READ THIS BOOKOr - at least slowly read the lists of NAMES and PLACES.

Welp, I sure didn't have "hysterically funny page-turner about the legacy of lynching" on my 2022 GoodReads Bingo Card. Love it or hate it, I guarantee you'll never read anything else quite like it. On the surface, it's a deadpan detective story about two Black MBI agents (Mississippi Bureau of Investigation) investigating a series of shocking, grisly murders that seem to be targeting the closest living relatives of the white men who lynched Emmett Till in 1955.But don't let that fast-paced simp...

I'm a little speechless.

Big call, I thought this was brilliant. I’m struggling a bit to write a review that I think will do this book justice. In the meantime I’ll say that I think what Everett does here is both very clever, and very important. The Trees reads a bit like Attica Locke’s Bluebird, Bluebird had a baby with Paul Beatty’s The Sellout. It’s not quite satirical but VERY darkly comedic and at times this is uncomfortable in a way that I have no doubt Everett intends it to be. I think to say much about the plot

This was (surprisingly) hilarious… until it wasn’t.Only Percival Everett could’ve written this book.Bonkers, ruthless, necessary.

Anger is an energy -John Lydon - RiseAnd I'll rise up, I'll rise like the dayI'll rise up, I'll rise unafraidI'll rise upAnd I'll do it a thousand times againAnd I'll rise up, high like the wavesI'll rise up in spite of the acheI'll rise upAnd I'll do it a thousand times again -Andra Day - Rise UpAlabama's gotten me so upsetTennessee made me lose my restAnd everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam - Nina Simone - Mississippi GoddamSouthern trees bear a strange fruitBlood on the leaves and blood

Love, love, loved this book. It’s a wild ride despite the very serious subject matter of lynching. I reviewed it for NPR. Here’s the open:At a certain point, dark social satire bleeds into horror. That can be powerful, but it can also very easily miss its target. Percival Everett's new novel The Trees hits just the right mark. It's a racial allegory grounded in history, shrouded in mystery, and dripping with blood. An incendiary device you don't want to put down.https://www.npr.org/2021/09/22/10...

Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. I read this with my new GR group and what a way to begin my journey with them. I’ve never heard of the author or the book before but the blurb looked interesting so I decided to give it a try. The novel was the perfect blend of dark humour, fast paced murder mystery and also historical drama. The humour was ridiculously good and right up my alley. It does make fun of some type of people living in the South of US so some might feel offended. The novel covers the i...

Goodness, I don't know how to describe this book or if I should even try. More impactful I think the less known going in the better. What the author has accomplished here is amazing. I've never read anything like it. An author that can take racism and horrific crimes, making this impactful but also using a great deal of tongue in cheek humor and ending by turning into a horror story. Let's just say it makes a very strong point. I'll also add that as is often said, revenge is a dish best served c...

Whoever you are, you need to set aside your thin skin for this one. The caustic satirical humor, poked at everyone but especially those of us from the south, is what makes bearable the grizzly painful slow-motion genocide that gives rise (pun intended - you'll get it after you read the book) to the arc of the story. On the serious side though, it is those trees, bearing their strange fruit born of noose or bullet but always of hatred, that make this story necessary. If that all sounds cryptic, i...

Doesn't quite maintain its early brilliance, but certainly an essential work. Dr Strangelove vibes, satirical fury against apathy and injustice.'American outrage is always for show.'

“Southern trees bear a strange fruit…” Eyebrows are raised, heads are scratched, and anxiety levels are elevated when two African American male cops from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation and a female African American special agent from the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrive in Money, MS to investigate a series of similar and violent murders of “prominent” white citizens alongside a corpse who eerily resembles Emmett Till. The investigation leads them to Chicago and beyond - eventually...

Incredibly funny and incredibly, incredibly sad. A genius of a mixture.

3.5, rounded down. Satire is really difficult to pull off and especially to sustain (see: The Sellout). Although for the most part I enjoyed this, it seemed heavily padded and kind of a 'one-trick pony' - I didn't NEED umpteen scenarios all along the same path of dead white guys with their testicles cut off found alongside desiccated black corpses ... I got it by the third one! By the time the former buffoon that had occupied the WH made his obligatory appearance, it just had kind of devolved in...

The Trees is a chimera. Its predominant tone is one of puerile, derisive humour. Its subject is a provocative race-revenge fantasy. Its method is schlocky horror with a little buddy-cop banter thrown in. The resulting loopy comedy/horror/history lesson is (at times) hilarious and (always) a powerful Black Lives Matter polemic.This is a novel that reaches its top gear right out of the gate—delivering multiple shocks with grisly (and impossible) murders, grotesque, openly racist characters (wh

Percival Everett writes books that absolutely need to be written, and although my introduction to him was his dramatic novel So Much Blue, I somehow intuited the inside zaniness married to a skydiver’s sense of adventure and a philosopher’s wisdom and fearless vision of truth because my head exploded on first contact: “This is it!” screamed my hair follicles. “This is who I’ve been looking for.” And I hadn’t even read I Am Not Sidney Poitier, Glyph, or the incredibly prescient God’s Country, all...

There is no doubt this book had an impact on me. It is some kind of riotous mash-up of "Mississippi Burning", "Raising Arizona" with a dash of "The Walking Dead" at the end there. The soundtrack is all Nina Simone. It is hard not to find this book compelling, dealing as it does with the legacy of lynching in America. To take this topic and make it into a racial allegory grounded in history, shrouded in mystery, and dripping with blood. ( to quote from the NPR review ) is both brave and risky. I...

| | blog | tumblr | letterboxd | |“Money, Mississippi, looks exactly like it sounds. Named in that persistent Southern tradition of irony and with the attendant tradition of nescience, the name becomes slightly sad, a marker of self-conscious ignorance that might as well be embraced because, let’s face it, it isn’t going away.” Percival Everett is an author that has been on my radar for a while now. And in many ways, The Trees does showcase the hand of a talented writer, as the book showcases

Southern trees bear strange fruitBlood on the leaves and blood at the root The Trees is a horror/satire/revenge fantasy (my local library has it filed in the Mystery section) that goes a long way towards illustrating the banality of evil (and that that “banality” is subject to one’s point-of-view): If you have a problem with the frequent, grisly murder of racist white men in this book, I hope you have a bigger problem with the history of frequent, grisly murder of innocent Black men; pulled f

Instead of a book review, this is more of a statement or plea to the public. If you pick up any Percival Everett book at any time of your life, please read this one. If you start elsewhere, the power in message and sheerness of wit will not be matched.With that said, read the rest of his catalogue too.Thank you.