Book Review: "The People in the Trees" by Hanya Yanagihara

This is one of those rare books that truly defies any attempt to classify it: it's fiction, but written in the form of a memoir, based on a true story, involving adventure, discovery, horror, and science all at once. When I consulted with a friend and coworker on how one would describe the nature of this story, he thought for a moment before replying a little helplessly that it was "a well-realized first novel," and leaving it at that.

In the end I have to agree. I don't honestly feel like I knew what the book was really about until the very end, even though the blurb seemed pretty straight-forward: An unlikely young scientist discovers on a lost island a tribe of people who have found the secret to immortality. There follows the stunning revelation to the scientific community, the subsequent scramble of researchers and pharmaceutical companies, and the desolation of the once-beautiful island, its secrets exposed and then ripped away.

But there's more to it than that. As I mentioned, this book is written as a memoir. Doctor Norton Perina, the main character (whom I didn't like at all but who was very effectively written), relays his story to us through letters to a colleague, which he sends from prison. The very beginning of the book features a newspaper article about his arrest, trial and sentencing, but after that Norton takes us back to the very beginning of his life, and we're made to wait on the details of his incarceration.

This organizational decision was very smart on Yanagihara's part, because I found the first hundred pages or so to be about as interesting as watching dust accumulate on a flat surface. It does, however, help to inform Perina's character, so I pressed on and was rewarded with a vibrant, intense story as soon as Perina reached Ivu'ivu. This story arc, full of questions and mystery and some very creative thinking on the part of the author, was the first of two that I caught within the story.

That first arc was about the rise and fall of Ivu'ivu; the second was about the rise and fall of Perina himself, and was heavily informed by the first arc. With the artful way in which his story is told, one assumes his innocence of the crimes of which he is accused, even though it is never specifically claimed within the text. And in this second portion appears what I felt to be the true center of the story: one man's obsession not with immortality, as one would imagine, but with recapturing  feeling that can never again be attained.

This story is both fascinating and horrifying. If you can beat your way past Norton's childhood and life up until he leaves for Ivu'ivu, you're in for a real psychological treat. Read this if you're a Stephen King fan, if you like "American Horror Story," or enjoy twisted tales that play with your mind instead of simply spraying gore everywhere. The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara was released in August of this year, and is available right now at your favorite independent bookstore.