Customer Reviews

The Tree of Life

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This book is like nothing I've ever read before. It is brilliant. Read it. This is history come alive. Rattlesnake bites, Indian skirmishes, visionaries and slaves and frustrated widows--all the true voices of the American Frontier come through this "journal" with unbelievable power and desperate longing.

In 1811, Thomas Keene, a minister, loses his faith and travels to Ohio. In this sparse, concise "diary," we get to know Thomas, his mundane activities, his fantasies, and his remarkable adventures on the American frontier. Thomas writes of routine events (his cash accounting, his business selling home-made whiskey), his sexual fantasies and realities, his relationships, his drunkenness, war, Indian legends, and the remarkable hardships of frontier life.

Through the series of simple journal entries, sketches, drawings, and accounting entries, author Hugh Nissenson creates a profound portrait of a fascinating man. Nissenson is a master of "artificial reality"- the structure, style, and false references lend an air of truth to this work of fiction. Historical facts and figures weave seamlessly with the fictional elements. The War of 1812 and John Chapmann (Johnny Appleseed) are prominently featured in the story. And Nissenson himself created the drawings and sketches attributed to his fictional character (the cover is a sample of his work).

I loved this book. It creeps into your mind and comes back to haunt you. I admire Hugh Nissenson's ability to paint, with deceptively-simple strokes, a deep, rich, intimate, lush landscape and a deeply moving character.

If you read and enjoy this book, be sure to read Nissenson's The Song of the Earth, in which he leaps forward rather than back in time for a stunning vision of what might be.

Writing this review two days after John Updike's death, I'm moved to note, through the contrasting example of Nissenson's career, the drastic difference in the two authors' range of printed output. And yet, if artists may be judged by a single work, then The Tree of Life puts Nissenson on the same plane as Updike. Indeed, it may be more indisputably a masterpiece than any single offering by Updike (though in the wide view Updike reigns supreme over every American contemporary and possibly over every American author ever). As for The Tree of Life, however, it is concisely, precisely beautiful, harrowing, historically evocative, and spiritually unsettling in a way that confirms the spirit. Hard to do, you say? Read it.

The book came highly recommended by a friend. I couldn't finish it. Got halfway. Too boring. I couldn't care less what nails cost in frontier Ohio in 1812.