Customer Reviews

The Boys in the Trees: A Novel

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3 star:		(1)
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There has been a recent trend among some journalists in Canada to instantly dismiss what has been termed, often derisively, as "Canadian gothic." Although the term is vague and not precisely defined, it is essentially accepted as dark, tragic, nineteenth-century rural Canadian narrative (for example, think Wuthering Heights transported to the Bruce Peninsula). Given this provisional definition, The Boys in the Trees by Mary Swan falls into this category, but it would be a mistake to overlook this fine novel simply based on this categorization.

The Boys in the Trees is a heartbreaking tale of a terrible tragedy and how it transforms (and informs) a community, offset with notions of how memory, responsibility, forgiveness, and knowledge shape lives. The story asks the reader how memories of the past affects the life one lives now, how responsibility is to be determined when actions cannot be predicted, how forgiveness is essential to a contented life, and how knowledge about one another, and memory of the past, is necessarily incomplete.

The novel begins and ends (as its title suggests) with vignettes of boys in trees. The trees at the beginning of the novel offer refuge, a safe haven from abuse and despair for a young boy named William Heath, one determined to escape his miserable existence and determined that one day people will know his name. The trees at the end of the novel provide a vantage point another group of boys to witness the final results of a tragic choice.

After the brief vignette in the trees, we next see William as a young man with a family living in England. He is beset by a first brutal onslaught of tragedy that causes the family to flee to Canada - first Toronto, then the fictional town of Emden, Ontario. However, William is unable to escape his feelings of anxiety, despair, and failure that have accompanied him since childhood, setting the stage for a second and even more brutal tragedy. It is this tragedy that is dealt with in the remainder of the novel, with the citizens of Emden reflecting and acting upon their impressions of what happened. Swan is masterful here at describing the ripple effects of a tragic singularity on the lives and memory of those involved with the Heath family.

Swan writes in a resolutely non-linear format that suits her examinations of knowledge and identity. In particular, the second and third chapters are composed in fascinating contrapuntal narratives that slowly converge into their respective tragic conclusions. The remainder of the novel consists of individual non-linear narratives (recollections of the citizens of Emden at various points in time) that slowly offer the reader additional insight into the characters and events of the first three chapters yet leave many questions unanswered, signifying that the causes and motivations behind many events are ultimately unknowable, even by those closest to them.

One narrative follows a young boy named Eaton, a neighbour and friend to the Heath daughters. The tragedy provides a defining point in Eaton's life, and assigns an infinite value to a secret gift that he will carry with him for the remainder of his life. Questions of guilt and responsibility continue to haunt Eaton even as his memory fades in old age.

Another narrative follows the Robinson family and how the main tragedy relates to and interacts with another within their own family. Again, questions of guilt and responsibility are examined, with a possible answer provided in the notion of forgiveness. Hints at guilt possibly lying elsewhere are suggested throughout the Robinson family narrative, and additional facets of the Heath family are provided by the Robinson women.

These narratives ask us: what can we really know of a person from their external appearance and outward actions? Swan shows that we can only glean facets, glimpses of knowledge that no matter how numerous will never coalesce into a whole, or even a reasonable representation of a whole. And moreover, this imperfect knowledge is ultimately doomed to fade away with the people holding them. Nevertheless, these accumulated facets can provide a rich description of characters and motives, even with many questions remaining unanswered.

This is remarkable debut by Mary Swan. It has been nominated for the 2008 Giller Prize, and in my opinion is the best of the four nominees I have read (having yet to read the Joseph Boyden entry, and not likely to finish it before the award is presented). I strongly urge anyone interested in the future of Canadian literature to read this book. I certainly look forward to reading more of her work.

Story opens in late 1800's in England. Boy (William Heath) escapes an abusive father and leaves as a teenager promising that he would live and lead a different life - and yet there is an irony in the final outcome.

"The Boys In the Trees" is not your traditional novel with a plot that runs sequentially from A to B to C. It is better described as a collection of related short stories with an intricate web of connectors between each story. Author never fully reveals the entire picture or story details - leaving you wanting (sometime frustratingly so) for a more linear explanation of what happened and why. In a fiction novel, you often expect complete and full analysis and clarity - yet, like our lives, you never really know what the underlying motivations, reasons and circumstances are for what/why people do what they do. And you'll find yourself with many unfilled gaps in this novel.

"From the things Sam has told me I know that nothing in the world is just what it seems, that there are laws operating underneath, and hidden reasons. Even the purest looking things, a scattering of sunlight, or the soft green of new leaves on trees."

You often finding yourself piecing together this story. And, the author goes deep into the lives of "tangential" characters and then doesn't close out the chapter of their lives - leaving you hanging.

The beauty of the writing however, pulls you along to the finish in this sad and haunting book which ever so lightly traces the Health's family struggles to lift themselves out of vicious poverty - which leads to Heath himself coming to a devastating conclusion that he's lost the battle and then Heath's crime and his punishment and its impact on a number of members of the community.

This book is more about "the ripples" of events then the events themselves. Be sure to read the terrific Q&A with the author at the conclusion of the book.

This novel sat on my bed table for a long time after I checked it out of the library because I thought I knew what it was about and I did not want to read anything so heavy or deal with any strong emotions. Finally, I took the dive into and I am so glad I did.

I just finished it tonight and I know tomorrow I will pick it up again and start all over. The Boys in the Trees is the most beautifully written novel I have read in a very long time. Heart wrenching, quiet, horrifying, reflective and haunting. The people of Emden and their stories will not leave you easily. This novel will make you think and make you feel.

I don't know what else to say, except to repeat what I've been saying to everyone I have encountered before I was a quarter way through it, "you've got to read this book."

William Heath was badly abused as a child. The scars on his body remind him never to hit a child, a vow he made to himself. He kept his personal pledge, but was a distant man, unable to display affection towards his wife and children. His employer in England caught William embezzling, but instead of sending him to prison he exiled him to Canada. There he and his family live in poverty, but he believes they are better than others in their poor community.

He has few job offers but accepts a job in Eastern Ontario in the town of Emden as a bookkeeper to Mr. Marl. Things look up for William and his family until he is arrested for embezzling from his new employer and in a twist of irony Mr. Morl bails him out. William gets a gun and kills his family members before surrendering to the law. His case upsets townsfolk who thought they knew him like his daughter's schoolteacher, the doctor and his son.

While the crime is shocking and horrifying, the effects ripple throughout the community long after the victims are buried and the killer hung. For instance the teacher regrets her inactivity and inability to read the signs of violence and feels guilty that she allowed him to take his daughter out of her class. The doctor wonders if he should have had an inkling on Mr. Heath's mental health when he came to pay his daughter's bill and perhaps prevented the tragedy by stepping forward. Others feel shock and shame for ignoring the signs (think of the Genovese killing in Queens, NY). Thus the audience obtains a fascinating crime tale that focuses on how everyone missed the signs of pending violence and the guilt shared by all.

Harriet Klausner

I know what I like. I also know that what I like isn't always what others like...or that what others like, I'll like. That being said, this novel, by turns infuriated me, enthralled me, bored me, frustrated me...

Ms Swan is a very capable writer. The prose is crisp, it's uncluttered, it suits the subject. There's very little 'wrong' in what she's written here. Except 'for me' in a storytelling sense.

I'm not a dumb bunny, but there were times when I was confused as to just what was going on, and who the characters were. I know what she was doing with her 'style', I knew it as she was doing it. This didn't help.

There was a fine story here to be told. Just not 'again, for me' told this way. It bordered on pretentiousness, the flitting about of reference points, of narrative perspective. I wanted to be done with the book half way through, I was fed up.

I'm not familiar with Ms Swan's work, though short fiction seems to be the core of her background. This makes sense, in retrospect: a novel is an entirely different creature from a short story, and some of the skills of each are not the hallmarks of the other. This novel showcases this truth.

All this having been said, I look forward to reading more from her...in the hope that a different tack is taken next time around.

I found this book a bit confusing the way it slipped between different times and different narrators. This book was a final five nominee for the 2008 Giller prize in Canada, so I expected it to be special. Instead I found it somewhat difficult to read. It is very well written, and Ms. Swan does a pretty good job of skipping around in time, but the actual tale is so horrific because of the enormity of the crime that Mr. William Heath commits. No explanation is really ever given for his drastic actions, but that is often the way it is in real life. The book is set in turn-of-the-century, small town Canada. It depicts what life was like back then with only one community doctor and all kinds of horrific illnesses. The way people lived, loved and died in these days is well depicted. These characters are very well-drawn and that is a redeeming factor for this book. It's not a very long book, but quite complex even so. On the whole I enjoyed reading the book, but would have like a little more continuity between the narratives.

Interconnected voices re-visit the same event from different perspectives over a period of years. The writing is gorgeous. I just loved and appreciated this book so much. The reason I give it four, not five, stars is because as a novel it doesn't completely hang together. But that's a small complaint; it will be so worth your time to submerge yourself in this writer's lovely prose for the long afternoon it will take to devour this worthy book. What is with those Canadians?! Alice Munro, Leonard Cohen, Swan...and this is a first novel.

Mary Swan's The Boys in the Trees has been called, by no less than Alice Munro, a "mesmerizing novel" with a "terrible beauty." I'm not sure I can put it much better than that. The subjects here are, for the most part, pretty grim. The deaths of young children, dysfunctional families, mistreated orphans, loveless marriages, a pitiless class system with grinding poverty and hopelessness for those at the bottom - all of these are elements in this story of lives in a small Canadian town, from the 1880s forward into the first half of the 20th century. Swan's tale shows how the sins of a father can indeed pay forward and innocent lives can be ruined and even abruptly and cruelly ended. The minutely examined lives of various people from the small undistinguished town of Emden will probably bring to mind other earlier and classic works of American literature - Winesburg, Ohio; Spoon River Anthology; and, more recently, books like Darryl Ponicsan's Andoshen, PA, or Elizabeth Strout's Pulitzer winner, Olive Kitteridge. There are many and various points of view offered here, but the one you most expect to hear is never heard, that of the accused murderer, William Heath. Because he is the person on whom the whole narrative turns, and yet his own thoughts must remain a mystery. This is not a fault in the book, mind you. It may even be its strength. One thing I will guarantee you. The Boys in the Trees will stay in your mind for a long, long time. - Tim Bazzett, author of LOVE, WAR & POLIO: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF YOUNG BILL PORTEOUS