{"id":9874,"date":"2023-04-09T10:44:27","date_gmt":"2023-04-09T14:44:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=9874"},"modified":"2025-03-19T00:54:52","modified_gmt":"2025-03-19T04:54:52","slug":"the-trees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2023\/04\/09\/the-trees\/","title":{"rendered":"The Trees."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Percival Everett has been publishing novels since the mid-1980s, but the 66-year-old author has come into much greater critical acclaim with his three most recent works, becoming a Pulitzer finalist for 2021\u2019s Telephone<\/em>, a Booker finalist for 2022\u2019s The Trees<\/em>, and, so far, already a finalist for the NBCC Fiction award for Dr. No<\/em>. I\u2019d never read any of his work before The Trees<\/em>, which I read on my flight to Phoenix and enjoyed so much that I went to Changing Hands that same day and bought Dr. No<\/em>. The Trees<\/a> <\/em>is a massive fake-out of a novel, starting out as a bawdy, neo-noir sort of detective novel, before taking a sudden turn into more serious and philosophical territory, resolving the question of the crime in the least satisfying way possible \u2013 because that was never the point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A couple of white men are found brutally murdered in the minuscule, backwards town of Money, Mississippi, a town only known for being the site of the murder of Emmett Till. In each case, they\u2019ve been castrated, with their genitalia in the fist of a Black man\u2019s corpse found in the same room. And each time, it\u2019s the same<\/em> Black man\u2019s corpse. It goes from the morgue to the next murder scene, making a mockery of the local authorities, who did not need the help. Two Black detectives from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigations show up to try to solve the murders, which doesn\u2019t go over well with the white cops in Money or even the victims\u2019 families, although the assistance the two receive from some of the Black residents is only slightly better. The victims turn out to have a surprising connection, and just as the MBI agents and the FBI agent assigned to help them have started to put this together, reports come in of nearly identical crimes in Chicago, Los Angeles, and elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n <\/script> \n \n\n\n\n

The Trees<\/em> is part dark comedy, part revenge fantasy, part detective story (at least at the start), but it is entirely a story about the weight of history. The systemic racism that pervades the entire history of the United States is reflected in the murders, the authorities, the investigation, almost every aspect of The Trees<\/em>. It\u2019s in the banter \u2013 much of it very, very funny \u2013 between the two MBI agents, who absolutely could have stepped out of The Wire<\/em>. It\u2019s in the diner where Gertrude, a fair-skinned woman who lives in Money, works as a waitress, often serving white people who conveniently forget that she\u2019s Black. It\u2019s practically woven into the pages of the book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the novel doesn\u2019t have the same psychological horror element as Get Out<\/a><\/em>, it mines very similar thematic territory, combining it with the sort of over-the-top humor that made Paul Beatty\u2019s The Sellout<\/a><\/em> such a critical success. There\u2019s a seething rage beneath the surface here that Everett holds in check with the various layers of humor, especially with the MBI agents Jim Davis and Ed Morgan, who combine the \u201cold married couple\u201d vibe of McNulty and Bunk with wry commentary on the dangers of their situation as two Black feds in a town that has is still debating whether to acknowledge the advent of Reconstruction. (These two characters could have their own TV series, although doing so would strip out the theme of historical racism that underlies the novel, and I think the novel is unfilmable given its somewhat ambiguous ending.) It\u2019s a delicate balance to strike, and Everett never seems to waver, mixing in humor highbrow and low, even throwing in some ridiculous character names like Cad Fondle or Herberta Hind, to allow him to escalate the extent and violence of the crimes at the narrative\u2019s heart without turning the reader away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where The Trees <\/em>ends may frustrate you if you need a firm conclusion that wraps up all of a novel\u2019s loose ends, as Everett does very little of that. You\u2019ll know who\u2019s responsible for the murders, but beyond that, he offers little resolution and far more doubt than is conventional for any novel, let alone one that at least draws on the traditions of the detective genre. It\u2019s in service of the book\u2019s larger themes of historical racism and the double-edged sword of vengeance. Your mileage may vary, of course. I found myself so drawn in by the humor and the tight prose that I was willing to follow The Trees <\/em>wherever it led me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next up: Elizabeth McCracken\u2019s The Hero of this Book<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Percival Everett has been publishing novels since the mid-1980s, but the 66-year-old author has come into much greater critical acclaim with his three most recent works, becoming a Pulitzer finalist for 2021\u2019s Telephone, a Booker finalist for 2022\u2019s The Trees, and, so far, already a finalist for the NBCC Fiction award for Dr. No. I\u2019d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1343,31,684,429,161,1453],"class_list":["post-9874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2022-novels","tag-african-american-literature","tag-contemporary-novels","tag-detective-novels","tag-highly-recommended","tag-percival-everett","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9874"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9874\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9875,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9874\/revisions\/9875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}