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A Novel
by Hanya Yanagihara
Book Reviewed by:Readers of exciting, challenging and visionary literary fiction will be drawn to this astonishingly gripping and accomplished anthropological adventure story that combines the visceral allure of a thriller with a profound and tragic vision of what happens when cultures collide.
In 1950, a young doctor called Norton Perina signs on with the anthropologist Paul Tallent for an expedition to the remote Micronesian island of Ivu'ivu in search of a rumored lost tribe. They succeed, finding not only that tribe but also a group of forest dwellers they dub "The Dreamers," who turn out to be fantastically long-lived but progressively more senile.
Perina suspects the source of their longevity is a hard-to-find turtle; unable to resist the possibility of eternal life, he kills one and smuggles some meat back to the States. He scientifically proves his thesis, earning worldwide fame and the Nobel Prize, but he soon discovers that its miraculous property comes at a terrible price. As things quickly spiral out of his control, his own demons take hold, with devastating personal consequences.
The wonders of new worlds are enticing – and when these are described in minute, mesmerizing detail as Yangiraha does, they make for an engrossing page-turner. In The People In the Trees, we are transported from the clinical, sterile environment of the research laboratory where Perina works, to the lush green environs of the untouched wild. Such is Yanagihara's power over the written word that the journey is vivid and atmospheric; we are with the expedition every step of the way...continued
Full Review
(661 words)
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(Reviewed by Amodini Sharma).
In The People of The Trees, Perina and Tallent journey to the fictional Micronesian states of U'ivu and Ivu'ivu. While these particular islands are fictitious, the region of Micronesia, literally "small island" in Greek is composed of thousands of small islands in the western Pacific Ocean, north of Australia.
From 1947, most of the nearly 2,500 islands that make up Micronesia were administered by the United States as the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. In 1986, the Trust Territory was dissolved into four constitutional governments: the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of Belau (Palau), the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. All four have continuing political ...
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It is among the commonplaces of education that we often first cut off the living root and then try to replace its ...
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Anthony Doerr, author of Four Seasons in Rome and The Shell Collector
The People in the Trees is not a first novel like other first novels. This is a big, soaring, old-school, super-absorbing vehicle into another world. It's a mystery story, an ecological parable, a monstrous confession, and a fascinating consideration of moral relativism. Yanagihara's narrator is misanthropic and grotesque, yet simultaneously magnetic; her prose is dazzling; and her book is a triumph of the imagination.
