The Trees by Percival EverettMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
The Trees by Percival Everett, 2021
The Trees, shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize, is a darkly humorous novel revisiting the 1955 murder of Emmet Till. It's a page-turner that opens with brutal murders involving testicles ripped from the victims' bodies, satirizes racism relentlessly through the story, and closes open-ended-ly to leave readers to interpret.
It's a bold and provocative "detective" book ladened with gory revenge fantasy. Some have described the narrative as alternating "between deadpan and slapstick modes of satire," which the author smartly uses to conflate comical with horror and effectively mine collective racial guilt.
I rate this book 3.25 out of 5 stars.
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