Only an author as skilled as Percival Everett could take a bloody historical event and transpose it not only into a contemporary narrative but a work of funny, quick-witted dialogue and the darkest black comedy imaginable. THE TREES (Graywolf Press 2021) is a sublime, imaginative, genre-bending novel that is easy to read, carries emotional weight, and provides entertaining hilarity in abundance.
In the deep south of Mississippi (current day), two black detectives arrive in the small town of Money to investigate a series of brutal murders (the body count begins at two but rapidly increases). At each scene, they find a dead local white man or men, and another body – that of an unidentified black person who bears an uncanny resemble to Emmett Till, the real life 14-year-old boy who was lynched in 1955 for (supposedly) making a remark to a white woman in a grocery store. Till’s mother insisted on an open casket to ensure the community knew the gruesome and tragic details of her son’s torture and death.
In THE TREES, it seems that Emmett Till himself has come back from the dead and is wreaking vengeance on the descendants of his attackers. This is, of course, impossible. But then, so is the fact that the same dead black man (Emmett Till?) disappears from the coroner’s van or the morgue and then turns up at the site of the next killing. And the next. Always holding a dead white man’s testicles in his hands.
It sounds horrific, and it is; Everett’s message is to remind us that the carnage he describes was commonplace last century (when it was black men, women and children who were savaged and murdered) in huge numbers and that any sharp intake of breath we inhale now with these white killings should be put into the perspective of the racism that has clouded America (and might I add, Australia, and most colonial countries) since the dawn of history. Just as in his latest book JAMES (a retelling of Huckleberry Finn from the black slave’s perspective) this complete reversal of facts and story is impressive in scope, imagination, themes and every tortured detail.
Everett is a writer of sublime talent. He pens literary prose and evocative description alongside direct and punchy dialect and sharply observed characterisations. THE TREES is easy to read and very pacy. The chapters are short and sharp. The narrative is full of action and twists, but these don’t obscure the author’s underlying message.
Is this a crime novel? A historical novel? A satire? It is all of these and more. A delight to read; a privilege to be privy to this author’s contemporary take on racism and its long, nightmarish tail of intergenerational trauma.
This book was recommended to me by Bill Nighy on his podcast: ILL-ADVISED, a refuge for the socially inept and unrelentingly awkward. As a sidebar, I can also highly recommend this podcast.