Caribbean.THE WHITE MAN IN A TREE is a novella and collection of other witty - sometimes wickedly so - short stories; all about life in the Caribbean, principally Haiti, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and French Guiana. What makes the book so enjoyable - besides Kurlansky's easy prose and comfort with the vernacular - is how he tackles the sociologically complex and serious issues that arise in such a potent admixture of people, places and cultures. Miscegnation is frought with portents of political correctness; rather than being shied away, Mr Kurlansky uses it as the theme to explore the misunderstandings and mistakes that are the common denominator of the humanly rich and diverse Caribbean.For anyone who has lived in the area the tales will ring true. The complexity of motives and resulting eccentricity of behaviour that seems so weird to visitors is perfectly captured and explained, with a locals' shrug of the shoulders by Mr Kurlansky. Underlying all is the constant rhythm of the Caribbean sense of humor, which Mr Kurlansky has in abundance and with which he writes with abandon. Misunderstandings and misjudgements aside, a sense of play is the one thing in common in the Caribbean; a necessary ingredient for living there and required of anybody who wishes to understand the region.

A friend gave me a copy of Mark Kurlansky's THE WHITE MAN IN THE TREE while I was planning a trip to the Caribbean. Get this book. It's guaranteed to double your travel pleasure wherever you go and whether or not you leave your armchair. You'll come away from Kurlansky's delicious romp knowing yourself and your world better. And that cast of characters! This book will remind you of Graham Greene. Kurlansky sees intently, like the visual artist he is, & forgets nothing, like the journalist he is. The combo makes for some wonderfully memorable writing.

I had approached Mark Kurlansky's White Man in a Tree, a book of short stories by a white Jewish man about non-whites in the Caribbean, cautiously if not with trepidation. Could a white man write appropriately about Caribbean culture? Could I read this book without feeling terribly uncomfortable? Could this journalist write engaging fiction? A fact that complicated things even further, and that should be revealed in all candor to readers of this review, is that Mark Kurlansky is married to my cousin. Being a fairly critical reader, I did not want to have to conceal either my dislike, boredom, or both, to my cousin and her husband. What a wonderful surprise! I finished White Man in about four days; reading it on the subway going to and from work, in the restroom, while lying in bed late into the night. In other words, I opened it up whenever I had a free moment. When I was finished, I wanted nothing else but to sit Mark down and cross-examine him about how he came to write each of the stories--in other words, to get the stories behind the stories. The stories are all engaging, educational, moving, and beautifully written. I sometimes felt they had qualities of Sholem Aleichem, sometimes Marquez. Each story takes place on a different island, and draws the reader in almost immediately. One of my favorites, The Unclean, is about a new rabbi in a Caribbean Jewish community who discovers that even the seemingly most observant members of his congregation are oblivious to Jewish dietary laws and eat shellfish with impunity. As a result, the rabbi engages the non-Jewish islanders in his quest to bring kosher meat to his congregation. In sum, I loved this book and have been recommending it to everyone I know.

Mark Kurlansky is the gifted author of several nonfiction books, including the extraordinary Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World, an eye-opening history of the Basques, and, if rumor serves, a forthcoming book on (forget it, you'll never guess) salt. It is therefore deeply unfair - appallingly unfair, really - to discover that he is a sensational, almost sui generic, writer of fiction. The White Man in the Tree, his first published fiction, is so nonfiction-like, so real in the deadpan, straight-ahead, choirboy-innocuous prose Kurlansky has invented, that it is only by conscientiously pinching ourselves every now and then that we can remember it is fiction he has turned his wicked hand to this time out, and not some mind-numbingly bizarre but nonetheless perfectly true story. Or stories. There are ten of them in White Man, each taking as its subject the comic, painful, surreal or just plain silly complications that arise from a form of cultural miscegenation as Euro-American cultures encounter the very different cultures of the Caribbean islands. Because these stories are simultaneously so real and so unreal, they make Kurlanksy's point about cultural and racial misapprehensions in a way that traditional fiction or nonfiction could never hope to achieve. They enlighten without preaching, amuse without humiliating, and establish a truth that is all the more profound and memorable for being just slightly too strange to be fully false.