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The Red Tree
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, 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...
Tied to local legends of supernatural magic, as well as documented accidents and 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...
385 pages, Paperback
First published July 10, 2009
About the author
Caitlín R. Kiernan
394 books1,600 followersCaitlín Rebekah Kiernan is an Irish-born American published paleontologist and author of science fiction and dark fantasy works, including ten novels, series of comic books, and more than two hundred and fifty published short stories, novellas, and vignettes.
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October 7, 2014No offence to the illustrator of the officially published cover but here is the more appropriate cover that better represents the content & soul of the book.
April 10, 2011
I have admired Caitlin Kiernan's short stories for some time now, so I was excited about finally getting to one of her novels. I wasn't disappointed. The Red Tree is a very ambitious effort, an accomplished metafiction that is certainly horrific, but also stands as a piece of literature. It's a damn shame the book is saddled with some of the worst, and most misleading, cover art I've seen in some time. (It's packaged as a YA novel, with a brooding goth chick on the front. If I were to rate this, like a film, I would give it a NC-17.) The novel deserves better than that, and should be on the short shelf of genre fans, beside Shirley Jackson's Haunting of Hill House, Straub's Ghost Story (IMHO, RT is better), Arthur Machen's collected stories, Poe, and of course Lovecraft.
The story, a first person narrative, is about a middle aged writer, Sarah Crowe, who moves to rural Rhode Island after the death (a suicide) of her lover, Amanda. Sarah is suffering from writer's block, and a dwindling bank account. She sets up shop in a very old farm house, whose previous occupant, a teacher and writer from a nearby college, has committed suicide. As Sarah explores the house, she discovers the teacher's unfinished manuscript, a study on local folklore (very Blair Witch), with a particular focus on a supposedly haunted red oak tree which is about 70 yards from the house. Sarah is not a reliable narrator. What follows is a slow disintegration that is hardly detectable at first. Kieran's skill in unfolding this disintegration (which is incredibly sad) is about as nuanced as any I have read. In the field of horror, you can't help but be reminded of Jackson's Eleanor from The Haunting of Hill House. But the echoes, or homages, are faint, since Kiernan is entirely her own writer, a true original. Her ability to integrate influences (and one major one here is Carrol's Alice's Adventure's in Wonderland) is astounding, leaving the reader wanting to look up the various influences for this fine novel. I'm reluctant to reveal much more. There are stories within stories, and you need to keep alert to the various clues. If you like your horror simple, with Good vs. Evil, with a Final Resolution, you will be disappointed. But if you like your reality blurred, and like to see an emphasis on atmosphere, then you should enjoy The Red Tree. Why this novel didn't win some sort of award (Bram Stoker, Shirley Jackson), is beyond me. I've read enough within the genre to know this one is special.
The story, a first person narrative, is about a middle aged writer, Sarah Crowe, who moves to rural Rhode Island after the death (a suicide) of her lover, Amanda. Sarah is suffering from writer's block, and a dwindling bank account. She sets up shop in a very old farm house, whose previous occupant, a teacher and writer from a nearby college, has committed suicide. As Sarah explores the house, she discovers the teacher's unfinished manuscript, a study on local folklore (very Blair Witch), with a particular focus on a supposedly haunted red oak tree which is about 70 yards from the house. Sarah is not a reliable narrator. What follows is a slow disintegration that is hardly detectable at first. Kieran's skill in unfolding this disintegration (which is incredibly sad) is about as nuanced as any I have read. In the field of horror, you can't help but be reminded of Jackson's Eleanor from The Haunting of Hill House. But the echoes, or homages, are faint, since Kiernan is entirely her own writer, a true original. Her ability to integrate influences (and one major one here is Carrol's Alice's Adventure's in Wonderland) is astounding, leaving the reader wanting to look up the various influences for this fine novel. I'm reluctant to reveal much more. There are stories within stories, and you need to keep alert to the various clues. If you like your horror simple, with Good vs. Evil, with a Final Resolution, you will be disappointed. But if you like your reality blurred, and like to see an emphasis on atmosphere, then you should enjoy The Red Tree. Why this novel didn't win some sort of award (Bram Stoker, Shirley Jackson), is beyond me. I've read enough within the genre to know this one is special.
November 25, 2021
The Red Tree is a beguiling title. The current cover does not do the book justice, because the girl looks like an angst filled teen with romance problems. The protagonist is actually a forty four year old woman whose lover has committed suicide. She runs away from her girlfriend's death to a sweet, old house in New England with a beautiful ancient tree. Not really, everything about the house and the tree is malevolent from the start.
The sad thing is you can't root for the heroine, because she's pretty much a terrible person.The type of jerk who believes crying is a sign of weakness. The relationship she had was not close to warm and loving,, because she is incapable of empathy, not only for her lover, but for herself as well. To top it off, she is a writer who has nothing left to write. The only contact she keeps is her agent, who desperately needs for her to fulfill a contract that had already been extended once.
The scene is set for some serious haunting and I loved this at first, but it kind of fizzled out towards the end.
The sad thing is you can't root for the heroine, because she's pretty much a terrible person.The type of jerk who believes crying is a sign of weakness. The relationship she had was not close to warm and loving,, because she is incapable of empathy, not only for her lover, but for herself as well. To top it off, she is a writer who has nothing left to write. The only contact she keeps is her agent, who desperately needs for her to fulfill a contract that had already been extended once.
The scene is set for some serious haunting and I loved this at first, but it kind of fizzled out towards the end.
April 27, 2020
The Red Tree just didn’t work for me. After slogging through page after page of thoughts by Sarah, I just didn’t care what happened to her at the end.
I didn’t care about the roommate Constance, the house or the tree. And it's a damn shame.
The creep factor could have been so much more and I’m disappointed that it didn’t work for me.
The author tried too hard to throw everything in this book including the kitchen sink by being literary and cool.
I didn’t need 10 million references to other authors in this book.
In my opinion, it took away from the plot, storyline and growing sense of dread for me. And honestly, this book could have had 100 pages cut and it would have worked better. It just really dragged.
I do like moody and atmospheric plots so I don't have issues with a story that leaves something to the imagination. Is there a beast outside, does the tree have elements of evil surrounding it or is this all in the main character’s head?
Sarah is a writer that decides to get away after the death of her partner. She rents a house in the middle of Nowhere, Rhode Island. The house and land has had plenty of questionable deaths, creepy circumstances and strange beasts roaming the grounds. And it all comes back to the red tree and sacrifices that have happened there.
Sarah while bored one day in the house, goes downstairs to the basement and finds an old manuscript. The professor that use to live in the house was doing research on the red tree along with the land and inhabitants.
Sarah learns that the professor ends up killing himself and she decides to read his research and find out why.
The Red Tree is part manuscript by the professor and part journal by Sarah.
Enter the madness and rambling of Sarah’s mind….I guess.
To me, this book had lots of promise but it just got in its own way with the flow along with the build up of dread and scare factor.
I’ll try other books by Caitlín R. Kiernan because I do see she’s got great ideas and her writing has lots of promise.
I didn’t care about the roommate Constance, the house or the tree. And it's a damn shame.
The creep factor could have been so much more and I’m disappointed that it didn’t work for me.
The author tried too hard to throw everything in this book including the kitchen sink by being literary and cool.
I didn’t need 10 million references to other authors in this book.
In my opinion, it took away from the plot, storyline and growing sense of dread for me. And honestly, this book could have had 100 pages cut and it would have worked better. It just really dragged.
I do like moody and atmospheric plots so I don't have issues with a story that leaves something to the imagination. Is there a beast outside, does the tree have elements of evil surrounding it or is this all in the main character’s head?
Sarah is a writer that decides to get away after the death of her partner. She rents a house in the middle of Nowhere, Rhode Island. The house and land has had plenty of questionable deaths, creepy circumstances and strange beasts roaming the grounds. And it all comes back to the red tree and sacrifices that have happened there.
Sarah while bored one day in the house, goes downstairs to the basement and finds an old manuscript. The professor that use to live in the house was doing research on the red tree along with the land and inhabitants.
Sarah learns that the professor ends up killing himself and she decides to read his research and find out why.
The Red Tree is part manuscript by the professor and part journal by Sarah.
Enter the madness and rambling of Sarah’s mind….I guess.
To me, this book had lots of promise but it just got in its own way with the flow along with the build up of dread and scare factor.
I’ll try other books by Caitlín R. Kiernan because I do see she’s got great ideas and her writing has lots of promise.
December 6, 2012
Sarah Crowe is a writer suffering from writer's block after her relationship with her girlfriend comes to a devastating end. She decides to rent an isolated old farm house out in the boonies of Rhode Island to recover and hide from the world.
Whilst poking around in the home she comes across an old typewriter which eventually leads her to a manuscript obsessing on the red tree on the property written by a previous renter who committed suicide on the grounds. Sarah begins to have increasingly strange dreams and as the story progresses she finds herself becoming obsessed with the tree herself and has difficulty discerning reality from her odd dream world.
The book is a disturbing first person account of one woman's slow slide into madness. It's very unsettling and definitely gets under the skin. The history of the red tree may (or may not) include human sacrifice, cannibalism, and lycanthropy. Is it real or all in Sarah's mind?
This is one of the best I've read by Kiernan.
Whilst poking around in the home she comes across an old typewriter which eventually leads her to a manuscript obsessing on the red tree on the property written by a previous renter who committed suicide on the grounds. Sarah begins to have increasingly strange dreams and as the story progresses she finds herself becoming obsessed with the tree herself and has difficulty discerning reality from her odd dream world.
The book is a disturbing first person account of one woman's slow slide into madness. It's very unsettling and definitely gets under the skin. The history of the red tree may (or may not) include human sacrifice, cannibalism, and lycanthropy. Is it real or all in Sarah's mind?
This is one of the best I've read by Kiernan.
November 19, 2012
I was pulled in by the good reviews...
and left disappointed....Let me preface this by saying I don't mind character driven stories. I don't mind moody and atmospheric stories that can sometimes leave the reader with more questions than answers. I don't need everything spelled out. In the world of creepy novels, sometimes the less that's said, the better because the imagination takes off and can creep you out more than what's written.
All of that being said, I was bored to tears and completely not creeped out or disturbed by this novel which seems to be just a bunch of rambling thoughts with no real story to pin it all together.
Sarah Crowe is an author. She is also a lesbian (which really shouldn't matter all that much if it weren't for the author's painstaking interjections to remind us of that very fact) that suffers from seizures and curses like a sailor on shore leave. Her live in lover had died many months ago and she decides to go to a pretty remote area of Rhode Island to work on her next book. While exploring her temporary home and workplace she happens upon a manuscript called the Red Tree written by a local professor who just so happened to be lodging himself in the same place Sarah now finds herself. He also killed himself before he could finish the book.
The Red Tree is part of the local folklore, actually a few hundred yards away from the house in which she now stays, dating back a couple of centuries. Tales of blood filled apples, people drawn to the tree, human sacrifice; Sarah finds herself inexplicably drawn to reading the manuscript in the midst of writer's block. What follows is her decent into madness.
On a more clever note, the novel is told in such as way as to make the reader believe it was 'delivered' to a local editor and is supposed to read like a series of journal entries. (Think Blair Witch Project here. The film myseriously found in the woods that chronicles the last days of the ill fated film students' lives, etc, etc).
The subject and some of the folklore of the tree itself is bordering on interesting as well. I just had a hard time with this book for several reasons.
It's not really a story. It's a series of rambling entries and self exploration by the 'author' and main character, Sarah Crowe. It rambles so much as to have left me feeling like saying 'ok, get to the point'.
The main character is completely unlikeable. To me there are two character archetypes. The ones you love to love and the ones you love to hate. Sarah Crowe is neither. She's crass and has bad habits. Which is fine for a character, main or otherwise. In this instance, however, it seems as if her bad language and depressing behavior is completely forced. There is a liberal use of both F and C bombs in this novel, but it never rings true with the character. Just rings of the author trying to show how edgy she can be and to almost hammer the point home that the character dances to her own beat. We get it. Really, we do.
In addition there are constant quotes and references to classic authors and their works. Poe, Thoreau, Carroll, etc, etc, as if to show off Sarah Crowe's literary prowess. I get that she's an author and that she's well read, however, once again, I'm not impressed and it just felt like the point was being driven home too hard.
The psychosexual 'interludes' put in the book really serve zero purpose. Once again, I think they're just there to add to the nebulous nature of the story telling and just to shock. They added nothing to the story.
In the end what people have described as 'creepy' and 'atmospheric' just came off to me as being rambling and odd. It is kind of ironic though that Sarah Crowe makes several railing barbs about amazon and it's quasi critics. Well, I guess that would be me =)
Alot of people seemed to have really enjoyed this book and her other works, but at the end of the story, it's just not my cup of tea and I think I'll be staying out of Kiernan's sandbox for the foreseeable future.
and left disappointed....Let me preface this by saying I don't mind character driven stories. I don't mind moody and atmospheric stories that can sometimes leave the reader with more questions than answers. I don't need everything spelled out. In the world of creepy novels, sometimes the less that's said, the better because the imagination takes off and can creep you out more than what's written.
All of that being said, I was bored to tears and completely not creeped out or disturbed by this novel which seems to be just a bunch of rambling thoughts with no real story to pin it all together.
Sarah Crowe is an author. She is also a lesbian (which really shouldn't matter all that much if it weren't for the author's painstaking interjections to remind us of that very fact) that suffers from seizures and curses like a sailor on shore leave. Her live in lover had died many months ago and she decides to go to a pretty remote area of Rhode Island to work on her next book. While exploring her temporary home and workplace she happens upon a manuscript called the Red Tree written by a local professor who just so happened to be lodging himself in the same place Sarah now finds herself. He also killed himself before he could finish the book.
The Red Tree is part of the local folklore, actually a few hundred yards away from the house in which she now stays, dating back a couple of centuries. Tales of blood filled apples, people drawn to the tree, human sacrifice; Sarah finds herself inexplicably drawn to reading the manuscript in the midst of writer's block. What follows is her decent into madness.
On a more clever note, the novel is told in such as way as to make the reader believe it was 'delivered' to a local editor and is supposed to read like a series of journal entries. (Think Blair Witch Project here. The film myseriously found in the woods that chronicles the last days of the ill fated film students' lives, etc, etc).
The subject and some of the folklore of the tree itself is bordering on interesting as well. I just had a hard time with this book for several reasons.
It's not really a story. It's a series of rambling entries and self exploration by the 'author' and main character, Sarah Crowe. It rambles so much as to have left me feeling like saying 'ok, get to the point'.
The main character is completely unlikeable. To me there are two character archetypes. The ones you love to love and the ones you love to hate. Sarah Crowe is neither. She's crass and has bad habits. Which is fine for a character, main or otherwise. In this instance, however, it seems as if her bad language and depressing behavior is completely forced. There is a liberal use of both F and C bombs in this novel, but it never rings true with the character. Just rings of the author trying to show how edgy she can be and to almost hammer the point home that the character dances to her own beat. We get it. Really, we do.
In addition there are constant quotes and references to classic authors and their works. Poe, Thoreau, Carroll, etc, etc, as if to show off Sarah Crowe's literary prowess. I get that she's an author and that she's well read, however, once again, I'm not impressed and it just felt like the point was being driven home too hard.
The psychosexual 'interludes' put in the book really serve zero purpose. Once again, I think they're just there to add to the nebulous nature of the story telling and just to shock. They added nothing to the story.
In the end what people have described as 'creepy' and 'atmospheric' just came off to me as being rambling and odd. It is kind of ironic though that Sarah Crowe makes several railing barbs about amazon and it's quasi critics. Well, I guess that would be me =)
Alot of people seemed to have really enjoyed this book and her other works, but at the end of the story, it's just not my cup of tea and I think I'll be staying out of Kiernan's sandbox for the foreseeable future.
February 21, 2011
I wanted to like this more than I did. A glance through the other negative/ambivalent reviews shows a lot of disappointment in harsh language, and more than a touch of thinly-veiled homophobia - let me say now, clearly and unequivocally: those were not my issues with this book. I think the narrator's (Sarah's) voice got to me, which made it difficult to enjoy the book, since it's written in the form of her journal. She should be an incredibly sympathetic character - within the first few pages, you know that (a) she's been through a lot before any of the book takes place, and (b) she will go through a lot before the book is over. But there was something about her I just couldn't get behind. There was just this sort of annoyingly self-aware, faux-gritty tone to it all that drove me crazy - it's the same sort of vibe that regularly makes me put down urban fantasy books. I do think that maybe if a bit more had been devoted to her actual thoughts or emotions - things about Amanda, or about her seizures - I would have found her more relatable (I don't need characters to be sunshiney and happy and likable all the time, but I do want to care a little bit, you know?).
And some of the touches that were supposed to make it feel more like a journal actually had the opposite effect - the reminders that things were paraphrased from memory, pointing out when something had been copied down into a conveniently-placed notebook, etc. The overly-specific music choices, too - maybe the author (Kiernan, not her author-character) actually does take the time to note in her own journal exactly what she's listening to at any given time. I know I don't. I think this would have worked better as a traditional first-person narrative without the journal conceit, but I see how that would have compromised some of the story's structure. There were also a couple of places where I felt threads had been dropped, which seems like a big flaw.
I like books with unreliable narrators, I like books with slow descents into madness and/or uncertainty, I like books with invented historical documents. And, at times, I did like this - Constance and Sarah's relationship was always interesting, if often frustrating (as it was meant to be). The cellar, the House of Leaves-esque bits, and what seemed to be a very well-drawn location (I've never been to Rhode Island, so I can't speak to the authenticity, but it sure felt real) were all much appreciated. I just felt like if Sarah's personality was meant to be the glue that bound everything together, it wasn't working.
Edit: after writing this, I read a little bit more about the author, and was surprised by just how much of Sarah Crowe is drawn directly from Caitlin Kiernan's own life. It makes the darker, less appealing sides of Sarah more understandable - Kiernan doesn't seem like the type to write up an idealized version of herself, and, in fact, seems more likely to be extra hard on herself in this fictionalized form. I still didn't love the book, but knowing how personal it was to the author does change my view a bit.
And some of the touches that were supposed to make it feel more like a journal actually had the opposite effect - the reminders that things were paraphrased from memory, pointing out when something had been copied down into a conveniently-placed notebook, etc. The overly-specific music choices, too - maybe the author (Kiernan, not her author-character) actually does take the time to note in her own journal exactly what she's listening to at any given time. I know I don't. I think this would have worked better as a traditional first-person narrative without the journal conceit, but I see how that would have compromised some of the story's structure. There were also a couple of places where I felt threads had been dropped, which seems like a big flaw.
I like books with unreliable narrators, I like books with slow descents into madness and/or uncertainty, I like books with invented historical documents. And, at times, I did like this - Constance and Sarah's relationship was always interesting, if often frustrating (as it was meant to be). The cellar, the House of Leaves-esque bits, and what seemed to be a very well-drawn location (I've never been to Rhode Island, so I can't speak to the authenticity, but it sure felt real) were all much appreciated. I just felt like if Sarah's personality was meant to be the glue that bound everything together, it wasn't working.
Edit: after writing this, I read a little bit more about the author, and was surprised by just how much of Sarah Crowe is drawn directly from Caitlin Kiernan's own life. It makes the darker, less appealing sides of Sarah more understandable - Kiernan doesn't seem like the type to write up an idealized version of herself, and, in fact, seems more likely to be extra hard on herself in this fictionalized form. I still didn't love the book, but knowing how personal it was to the author does change my view a bit.
April 27, 2020
Nope, didn't work for me sorry. I'm not a fan of The Unreliable Narrator in fiction, and this one took it aaaaallllllll the way.
Kiernan's writing is great, and I'll probably read more of her work, but hopefully the next one will have a protagonist (or even an antagonist!) I can feel some sympathy for and care about, this one was a mess. Not even a hot mess. Just a bit of a whinging 40 year old Emo who needed to grow up and take some responsibility for herself, and maybe make better choices in the women she dates.
A Buddy-read with some of the crew, Latasha and Ginger over at Horror Aficionados. Thanks for the BR girls, it was fun as always, I'll try to choose a better book for the next one.
Kiernan's writing is great, and I'll probably read more of her work, but hopefully the next one will have a protagonist (or even an antagonist!) I can feel some sympathy for and care about, this one was a mess. Not even a hot mess. Just a bit of a whinging 40 year old Emo who needed to grow up and take some responsibility for herself, and maybe make better choices in the women she dates.
A Buddy-read with some of the crew, Latasha and Ginger over at Horror Aficionados. Thanks for the BR girls, it was fun as always, I'll try to choose a better book for the next one.
December 4, 2013
Please ignore the god-awful, "paranormal romance" cover art. This book is not even VAGUELY romantic...though it certainly is paranormal. Cait Kiernan is one of my favourite authors, and this is beyond any shadow of a doubt her best book since Threshold, the first of her longer works I'd ever read. The Red Tree is a swirling, delerious, and very troubling descent into the same realm of New England horror first mapped out by Hawthorne and H. P. Lovecraft--but, unlike their works, this one has no tidy conclusions, no resolutions...only revelations. Revelations that barely make any sense whatsoever. I'd even venture to say this book has no pronounced plot, but is more an assemblage of ever-stranger and ever-creepier scenes held together by the narration of main character Sarah Crowe. But this is most emphatically NOT a Bad Thing. The Red Tree is a fast read, because it's just so gripping: Kiernan has an amazing faculty at presenting tantalizing bits of detail but leaving ultimate interpretations to the reader--which gives the novel a sort of puzzle-like atmosphere. However, it's not a puzzle that can be easily solved, if at all. It's a Rubik's cube of a book, only the colored tiles have been so scrambled that reassembling them may be damnear impossible...but this is good--because the challenge of understanding is always so much more fulfilling than the solution. The best books are those that haunt you long after you've finished reading them, and believe me, The Red Tree will haunt you with all the Fortean indeterminacy of a shower of frogs. You will obsess over it. You will fight to understand it. Goddamn it, you will hate it and love it and pick it apart with your friends...and maybe, possibly, you'll figure it out. But your conclusions will be your own, and may be completely different than anyone else's.
I'm going right back and reading it again.
Oh, and there are ghouls in it. Richard Upton Pickman would be proud!
I'm going right back and reading it again.
Oh, and there are ghouls in it. Richard Upton Pickman would be proud!
March 6, 2010
There are few things that terrify me more than the thought of my brain ceasing to function properly. I can imagine dozens of truly horrifying situations and experiences I might be forced to endure, but I know from simple moments where I can’t remember a name, or a word that I should be intimately familiar with, that if I had to question my own sanity, or worry that others were questioning it, I’d be off the ledge and free-falling pretty quickly.
In The Red Tree, Caitlin Kiernan delivers exactly that fear through the words and thoughts of her protagonist, Sarah Crowe. Sarah has left behind a life crippled by the suicide of her lover, whose name we never learn because when she writes about her, she calls her by another name. She has retreated to a small house in Rhode Island to write her next novel and get herself together. The author also manages to make you care that both of these things, in fact, happen. The author is not to be trusted.
Sarah finds that the previous tenant of her new retreat was an author – a parapsychologist researching the murky history surrounding a huge Red Oak tree. That tree stands within easy site of the windows of her new home, and the history is a crazy one filled with hints of ancient evil, sacrifice, and lycanthrope. That previous tenant committed suicide. There’s a lot of that in the novel. Sarah finds his manuscript hidden in a basement that is not exactly a basement…sometimes.
This is the point in a review I hate. I have a lot to say about this book, but a lot of what I’d like to say gives away too much. The point is, everything that happens to Sarah feels very real. You get an almost Lovecraftian sensation of worlds overlapping at some mystic portal. You can feel the ancient “ley lines” rippling beneath the foundations of the old house, and through the roots of the tree. The stories, the reports of strange happenings surrounding this arboreal menace throughout history, add to the sensation of other-worldliness, and strengthen either the reality of the events in the book – or the foundations of the insanity invading Sarah’s brain.
The thing is that there’s a very fine line involved in this story. It’s possible that it’s the story of an eroding mind, locked away and unable to cope with a string of events that began decades earlier when the protagonist witnessed a traumatic event. It’s also possible that it’s a detailed narration of one person’s encounter with unknown, unknowable forces. There may be a girl named Amanda, and another named Constance…or it might be a story written and typed by an author no longer in any type of contact with reality. It might be the rendering of insanity into words, created in solitude.
And at its core, that’s what this book is about. Solitude. Loneliness. Different characters deal with these issues throughout the novel, all through the filter of Sarah’s mind and the words she types. These words include a story she doesn’t even remember writing, and yet believes that she did write. We never know if she did, or did not, if the events in the story are real, or merely a version of some similar event in Sarah’s past – the relationship that drove her to isolation and despair – it’s impossible for the reader to tell.
The true terror is in the fact that, in the case of many things that either happen or do not happen during the course of the novel, the protagonist finds herself unable to separate one from the other. If it’s all happening, the world as she knows it is a lie. If it’s not happening, she’s going (or has already gone) insane. Even the source of that insanity – external from the oak tree or internal – is in question. As I said, the author is not to be trusted. The book, though? It’s amazing.
I’m not going to belabor a point that I have covered in the past, or that others have covered more eloquently. Genre fiction is littered with mediocrity. It’s much easier for an “okay” author to write weird fiction and get away with it. Following trends and writing to the cliché of the day is the norm. Caitlin Kiernan marches to the beat of her own drummer. She is literate, educated, and in touch with the levels of her mind that shift images to words with precision and power. This is not a “horror” novel, it’s a Caitlin Kiernan novel – and to my way of thinking that’s a much more precious thing. There are only a handful of authors of whom you’ll hear me say that.
I highly recommend this novel to anyone, but in particular to fans of Lovecraft or Ramsey Campbell, The characters are very real, but the world is surreal and untrustworthy enough that it might take multiple readings to get everything straight in your mind.
In The Red Tree, Caitlin Kiernan delivers exactly that fear through the words and thoughts of her protagonist, Sarah Crowe. Sarah has left behind a life crippled by the suicide of her lover, whose name we never learn because when she writes about her, she calls her by another name. She has retreated to a small house in Rhode Island to write her next novel and get herself together. The author also manages to make you care that both of these things, in fact, happen. The author is not to be trusted.
Sarah finds that the previous tenant of her new retreat was an author – a parapsychologist researching the murky history surrounding a huge Red Oak tree. That tree stands within easy site of the windows of her new home, and the history is a crazy one filled with hints of ancient evil, sacrifice, and lycanthrope. That previous tenant committed suicide. There’s a lot of that in the novel. Sarah finds his manuscript hidden in a basement that is not exactly a basement…sometimes.
This is the point in a review I hate. I have a lot to say about this book, but a lot of what I’d like to say gives away too much. The point is, everything that happens to Sarah feels very real. You get an almost Lovecraftian sensation of worlds overlapping at some mystic portal. You can feel the ancient “ley lines” rippling beneath the foundations of the old house, and through the roots of the tree. The stories, the reports of strange happenings surrounding this arboreal menace throughout history, add to the sensation of other-worldliness, and strengthen either the reality of the events in the book – or the foundations of the insanity invading Sarah’s brain.
The thing is that there’s a very fine line involved in this story. It’s possible that it’s the story of an eroding mind, locked away and unable to cope with a string of events that began decades earlier when the protagonist witnessed a traumatic event. It’s also possible that it’s a detailed narration of one person’s encounter with unknown, unknowable forces. There may be a girl named Amanda, and another named Constance…or it might be a story written and typed by an author no longer in any type of contact with reality. It might be the rendering of insanity into words, created in solitude.
And at its core, that’s what this book is about. Solitude. Loneliness. Different characters deal with these issues throughout the novel, all through the filter of Sarah’s mind and the words she types. These words include a story she doesn’t even remember writing, and yet believes that she did write. We never know if she did, or did not, if the events in the story are real, or merely a version of some similar event in Sarah’s past – the relationship that drove her to isolation and despair – it’s impossible for the reader to tell.
The true terror is in the fact that, in the case of many things that either happen or do not happen during the course of the novel, the protagonist finds herself unable to separate one from the other. If it’s all happening, the world as she knows it is a lie. If it’s not happening, she’s going (or has already gone) insane. Even the source of that insanity – external from the oak tree or internal – is in question. As I said, the author is not to be trusted. The book, though? It’s amazing.
I’m not going to belabor a point that I have covered in the past, or that others have covered more eloquently. Genre fiction is littered with mediocrity. It’s much easier for an “okay” author to write weird fiction and get away with it. Following trends and writing to the cliché of the day is the norm. Caitlin Kiernan marches to the beat of her own drummer. She is literate, educated, and in touch with the levels of her mind that shift images to words with precision and power. This is not a “horror” novel, it’s a Caitlin Kiernan novel – and to my way of thinking that’s a much more precious thing. There are only a handful of authors of whom you’ll hear me say that.
I highly recommend this novel to anyone, but in particular to fans of Lovecraft or Ramsey Campbell, The characters are very real, but the world is surreal and untrustworthy enough that it might take multiple readings to get everything straight in your mind.
July 26, 2019
music: Ramones - "I Don't Want To Go Down To The Basement" (both doesn't fit and does; there's many reasons why the house's basement, that Sarah lives in in this story, is scary and dangerous)
(this book reminds me a lot of the author's own voice; something of her and her life seems to be over this)
After leaving Atlanta, and the tragic end of her relationship with her girlfiend, Sarah Crowe is determined to rest and finish her novel living alone on Wight Farm, in rural Rhode Island. But as she wanders around the house, she discovers in the cellar several pages of previous occupant's, Dr Charles Harvey's, unfinished book. He was a parapsyhologist with an obsession on stories about the ancient, tall red oak, which still stood in one corner of the property. Many legends of magic and misfortune have been connected to the tree, and soon Sarah notices its strange hold on her, and how a trip to visit it isn't always as easy as it looks. And when another woman comes to live for summer in the attic above her, things escalate...
The story is written in diary form, lasting a few months during the summer of 2008. The book is credited both to Sarah and Dr Harvey (as he is heavily quoted), so it's a book with the same title as the book we are reading. The editor has added a bit of Sarah's own writings in there at the end. The entries start in May, though she arrives at the end of April.
The other person there, painter Constance Hopkins, is a good pair for us in moving the story along. It's true that her and Sarah frequently fight, but she's a source of information here and there, and Sarah does end up caring for her safety even while resenting her. As the editor says, he tried to contact Hopkins afterwards, but she refused to comment. There's a strange twist to the story regarding her: !
Sarah's ex, Amanda, keeps appearing in her dreams. And Sarah's dreams are one of the things constantly appearing here. We learn that Sarah has often used dreams within her stories, so much that some readers have complained about them. But the dreams are also useful as in they tell her (and us) more about the strange things that have happened around the tree.
Another thing seems to be all the fights. With Amanda, with Constance. Sarah can be one grumpy woman, making things difficult for her. So does her inability to write, which frustrates her, and the occasional seizures, which she has grown used to (but which spook Constance).
There's so many things you notice: the green fishing line, the sacrifical stone, the leaves, the bit in one dream about pony play, the doglike creature that Constance sees once in the garden, the getting lost, some of the people mentioned in Dr Harvey's writings.
The story does grow more intense at the end, but it's not an action-packed thing. The story does end at the last entry, and of Sarah's . So the story is more of a mood, a dreamlike horror thing, and you do end of feeling for Sarah (and perhaps wishing the man who rents the place would do something final to the tree... but I don't think he would get the reason why). The story might be quiet though intense, but I liked it. :)
(this book reminds me a lot of the author's own voice; something of her and her life seems to be over this)
After leaving Atlanta, and the tragic end of her relationship with her girlfiend, Sarah Crowe is determined to rest and finish her novel living alone on Wight Farm, in rural Rhode Island. But as she wanders around the house, she discovers in the cellar several pages of previous occupant's, Dr Charles Harvey's, unfinished book. He was a parapsyhologist with an obsession on stories about the ancient, tall red oak, which still stood in one corner of the property. Many legends of magic and misfortune have been connected to the tree, and soon Sarah notices its strange hold on her, and how a trip to visit it isn't always as easy as it looks. And when another woman comes to live for summer in the attic above her, things escalate...
The story is written in diary form, lasting a few months during the summer of 2008. The book is credited both to Sarah and Dr Harvey (as he is heavily quoted), so it's a book with the same title as the book we are reading. The editor has added a bit of Sarah's own writings in there at the end. The entries start in May, though she arrives at the end of April.
The other person there, painter Constance Hopkins, is a good pair for us in moving the story along. It's true that her and Sarah frequently fight, but she's a source of information here and there, and Sarah does end up caring for her safety even while resenting her. As the editor says, he tried to contact Hopkins afterwards, but she refused to comment. There's a strange twist to the story regarding her: !
Sarah's ex, Amanda, keeps appearing in her dreams. And Sarah's dreams are one of the things constantly appearing here. We learn that Sarah has often used dreams within her stories, so much that some readers have complained about them. But the dreams are also useful as in they tell her (and us) more about the strange things that have happened around the tree.
Another thing seems to be all the fights. With Amanda, with Constance. Sarah can be one grumpy woman, making things difficult for her. So does her inability to write, which frustrates her, and the occasional seizures, which she has grown used to (but which spook Constance).
There's so many things you notice: the green fishing line, the sacrifical stone, the leaves, the bit in one dream about pony play, the doglike creature that Constance sees once in the garden, the getting lost, some of the people mentioned in Dr Harvey's writings.
The story does grow more intense at the end, but it's not an action-packed thing. The story does end at the last entry, and of Sarah's . So the story is more of a mood, a dreamlike horror thing, and you do end of feeling for Sarah (and perhaps wishing the man who rents the place would do something final to the tree... but I don't think he would get the reason why). The story might be quiet though intense, but I liked it. :)
July 18, 2012
A haunting, beautifully-wrought exercise in uncertainty that pushes just about every button I have when it comes to tension, horror, and the supernatural. Kiernan hates to be called a "horror" writer, and while part of me sypmathizes the rest of me doesn't give a damn. "Horror" wouldn't be a shame to be associated with if it were primarily identified with this sort of multi-faceted and subtle work. This is a gobsmackingly good study of stress, illness, inevitability, folklore, haunted places, and above all not having easy answers offered up on a spoon just before the pages run out. An eerie and unsettling masterpiece. This inadequate thumbnail sketch will have to do until I can pry the novel apart at greater length.
April 26, 2020
“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.
September 23, 2019
Caitlin R. Kiernan certainly has a way with words, doesn't she? Wow! It took me a minute to get into the swing of it, but I'm so glad I kept going. If you like Neil Gaiman's style, I have a feeling you'll love The Red Tree. I need to read more of this author's work in the future.
November 7, 2021
2.5 stars. It held such promise… but ultimately didn’t deliver.
July 3, 2015
Writer Sarah Crowe came north to Rhode Island to try to forget an upsetting relationship that had a tragic end. Hoping that a change of location will cure her writer's block, she rents an old house with a huge red oak tree several hundred years old sitting at the edge of the property. In the dank basement Sarah finds an unfinished manuscript written by a professor who had been investigating the horrific local legends about the great tree. He added to the historical lore when he hung himself from its branches.
"The Red Tree" has been written by Sarah as a journal. The huge oak tree is an evil presence with evidence of sacrifice on the stone altar at its base. There is a disturbing atmosphere in the book which has elements of psychological terror and dark fantasy. Sarah's mind seems to become more and more unhinged, partly because she is haunted by memories of her suicidal lover Amanda. One wonders if the artist renting the attic of the house is real or a figment of her imagination. Sarah also has lapses in time due to seizures. The journal records her version of reality woven together with mysterious dreams. References to other literary works are blended into the story with quotes from Thoreau, Lovecraft, Poe, and other authors. As Sarah spirals further into darkness she feels like Alice going through the rabbit hole. Her psychological pain and delusions are taking over her mind. What is truth and what is insanity?
You'll never want to go into a dark basement again after reading this! Recommended to fans of horror and dark fantasy.
"The Red Tree" has been written by Sarah as a journal. The huge oak tree is an evil presence with evidence of sacrifice on the stone altar at its base. There is a disturbing atmosphere in the book which has elements of psychological terror and dark fantasy. Sarah's mind seems to become more and more unhinged, partly because she is haunted by memories of her suicidal lover Amanda. One wonders if the artist renting the attic of the house is real or a figment of her imagination. Sarah also has lapses in time due to seizures. The journal records her version of reality woven together with mysterious dreams. References to other literary works are blended into the story with quotes from Thoreau, Lovecraft, Poe, and other authors. As Sarah spirals further into darkness she feels like Alice going through the rabbit hole. Her psychological pain and delusions are taking over her mind. What is truth and what is insanity?
You'll never want to go into a dark basement again after reading this! Recommended to fans of horror and dark fantasy.
November 26, 2019
It's a decent enough book but it seems to meander around aimlessly for about 90% of the page space and then end very abruptly. I was very into it at some points and for awhile even thought I would give it 4 stars, but ultimately there was just not enough of a payoff at the end. Also it does that thing where an author has a main character who is ALSO an author and seems to use that character as a proxy to complain about certain negative reviews of their own books and I just HATE that. Like I love Kiernan's stuff in general but she can be a bit long-winded and sometimes her many plot points don't get pulled together in a totally satisfactory way - like here - but that doesn't mean she needs to go on and on about it in the text of her works. Still it was enjoyable for the most part and definitely a very easy read, although I wish the chapters were a bit shorter.
December 24, 2014
A compelling epistolary tale of a woman coming apart in an old house steeped in ghastly folklore and legend. Really enjoyed and admired the entwining of historical documents with the strangeness of the unfolding drama in the story. For fans of Picnic at Hanging Rock the picnic scene here and some of the dream sequences are marvellous. New Years resolution for 2015 - must read the other Kiernan novels I haven't yet read.
June 19, 2021
A horror story within a horror story within a horror story. The Red Tree is framed as an unfinished manuscript (complete with editor’s notes) written by an author who spent the last months of her life staying at the Wight Farm in Rhode Island. The editor’s introduction tells us that an abundance of folktales surround an imposing tree on the property. The narrative baton is then passed to the author, Sarah Crowe.
Sarah is abrasive, perpetually horny and frequently angry, and she’s never met an expletive she didn’t love overusing. She’s overdue in submitting her latest novel to her publisher – in fact, she hasn’t even started it. Instead of working on that, she explores the farm, and finds yet another manuscript in the basement, written by a previous writer-tenant who was obsessed with the ‘red tree’. When a painter, Constance Hopkins, also comes to stay at the farm, a will-they-won’t-they relationship develops as the two share some seriously disturbing experiences around the sinister reality-warping tree.
I definitely thought the whole thing was going to spiral into cosmic horror, and between that and my inability to warm to Sarah I was teetering on the edge of a three-star rating... but the ending is so good! Such a great study in horror done right. At times, The Red Tree reminded me of some of my favourite F.G. Cottam books, particularly Brodmaw Bay and (the also tree-centric) The Memory of Trees. The supernatural elements are kept on a tight rein, just explicit enough to be chilling, not outlandish enough to risk seeming silly. It’s intriguing and creepy but also pretty good fun – basically everything I want a horror novel to be.
TinyLetter | Linktree
Sarah is abrasive, perpetually horny and frequently angry, and she’s never met an expletive she didn’t love overusing. She’s overdue in submitting her latest novel to her publisher – in fact, she hasn’t even started it. Instead of working on that, she explores the farm, and finds yet another manuscript in the basement, written by a previous writer-tenant who was obsessed with the ‘red tree’. When a painter, Constance Hopkins, also comes to stay at the farm, a will-they-won’t-they relationship develops as the two share some seriously disturbing experiences around the sinister reality-warping tree.
I definitely thought the whole thing was going to spiral into cosmic horror, and between that and my inability to warm to Sarah I was teetering on the edge of a three-star rating... but the ending is so good! Such a great study in horror done right. At times, The Red Tree reminded me of some of my favourite F.G. Cottam books, particularly Brodmaw Bay and (the also tree-centric) The Memory of Trees. The supernatural elements are kept on a tight rein, just explicit enough to be chilling, not outlandish enough to risk seeming silly. It’s intriguing and creepy but also pretty good fun – basically everything I want a horror novel to be.
TinyLetter | Linktree
October 27, 2015
Sarah Crowe, mid-list author of fantasy novels and short stories, has left Atlanta after a bitter breakup (culminating in the suicide of her ex-girlfriend) and decamped to the middle of nowhere in Rhode Island. Unfortunately for her (but fortunately for Kiernan’s reader), the house she’s rented has a troubling history that centers on an enormous red tree set nearby, linked to centuries of sacrifice, hauntings, werewolves, and death. Much of this history is relayed through - what else? - a manuscript found in the house. Things get even more complicated when Constance Hopkins, an artist, arrives and unexpectedly takes up residence in the attic of the house, and provides a catalyst for Crowe/Kiernan’s musings on the trauma of human relationships.
There’s a tinge of metafiction at work here - Sarah Crowe isn’t exactly Caitlin Kiernan, but she isn’t exactly not Caitlin Kiernan either - both authors/paleontologists who grew up gay in the Deep South, now transplanted to New England - and a story “by Crowe” (published previously by Kiernan) takes up the middle of the novel (and also the nadir of the novel), and Crowe mentions having authored at least one other story written and published by Kiernan in real life. As this is a descent-into-madness narrative in the Lovecraftian confessional mode (culminating in Crowe’s suicide), this sense of authenticity is effectively unsettling. Alienation and misery are constant themes throughout Kiernan’s work (and, therefore, Crowe’s life), and are constantly reflected here in Crowe’s physical isolation, with nothing but ghosts and her own imagination to keep her company much of the time. This is a brutally downtrodden story.
An epistolary work, The Red Tree opens with an introduction by Crowe’s editor, is mostly taken up by Crowe’s journal, has said short story interjected in the middle, and closes with an excerpt from one of Crowe’s novels. Crowe’s journal also quotes liberally from the manuscript written by the house’s previous occupant, an academic working on a history of the house and tree. The voice of the journal was my chief complaint with the novel - I suppose it’s possible that authors keep journals like this, but the prose vacillated a little too wildly between Kiernan’s usual lyricism and an overly prosaic/conversational tone (“And why the hell am I writing all this crap down? Oh yeah, boredom.”) I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the rock-bottom intersection of those tendencies: an attack on critics and Amazon reviewers who complain about dream sequences in her fiction. Of course, it wouldn’t be an epistolary novel of weird horror if there wasn’t some degree of unreliability, so: how much of what Crowe is telling us is real? What’s supernatural, and what’s only in her head? Who really wrote that manuscript she found? How big is the basement of the house, really? Who wrote that short story? and etc. While I freely admit that I am a sucker for an unreliable narrator, I’m not entirely convinced that this sort of madness-versus-supernatural is ever entirely convincing - who reads things like this and thinks "oh, poor thing, it was all in her head" and opts for the mundane, less-interesting reading? This book, existing down in the gloom and the murk of Crowe's depression and misery, walks the line more convincingly than most, though.
That short story (which turns up in the house, although Crowe has no memory of writing it) is reproduced in its entirety as part of Crowe’s manuscript, and it is the definite low point of the novel - it combines Kiernan’s (good) tendency toward works that circle a never-clearly-delineated weirdness and her (bad) tendency toward the self-consciously outre and endlessly-squabbling couples. Kiernan’s characters, both here and elsewhere, tend not to have conversations so much as arguments of varying heat (and varying pettiness). It wears thin.
Complaints aside, this is a book that has really stuck with me. The protagonist of “Pony” at one points reflects on a ghost story “[m]ore like something an Arthur Machen might have written, or an Algernon Blackwood, something more mood and suggestion than anything else,” and The Red Tree is a worthy addition to this lineage. Its most obvious antecedent, though, is Oliver Onions’ “The Beckoning Fair One,” with its miserable, possibly-unhinged author protagonist and creepy house. Kiernan is one of the modern masters of this branch of weird fiction that largely avoids an explicit explosion of horror in favor of uncanny, inexplicable wrongnesses just beyond the narrator/reader’s perception/understanding (see, perhaps especially, her “The Long Hall on the Top Floor” (1999) and “Houses Under the Sea” (2006), which remains her greatest achievement).
I think I say this every time I comment on a piece of her fiction, but I find Kiernan to be incredibly frustrating. I think her interests in writing and my interests in reading are sometimes wholly compatible (ie unreliable narrators, descents into madness, everything in the above paragraph) and sometimes wholly incompatible (ie horror erotica, outsiderdom verging on solipsism), but rarely anything in between those two extremes. When she’s writing the sort of thing that I like, though, it is the sort of thing I really like.
PS - how about that cover?
There’s a tinge of metafiction at work here - Sarah Crowe isn’t exactly Caitlin Kiernan, but she isn’t exactly not Caitlin Kiernan either - both authors/paleontologists who grew up gay in the Deep South, now transplanted to New England - and a story “by Crowe” (published previously by Kiernan) takes up the middle of the novel (and also the nadir of the novel), and Crowe mentions having authored at least one other story written and published by Kiernan in real life. As this is a descent-into-madness narrative in the Lovecraftian confessional mode (culminating in Crowe’s suicide), this sense of authenticity is effectively unsettling. Alienation and misery are constant themes throughout Kiernan’s work (and, therefore, Crowe’s life), and are constantly reflected here in Crowe’s physical isolation, with nothing but ghosts and her own imagination to keep her company much of the time. This is a brutally downtrodden story.
An epistolary work, The Red Tree opens with an introduction by Crowe’s editor, is mostly taken up by Crowe’s journal, has said short story interjected in the middle, and closes with an excerpt from one of Crowe’s novels. Crowe’s journal also quotes liberally from the manuscript written by the house’s previous occupant, an academic working on a history of the house and tree. The voice of the journal was my chief complaint with the novel - I suppose it’s possible that authors keep journals like this, but the prose vacillated a little too wildly between Kiernan’s usual lyricism and an overly prosaic/conversational tone (“And why the hell am I writing all this crap down? Oh yeah, boredom.”) I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the rock-bottom intersection of those tendencies: an attack on critics and Amazon reviewers who complain about dream sequences in her fiction. Of course, it wouldn’t be an epistolary novel of weird horror if there wasn’t some degree of unreliability, so: how much of what Crowe is telling us is real? What’s supernatural, and what’s only in her head? Who really wrote that manuscript she found? How big is the basement of the house, really? Who wrote that short story? and etc. While I freely admit that I am a sucker for an unreliable narrator, I’m not entirely convinced that this sort of madness-versus-supernatural is ever entirely convincing - who reads things like this and thinks "oh, poor thing, it was all in her head" and opts for the mundane, less-interesting reading? This book, existing down in the gloom and the murk of Crowe's depression and misery, walks the line more convincingly than most, though.
That short story (which turns up in the house, although Crowe has no memory of writing it) is reproduced in its entirety as part of Crowe’s manuscript, and it is the definite low point of the novel - it combines Kiernan’s (good) tendency toward works that circle a never-clearly-delineated weirdness and her (bad) tendency toward the self-consciously outre and endlessly-squabbling couples. Kiernan’s characters, both here and elsewhere, tend not to have conversations so much as arguments of varying heat (and varying pettiness). It wears thin.
Complaints aside, this is a book that has really stuck with me. The protagonist of “Pony” at one points reflects on a ghost story “[m]ore like something an Arthur Machen might have written, or an Algernon Blackwood, something more mood and suggestion than anything else,” and The Red Tree is a worthy addition to this lineage. Its most obvious antecedent, though, is Oliver Onions’ “The Beckoning Fair One,” with its miserable, possibly-unhinged author protagonist and creepy house. Kiernan is one of the modern masters of this branch of weird fiction that largely avoids an explicit explosion of horror in favor of uncanny, inexplicable wrongnesses just beyond the narrator/reader’s perception/understanding (see, perhaps especially, her “The Long Hall on the Top Floor” (1999) and “Houses Under the Sea” (2006), which remains her greatest achievement).
I think I say this every time I comment on a piece of her fiction, but I find Kiernan to be incredibly frustrating. I think her interests in writing and my interests in reading are sometimes wholly compatible (ie unreliable narrators, descents into madness, everything in the above paragraph) and sometimes wholly incompatible (ie horror erotica, outsiderdom verging on solipsism), but rarely anything in between those two extremes. When she’s writing the sort of thing that I like, though, it is the sort of thing I really like.
PS - how about that cover?
April 15, 2013
I've not read a Caitlin Kiernan book in a long time, and was quite nostalgically going back, hoping to find something spooky and dark and poetic. It has those elements, which is why it has some stars, but little else to it - as if that is all the author has relied upon and has eschewed a cohesive story, structure and credible characters. This book has rave reviews from so many, but I cannot get at all what they're talking about. To me, it meanders and rambles in an incoherent fashion around the idea of this cursed tree, with various references to its history, a few inexplicable events to the two main characters of the book, an awful lot of dream description and dialogue mainly consisting of disjointed, laconic and cruel conversations where I had no idea why the characters where even talking to each other like that. Then finally - it's all a dream! Or is it? Was it all in her head or was it real? I mean, come on, really...
We are taken through pages and pages of digression which the author then admits and passes off as "her style of writing", after you have just wasted your time reading them. There are also seemingly endless pages of a fictional reference book to get through, written by the previous victim of the tree. It does have some beautiful language and description, and there are a couple of chapters where genuine tension is created. I would be less disparaging if I could see this was just a bad author, but Caitlin is by no means that; she has a wonderful way with words and good ideas. It seems this story was just - lazily written? Or badly edited, perhaps?I was left feeling cheated out of my money and time, which is a real pity, because I wanted so much to like it.
We are taken through pages and pages of digression which the author then admits and passes off as "her style of writing", after you have just wasted your time reading them. There are also seemingly endless pages of a fictional reference book to get through, written by the previous victim of the tree. It does have some beautiful language and description, and there are a couple of chapters where genuine tension is created. I would be less disparaging if I could see this was just a bad author, but Caitlin is by no means that; she has a wonderful way with words and good ideas. It seems this story was just - lazily written? Or badly edited, perhaps?I was left feeling cheated out of my money and time, which is a real pity, because I wanted so much to like it.
November 12, 2017
If books were judged by covers, I would place this on the "Buffy-type character who works at the local funeral parlor putting makeup on the dead bodies uses her magic to get the cute guy to ask her to prom" shelf. But we don't judge books by covers, and if I did I would not have read this. The Red Tree is a couple of stories in one, never lingering too long on any one thread, never rally wrapping anything up. Like the part where she talks about things never ending, like walking the circumference of a circle, around and around until you get tired. You know what happens from the beginning of the book so it's not a "throw the book out the window because nothing gets resolved ending" and the unreliable narrator was uniquely used in that she tells us she is making stuff up throughout the story. I like a little bit of mystery, I don't need everything perfectly explained. I like for things to at least somewhat make sense, but I don't need every question answered. Very good book that kept my interest for its entirety. Scary in mood and in the images it put in my head.
November 21, 2022
Kiernan is an excellent writer and her story kept me enthralled. It's horror, but not your usual horror story. A young woman writer leaves Atlanta and rents a house in rural Rhode Island to find the peace and quiet to write. She finds a "lost" manuscript telling the history of a huge old "red" oak tree, which she can see from the house. She becomes obsessed with the tree -- and an atmosphere of increasing dread develops.
Kiernan is obviously paying homage to H.P. Lovecraft, particularly with the New England setting. I like that--so I'll be looking for more of her work.
Kiernan is obviously paying homage to H.P. Lovecraft, particularly with the New England setting. I like that--so I'll be looking for more of her work.
July 7, 2023
About as layered a work of genre fiction as you're going to get...pretty much as near-infinitely interpretable as a Lynch film, as heart-on-sleeve [in a good way] as anything you'd get out of a work this openly indebted to its vastly diverse influences, and still as chilling and upsetting in what it implies and leaves out as much as it shows. I'd go as far as to say that a second read of this is even darker than the first, the second experience for me netted more interest in the realism than the supernatural flourishes...Kiernan never shows their hand precisely, because that would defeat the point, but there's always a sense that there's something much more sinister in a real world context going on here than stories of demonic possession and haunted wildlife. Sarah is clearly running from a violent past, one in which she has potentially been both victim and perpetrator at different times, and the direct inability to take what she says at face value [by her own frequent admission] makes it nearly impossible to deduce her guilt or innocence. The novel takes psychological horror to its extremities, Sarah is essentially gaslighting herself as much as the reader; we're made to inhabit this frightful interior space because the journalistic approach gives no recourse to escape the brain of this very volatile, really quite nasty human being. Staying in the headspace of Sarah this long and this intensely is of course a bold move that will alienate many, but the time spent with her allows for empathy and intimacy that a more detached perspective wouldn't necessarily be able to conjure. This is a character study before it is anything else, and it really pays off.
This novel has always reminded me of "The Blair Witch Project" [which is not surprising considering Kiernan directly cites it as an influence], but the similarities are a lot more about the postmodern application of ideas than the surface level "haunted woodlands" atmosphere that I didn't recognize initially...Sarah and Heather are pretty similar protagonists in the sense that they both filter and understand their deteriorating situations through the use of physical mediums and specifically the Objects in which they filter them, Heather's being the camera and Sarah's being the typewriter specifically. Both utilize the specifics of their mediums to great effect, with the physical object not just being a means of narrative convenience but an extremely important cornerstone of how the characters understand and compartmentalize the narrative on their own terms, and as a result it makes both works feel like they exist independently of an audience because the integration of one's own individual perspective is so carefully crafted in a meta sense. In other words, just like "The Blair Witch Project", "The Red Tree" actually does feel like it could have been someone's journal discovered after their death, intended for no one else's eyes but the writer. Which is also even more metatextually effective, because this novel is clearly autobiographical for Kiernan, who is essentially splurging this very confessional and dark fairy-tale metaphor for her own life to be read and analyzed by nerds like me.
And ofc as a textural work it's just great, Kiernan is clearly incredibly well-read and the diverse bag of influences and references they pull from never feel like they're overplayed or cloying because their central authorial voice is always clear and full of movement and purpose, even when the narrative for all intents and purposes moves at a snail's pace due to most of it being in Sarah's [and by extension Kiernan's] mind. The meta elements, Sarah's character and her obsessions, and the nested story structure allows for an exploration of tons of disparate ideas and avenues of thought, and the rug is never pulled out from under the reader in an undermining way considering Sarah is always transparent that what she says is not the full truth, but just as transparent in that she truly believes she isn't lying either. So you can read it as the story of real, Lovecraftian hauntings, or the story of a woman's mind disintegrating, or the story of cult murder and conspiracy and criminal activity, and then some; no potential explanation takes less or more precedent than the other. It makes the novel inherently rereadable and assures longevity for anyone who is willing to sit with it and accept the narrative deceit on the terms established.
So yeah, along with "The Fisherman" [also kinda a similar novel] this is another one of those genre reads I was worried would cool on me the second time around but only ended up enriching itself and revealing its deeper secrets to me even further. Would definitely recommend this to anyone interested in postmodernism when applied in a genre context, but also would recommend it to anyone invested in character studies because it works just fine on both those levels and then some. Plus Kiernan can fucking write, they're not going on these long and labyrinthine prose poems, but they absolutely understand how the human voice and cadence translates into a written context better than most writers of dialogue I've ever encountered. So yeah this book is a big W and the cover sucks, read it in spite of that because it's worth the investment!
This novel has always reminded me of "The Blair Witch Project" [which is not surprising considering Kiernan directly cites it as an influence], but the similarities are a lot more about the postmodern application of ideas than the surface level "haunted woodlands" atmosphere that I didn't recognize initially...Sarah and Heather are pretty similar protagonists in the sense that they both filter and understand their deteriorating situations through the use of physical mediums and specifically the Objects in which they filter them, Heather's being the camera and Sarah's being the typewriter specifically. Both utilize the specifics of their mediums to great effect, with the physical object not just being a means of narrative convenience but an extremely important cornerstone of how the characters understand and compartmentalize the narrative on their own terms, and as a result it makes both works feel like they exist independently of an audience because the integration of one's own individual perspective is so carefully crafted in a meta sense. In other words, just like "The Blair Witch Project", "The Red Tree" actually does feel like it could have been someone's journal discovered after their death, intended for no one else's eyes but the writer. Which is also even more metatextually effective, because this novel is clearly autobiographical for Kiernan, who is essentially splurging this very confessional and dark fairy-tale metaphor for her own life to be read and analyzed by nerds like me.
And ofc as a textural work it's just great, Kiernan is clearly incredibly well-read and the diverse bag of influences and references they pull from never feel like they're overplayed or cloying because their central authorial voice is always clear and full of movement and purpose, even when the narrative for all intents and purposes moves at a snail's pace due to most of it being in Sarah's [and by extension Kiernan's] mind. The meta elements, Sarah's character and her obsessions, and the nested story structure allows for an exploration of tons of disparate ideas and avenues of thought, and the rug is never pulled out from under the reader in an undermining way considering Sarah is always transparent that what she says is not the full truth, but just as transparent in that she truly believes she isn't lying either. So you can read it as the story of real, Lovecraftian hauntings, or the story of a woman's mind disintegrating, or the story of cult murder and conspiracy and criminal activity, and then some; no potential explanation takes less or more precedent than the other. It makes the novel inherently rereadable and assures longevity for anyone who is willing to sit with it and accept the narrative deceit on the terms established.
So yeah, along with "The Fisherman" [also kinda a similar novel] this is another one of those genre reads I was worried would cool on me the second time around but only ended up enriching itself and revealing its deeper secrets to me even further. Would definitely recommend this to anyone interested in postmodernism when applied in a genre context, but also would recommend it to anyone invested in character studies because it works just fine on both those levels and then some. Plus Kiernan can fucking write, they're not going on these long and labyrinthine prose poems, but they absolutely understand how the human voice and cadence translates into a written context better than most writers of dialogue I've ever encountered. So yeah this book is a big W and the cover sucks, read it in spite of that because it's worth the investment!
April 27, 2017
This book gave me the walking pneumonia and the throw it out the window fits.
I loved Kiernan's
...only book of hers that I've read and that was a novella.I mean -I damned dead long gone loved that.
So I bought this.
It's a ghost love story told first person (from "journals" left by a suicide we're informed in the almost endless introduction) and its so impossibly hip and so many fathoms beyond cool that I felt like I was a goddamned retro with a flat-top. Double the Butch Wax.
I can't say I "hate" this novel because it never held my interest long enough to summon up anything more than a high fever and low grades.
Disappointing.
I can't believe I set aside a brilliant little 1937 item by Jonathan Latimer to partially read this.
Curses!
Foiled again.
April 18, 2015
So, let's start with the worst.
What on earth was the cover artist and artist thinking?! This is possibly the WORST imaginable cover possible for the book. It makes it like some generic, broody urban fantasy or paranormal romance when it's far from that.
It's straight up psychological horror - with a 44 year old heroine, not a late teen/20ish one with too much eye makeup.
If I hadn't already been familiar with Kiernan from her more recent book The Drowning Girl, I never would have given this volume a second glance.
Now on to the rest.
This has a lot of components in common with her The Drowning Girl. Unreliable narrators. Slow slides into madness. Digressions. Stories within a story. More digressions and seemingly unrelated sets of facts and numbers. Lesbian relationships. The first-person diary format. The people and events that may or may not be someone's imagination.
At the same time, Sarah doesn't quite support all this ambiguity and digression quite as well as Imp did - which is a shame. And (obviously) this isn't a criticism I would have had if I'd read them in the order that Kiernan had written them. But it does make me look back at The Drowning Girl and realize that it may deserve a 5 star rating instead of the 4 stars I gave it at the time. It just worked so well - and this doesn't, not quite.
I loved the ambiguity, the atmosphere, the House of Leavesish bits, the Edgar Allen Poeish bits, the Lovecraftian bits, the Lewis Carolish bits. But I'm reminded of a quote by H.P. Lovecraft: "There are my 'Poe' pieces and my 'Dunsany' pieces—but alas—where are my Lovecraft pieces?"
After these two books, I'm beginning to think that the ambiguity and the digressive nature of the text might be what makes a Kiernan piece - but I still need a bit more data to say for certain.
What on earth was the cover artist and artist thinking?! This is possibly the WORST imaginable cover possible for the book. It makes it like some generic, broody urban fantasy or paranormal romance when it's far from that.
It's straight up psychological horror - with a 44 year old heroine, not a late teen/20ish one with too much eye makeup.
If I hadn't already been familiar with Kiernan from her more recent book The Drowning Girl, I never would have given this volume a second glance.
Now on to the rest.
This has a lot of components in common with her The Drowning Girl. Unreliable narrators. Slow slides into madness. Digressions. Stories within a story. More digressions and seemingly unrelated sets of facts and numbers. Lesbian relationships. The first-person diary format. The people and events that may or may not be someone's imagination.
At the same time, Sarah doesn't quite support all this ambiguity and digression quite as well as Imp did - which is a shame. And (obviously) this isn't a criticism I would have had if I'd read them in the order that Kiernan had written them. But it does make me look back at The Drowning Girl and realize that it may deserve a 5 star rating instead of the 4 stars I gave it at the time. It just worked so well - and this doesn't, not quite.
I loved the ambiguity, the atmosphere, the House of Leavesish bits, the Edgar Allen Poeish bits, the Lovecraftian bits, the Lewis Carolish bits. But I'm reminded of a quote by H.P. Lovecraft: "There are my 'Poe' pieces and my 'Dunsany' pieces—but alas—where are my Lovecraft pieces?"
After these two books, I'm beginning to think that the ambiguity and the digressive nature of the text might be what makes a Kiernan piece - but I still need a bit more data to say for certain.
January 10, 2014
I once had a girlfriend who had a bit of a clairvoyance/psychic kind of vibe going on. One night in the middle of sleep she wakes, bolt upright in bed and I do too, stuck in that groggy place between the two. "My grandfather is here." And I agreed, as I had no idea what she was talking about, so I took a survey of my surroundings. I shit you not, there, in the corner of the room, is a shape blacker than the inky darkness of the room. I see it, and pull the covers over my head. "What the fuck is that?" And she repeated the earlier statement, like I was slow to catch on. So we stayed in position: She, sail-mast straight and I, hiding like a little bitch. Eventually she lay back down and said "He's gone now."
That's it.
What the fuck just happened?
So my long winded point is, that I have no clue what happened that night. I know what I saw, and felt. There was something there that I will never be able to explain. This book is like that. Every first person narrator is unreliable. My Ex may have a completely different recollection of that night than I do. Caitlin Kiernan does an excellent job of sowing the seeds of doubt in the readers mind. Are these things happening to Sarah? Is Harvey's manuscript real? Who is Constance really?
It leaves you with so many questions, but answers so few. To me that is the magic of the novel: we aren't supposed to know. There are things at work in the background that are too much for us to bear.
The writing is gorgeous. Literary, complex, layered. Allusions are sprinkled throughout, really adding to the depth of the experience. The dread really does creep up on you and by then, it's already too late.
Loved it.
That's it.
What the fuck just happened?
So my long winded point is, that I have no clue what happened that night. I know what I saw, and felt. There was something there that I will never be able to explain. This book is like that. Every first person narrator is unreliable. My Ex may have a completely different recollection of that night than I do. Caitlin Kiernan does an excellent job of sowing the seeds of doubt in the readers mind. Are these things happening to Sarah? Is Harvey's manuscript real? Who is Constance really?
It leaves you with so many questions, but answers so few. To me that is the magic of the novel: we aren't supposed to know. There are things at work in the background that are too much for us to bear.
The writing is gorgeous. Literary, complex, layered. Allusions are sprinkled throughout, really adding to the depth of the experience. The dread really does creep up on you and by then, it's already too late.
Loved it.
September 18, 2021
First things first, DO NOT JUDGE THIS BOOK BY ITS COVER.
Whichever imbecile at the publishing house decided that THIS was an appropriate cover needs to be fired and starved of a pension.
This is a work of literature which delves deep into the heart of a young writer in the throws of grief after the upsetting conclusion to a romantic relationship through the exploration of a dark and ominous series of local legends.
It is NOT some edgy melodramatic YA novel like the cover implies.
Got it? Fired the cover artist? Good.
Right.
Kiernan here has used an insightfully introspective tale to convey a number of emotionally significant messages about the heart and soul whilst also bringing to life a creepy and ominous tale of death and tragedy which revolves around the mysterious red tree in the POV narrator's garden in the Rhode Island property she is renting to escape heartbreak.
Honestly, my read dates will make it look like I took a week to get through this, but that isn't accurate. I took six days putting off reading this because of the YA-style cover, but the day I actually opened the book was the day I finished it, so...
It is truly a pity that this ridiculous cover has been matched with this masterfully written tale because not only is the cover the representation of a polar opposite story, but it is most definitely going to attract the wrong audience whilst putting off the right one.
Thoroughly enjoyed the book itself, Kiernan has a great skill, I just really hate this damn cover.
Whichever imbecile at the publishing house decided that THIS was an appropriate cover needs to be fired and starved of a pension.
This is a work of literature which delves deep into the heart of a young writer in the throws of grief after the upsetting conclusion to a romantic relationship through the exploration of a dark and ominous series of local legends.
It is NOT some edgy melodramatic YA novel like the cover implies.
Got it? Fired the cover artist? Good.
Right.
Kiernan here has used an insightfully introspective tale to convey a number of emotionally significant messages about the heart and soul whilst also bringing to life a creepy and ominous tale of death and tragedy which revolves around the mysterious red tree in the POV narrator's garden in the Rhode Island property she is renting to escape heartbreak.
Honestly, my read dates will make it look like I took a week to get through this, but that isn't accurate. I took six days putting off reading this because of the YA-style cover, but the day I actually opened the book was the day I finished it, so...
It is truly a pity that this ridiculous cover has been matched with this masterfully written tale because not only is the cover the representation of a polar opposite story, but it is most definitely going to attract the wrong audience whilst putting off the right one.
Thoroughly enjoyed the book itself, Kiernan has a great skill, I just really hate this damn cover.
June 21, 2010
Rating: between 3.0 and 3.5
I'm going to echo some of the other reviewers on this site and agree that this is one of Kiernan's better novels (though all of her stuff, that I've read, is good and highly recommended). As is true of her earlier work, it's never certain that what the narrator narrates is what happens, and our narrator's (Sarah Crowe) mental and physical capacities are always in doubt. As she often concedes in the course of this first-person tale.
It reminds me of Sylvia Townsend Warner's Lolly Willowes in that every supernatural event can be explained by the machinations of the unconscious mind. Kiernan's vision is far bleaker but both authors are masters (mistresses?) of mood setting and evocative writing. Though I should mention that, IMO, this is Kiernan's least lyrical novel. There's almost none of her, at times, ecstatic/euphoric use of words; I kept thinking that she was holding herself back as I read.
Regardless of the "truth" of Sarah Crowe's experiences, for lovers of Lovecraft, Machen and other horror authors who value the psychological power of terror over gore, I'd recommend The Red Tree. If your idea of "horror" is graphic descriptions of butchery and the "Saw" franchise, you'll be bored out of your mind and probably should avoid this novel.
I'm going to echo some of the other reviewers on this site and agree that this is one of Kiernan's better novels (though all of her stuff, that I've read, is good and highly recommended). As is true of her earlier work, it's never certain that what the narrator narrates is what happens, and our narrator's (Sarah Crowe) mental and physical capacities are always in doubt. As she often concedes in the course of this first-person tale.
It reminds me of Sylvia Townsend Warner's Lolly Willowes in that every supernatural event can be explained by the machinations of the unconscious mind. Kiernan's vision is far bleaker but both authors are masters (mistresses?) of mood setting and evocative writing. Though I should mention that, IMO, this is Kiernan's least lyrical novel. There's almost none of her, at times, ecstatic/euphoric use of words; I kept thinking that she was holding herself back as I read.
Regardless of the "truth" of Sarah Crowe's experiences, for lovers of Lovecraft, Machen and other horror authors who value the psychological power of terror over gore, I'd recommend The Red Tree. If your idea of "horror" is graphic descriptions of butchery and the "Saw" franchise, you'll be bored out of your mind and probably should avoid this novel.
December 3, 2012
I've been meaning to try a book by Caitlin R. Kiernan. I chose this one because I need a novel with "Red" in the title for a reading challenge. We Goodreads people pick books for the stupidest reasons, don't we?
---------------
So I finished the novel and I'm not sure if this is typical Kiernan. It has many of the traits I've been warned about including the wandering off-topic and obligatory lesbian sex. But it reads like more of a tribute to a style of horror story that might be described "Unreliable narrator becomes obsessed with strange phenomena / environment". The tribute is well intended as Kiernan quotes many references to this "sub-genre" including Edgar Allen Poe, Shirley Jackson, and even the great under-appreciated short tale "Canavan's Back Yard" by Joseph Payne Brennan which has many similarities to The Red Tree. The book is represented as a last memoir of a novelist as she writes in seclusion in a Rhode Island farm. She in turn finds a manuscript of a professor researching the history of the farm and, in specific, a red oak tree that has a history of strange happenings. There is a very slow build-up of events and we explore the events through the complex and troubled mind of the narrator. This slow build-up is what makes this novel so engrossing. It doesn't try to shock and the scary parts are more eerie then terrifying. It clearly owes some of this to Jackson's Haunting of Hill House and the vintage atmospheric ghost tales of Machen and Blackwood. The Red Tree remains a first rate psychological horror story from start to finish. Whether it is typical of Kiernan or not, it is certainly written with the hands of a master and I will be seeking more books by this author.
---------------
So I finished the novel and I'm not sure if this is typical Kiernan. It has many of the traits I've been warned about including the wandering off-topic and obligatory lesbian sex. But it reads like more of a tribute to a style of horror story that might be described "Unreliable narrator becomes obsessed with strange phenomena / environment". The tribute is well intended as Kiernan quotes many references to this "sub-genre" including Edgar Allen Poe, Shirley Jackson, and even the great under-appreciated short tale "Canavan's Back Yard" by Joseph Payne Brennan which has many similarities to The Red Tree. The book is represented as a last memoir of a novelist as she writes in seclusion in a Rhode Island farm. She in turn finds a manuscript of a professor researching the history of the farm and, in specific, a red oak tree that has a history of strange happenings. There is a very slow build-up of events and we explore the events through the complex and troubled mind of the narrator. This slow build-up is what makes this novel so engrossing. It doesn't try to shock and the scary parts are more eerie then terrifying. It clearly owes some of this to Jackson's Haunting of Hill House and the vintage atmospheric ghost tales of Machen and Blackwood. The Red Tree remains a first rate psychological horror story from start to finish. Whether it is typical of Kiernan or not, it is certainly written with the hands of a master and I will be seeking more books by this author.
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