The Red Tree by Caitlin R. Kiernan
My favorite part about fall is getting to treat myself to new horror novels. There’s something about the changing season that makes me want to frighten myself.
This book had come highly recommended as one to positively terrify its readers. And the blurb in the Kindle store had been promising.
The plot follows Sarah who has just moved into an old Rhode Island farmhouse. While trying to escape the heat in the basement, she finds the manuscript of a former tenant of the house. The story then revolves around the evil manifestations of a tree on the property. The format of the book is epistolary, flitting between a diary that Sarah is keeping and passage from the manuscript itself.
About halfway through, having been reading it for most of the day, I did find that the suspicion and paranoia had worked themselves into my head and I was jumping at shadows in my house. However, I DNF’d this book (at the 87% mark according to my Kindle) because I simply couldn’t stand the narrator for another moment.
I can handle an unlikeable protagonist for the most part. It’s not my favorite, but done well, it’s okay. Usually, though, there has to be some sympathetic character somewhere. But in this book, the narrative voice was so corrosive and all the characters were so reprehensible, I couldn’t do it. And the story revolved so much in the interplay between the characters and less with the tree itself.
I’m sure the last 13% of this book is probably scary. I can pretty well imagine what happens, and so I have no desire to finish it. Which is a damn shame, because it had such promise in the beginning.
I’d give this 2/5 stars. There are parts that are done very well, an insidious creepiness that gets under your skin when you aren’t looking. But the narrator is a pretentious asshole and since it’s her headspace we’re viewing everything through, it’s a slog to get through.
