The Trees by Percival Everett

 

This is a really subtly angry novel. Well, the anger isn't all exactly subtle but the measure of it--the breadth and width and depth of it--doesn't become clear until the back third or quarter, when it takes a turn toward a sort of hard-earned borderline-apocalyptic nihilism. That's when the novel steeply increases the discomfort level, at least for this white guy reading it, but I think that's Everett's intention, or at least part of it. In some ways this is a more explicitly literate take on the "vengeance is another word for pain" thing that S. A. Cosby (among others) does so well, but here the pain has deep genetic roots all around. The prose crackles and sings, the characters are (mostly) well-defined--there is some strong hint of mockery of some of them, but that mockery seems deserved, not particularly like Flannery O'Connor laughing at all of her characters behind her hand. The ending has a strong "The Lady or the Tiger" vibe, though I'm not sure the reader has enough basis to figure out which way things fall. Very much a novel that might have people thinking late into the night when they should be sleeping.