THE TREES

by Percival Everett

I’m not sure why, after having read James and being in awe of it, I didn’t immediately go back and explore Percival Everett’s extensive backlist of books.  It took a friend whose opinion I value to encourage me to read The Trees, published in 2021. The Trees is like no other novel I have ever read. I recently read someone describe Everett’s writing style as “genre-bending.” Maybe that’s what explains The Trees’ uniqueness. It defies categorization.

In The Trees, Everett writes about a series of murders in the fictitious town of Money, Mississippi.  That the victims are all white, as is the town’s entire department of law enforcement, and all signs point to the killer(s) being Black, the intensity of the situation quickly ratchets up.  That the victims have been brutally strangled and then mutilated is beyond anyone’s ability to comprehend.  And then Everett introduces the two state agents and the FBI agent that have been called to Money to investigate the murders and they are all Black.  The situation becomes positively combustible.

However it isn’t Everett’s story that defies categorization, but rather his writing style. The law enforcement officers from Money are so blinded by their racist upbringing and beliefs, that they fail to notice the parallels between the way these victims are being murdered and how the thousands of Black men and women from previous decades were lynched.  Actually, Everett writes his white characters as so ignorant and unaware that they come across almost as slapstick.  That is, they could be comical—if they weren’t so horrifying. The juxtaposition of this cluelessness on the part of the white characters and the horrifying retributive murders committed by the Black characters left me feeling deeply uncomfortable. Percival Everett’s The Trees remains lodged in my psyche, perfectly brilliant in its vileness.  (Liz)