Customer Reviews

The White Man in the Tree and Other Stories

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Truth is stranger than fiction. Not always. When penned by Mark Kurlansky both are equally extraordinary. Not satisfied with being a Caribbean reporter for the Chicago Tribune, he became a successful non-fiction writer (COD and THE BASQUE HISTORY OF THE WORLD). Now, with THE WHITE MAN IN THE TREE, it's fiction and very obvious that he is equally at ease in the imagination, and also very much at home in the Caribbean.

THE WHITE MAN IN A TREE is a novella and collection of other witty - sometimes wickedly so - short stories; all about life in the Caribbean, principally Haiti, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and French Guiana. What makes the book so enjoyable - besides Kurlansky's easy prose and comfort with the vernacular - is how he tackles the sociologically complex and serious issues that arise in such a potent admixture of people, places and cultures. Miscegnation is frought with portents of political correctness; rather than being shied away, Mr Kurlansky uses it as the theme to explore the misunderstandings and mistakes that are the common denominator of the humanly rich and diverse Caribbean.

For anyone who has lived in the area the tales will ring true. The complexity of motives and resulting eccentricity of behaviour that seems so weird to visitors is perfectly captured and explained, with a locals' shrug of the shoulders by Mr Kurlansky. Underlying all is the constant rhythm of the Caribbean sense of humor, which Mr Kurlansky has in abundance and with which he writes with abandon.

Misunderstandings and misjudgements aside, a sense of play is the one thing in common in the Caribbean; a necessary ingredient for living there and required of anybody who wishes to understand the region.

A friend gave me a copy of Mark Kurlansky's THE WHITE MAN IN THE TREE while I was planning a trip to the Caribbean. Get this book. It's guaranteed to double your travel pleasure wherever you go and whether or not you leave your armchair. You'll come away from Kurlansky's delicious romp knowing yourself and your world better. And that cast of characters! This book will remind you of Graham Greene. Kurlansky sees intently, like the visual artist he is, & forgets nothing, like the journalist he is. The combo makes for some wonderfully memorable writing.

Mark Kurlansky is the gifted author of several nonfiction books, including the extraordinary Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World, an eye-opening history of the Basques, and, if rumor serves, a forthcoming book on (forget it, you'll never guess) salt. It is therefore deeply unfair - appallingly unfair, really - to discover that he is a sensational, almost sui generic, writer of fiction. The White Man in the Tree, his first published fiction, is so nonfiction-like, so real in the deadpan, straight-ahead, choirboy-innocuous prose Kurlansky has invented, that it is only by conscientiously pinching ourselves every now and then that we can remember it is fiction he has turned his wicked hand to this time out, and not some mind-numbingly bizarre but nonetheless perfectly true story. Or stories. There are ten of them in White Man, each taking as its subject the comic, painful, surreal or just plain silly complications that arise from a form of cultural miscegenation as Euro-American cultures encounter the very different cultures of the Caribbean islands. Because these stories are simultaneously so real and so unreal, they make Kurlanksy's point about cultural and racial misapprehensions in a way that traditional fiction or nonfiction could never hope to achieve. They enlighten without preaching, amuse without humiliating, and establish a truth that is all the more profound and memorable for being just slightly too strange to be fully false.

Mark Kurlansky knows the Caribbean. This is evident from his penning of the nonfiction book, A CONTINENT OF ISLANDS which efficiently and knowledgeably introduces the West Indies to those who do not know it and offers reflection to those who are from the region or to those who care about it. In THE WHITE MAN IN THE TREE, Kurlansky tries something different. He writes short stories that take place in different areas of the Caribbean: Haiti, Curacao, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic. He works well in this area of fiction, and, as short stories, his succeed. What doesn't work quite as well is that most of the stories sound as though they are inspired from the viewpoint of a journalist and transferred to fiction. Seeing that Kurlansky is a journalist, this is understandable, but there are times when his style doesn't work. The reader can easily become engaged with a story only to feel, halfway through it, that he or she is reading an article from a news magazine. Kurlansky tries to disconcert the reader by presenting misunderstandings and cultural clashes, but there are many times in the stories when one is left feeling uncomfortable as though the author may have gone too far into another's culture. There is too much - socially and politically - that is walking a fine line here. But there is nothing to say that Kurlansky should not be writing of all these different cultures and nationalities. The rule in stepping out of oneself to write as "other" is to know one's subject, and not to portray anything or anyone in an incorrect way. For the most part, Kurlansky is on level ground here; he knows his subject matter. Still, there is a slightly eerie feeling about the entire book of stories that makes the reader think that these are stories that might better have been told in a genre other than fiction.

I had approached Mark Kurlansky's White Man in a Tree, a book of short stories by a white Jewish man about non-whites in the Caribbean, cautiously if not with trepidation. Could a white man write appropriately about Caribbean culture? Could I read this book without feeling terribly uncomfortable? Could this journalist write engaging fiction? A fact that complicated things even further, and that should be revealed in all candor to readers of this review, is that Mark Kurlansky is married to my cousin. Being a fairly critical reader, I did not want to have to conceal either my dislike, boredom, or both, to my cousin and her husband. What a wonderful surprise! I finished White Man in about four days; reading it on the subway going to and from work, in the restroom, while lying in bed late into the night. In other words, I opened it up whenever I had a free moment. When I was finished, I wanted nothing else but to sit Mark down and cross-examine him about how he came to write each of the stories--in other words, to get the stories behind the stories. The stories are all engaging, educational, moving, and beautifully written. I sometimes felt they had qualities of Sholem Aleichem, sometimes Marquez. Each story takes place on a different island, and draws the reader in almost immediately. One of my favorites, The Unclean, is about a new rabbi in a Caribbean Jewish community who discovers that even the seemingly most observant members of his congregation are oblivious to Jewish dietary laws and eat shellfish with impunity. As a result, the rabbi engages the non-Jewish islanders in his quest to bring kosher meat to his congregation. In sum, I loved this book and have been recommending it to everyone I know.

Mark, stick to non fiction writing which you do so well. This book wasn't very interesting although your writing skills nearly pulled it off. Some interesting bits here and there but overall not up to your usual standard.