Review: The Red Tree

The Red Tree by Caitlín R. Kiernan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’ve been meaning to try a book by and this was the one OverDrive had. The Red Tree is an epistolary novel about a writer with a who rents an old farmhouse near an ancient red oak tree. She ends up committing suicide, and a month later her editor receives a package containing her journal entries, from the time she moved into the farmhouse to the point of her death. The package arrives with no return address and no explanation.

She finds a manuscript about the red tree, written by the previous tenant. Most of the horror is psychological; there may or may not be something supernatural going on. Everything feels quite real, though. Not a whole lot happens, but overall I found this pretty compelling for the characters and the eerie setting.

I’m still not sure what to make of the ending.

I’d like to read more of her work, probably The Drowning Girl.

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Book Beginnings

I tried to post about this yesterday. Not sure what happened to that post, so I'm reposting this.

My book is The Red Tree by Caitlin R. Kiernan. When I finish it, this will be book #2 for the RIP Challenge.

"Editor's Preface

I have visited the old Wight Farm and its "red tree," there where the house squats ancient and neglected below the bogs that lie at the southern edge of Ramswool Pond. So, I have been. I have seen it for myself, but just once. Having accepted the task of editing The Red Tree for posthumous publication, it seemed, somehow, like a necessary pilgrimage. A sort of duty, required of me if I were to gain any insight at all into Sarah Crowe's state of mind in those last months of her life. So, I went, and even went alone."

A great beginning, I think. Very mysterious.