Drifting from town to town, Caroline Harrison has a secret past -- and an uncertain future. When she wakes up in a hospital after a car accident, she decides to settle down where she is -- Sugartown, Texas. But this peaceful community is not the end of the road for Caroline. Her memories are still haunting her. Her anger and fear are consuming her. And -- locked away in a small house in the woods of upstate New York -- her destiny is calling...
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
"I was twenty-seven years old and I had lost my way. I found myself driving on an unlit highway through the middle of a black summer night: it wasn't where I'd intended to be." In his second novel, Why the Tree Loves the Ax, Jim Lewis uses the conventions of the mystery to explore the space between what is lost and what is found. When a car accident brings Caroline Harrison to Sugartown, Texas, she is running from her past, but what she finds are the kind of secrets that simmer beneath the surface of small-town America. At first Sugartown seems like a good place to settle, and Caroline finds a home, a job, and a new, anonymous existence. Eventually, however, the creepy sense of foreboding Lewis has skillfully built in early chapters explodes in violence and Caroline is driven out of Sugartown, fleeing first to New York City and finally to upstate New York for the novel's disturbing denouement.
Why the Tree Loves the Ax is a suspense novel at heart, but when it moves toward its climax, the reader is left with the uncomfortable realization that Lewis has deftly deconstructed our notions of Caroline's role as narrator. As events unfold, it becomes clear that her past and her motives are as mysterious as those of any other character, and that the conundrums this mystery seeks to unravel are those of the soul. Lewis wraps his plot in layers of intensely poetic language--a technique that is challenging at first, but ultimately rewarding. Characters seem to exist behind a mist of imagery that keeps us at arm's length, creating a dreamily menacing atmosphere that will linger long after the final page has been turned. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
Caroline has been wandering from city to city trying to find a place to settle. Literally crashing into Sugartown, Texas, she decides to stay. She takes a job in a nursing home and meets Billy, a mean old man who nevertheless intrigues her. She also befriends Bonnie, who like Caroline is wandering through life. During a Labor Day celebration that turns into a riot, Caroline kills a policeman. Before skipping town, she pays one last visit to Billy, who gives her a mysterious box to deliver to an address in upstate New York. Arriving at a house in the woods, Caroline discovers three men and a boy who are up to something. Are they friendly or not? Is she responsible for the policeman's death? Part mystery, part psychological sketch, this intriguing novel from the author of Sister (Graywolf, 1993) is slow to start, but the narrative soon picks up, taking the reader through the many mental twists and turns of the life of a very disturbed woman. For larger collections.?Robin Nesbitt, Columbus Metropolitan Lib., Ohio
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wry, inventive, provocative, ingenious, and yes, maddening,
This review is from: Why the Tree Loves the Ax (Paperback)
This is one of the darkest, most concise, most excrutiatingly beautiful tales I've ever read. It has all the marks of a cult classic masterpiece waiting to be read by many. One finds him or herself so detached and confused by what drives Caroline, the book's protagonist, that they literally begin to understand, in a weird kind of twilight-zone empathy, her nature, and thus our common human nature. The extremes of this novella are shocking at first, yet Lewis's imagery blends what can only be said to be THE most innovative techniques of metaphor and simile in modern fiction with a suspenseful plot that keeps you guessing and wanting to read on.I love how Lewis remains fundementally seperate from his character yet imbues her with such amorality that the reader can't help but reaccess their own lives and values. It's not moral, or IMMoral- the things Caroline does are mistakes, and we all make them, and the books deals with how life goes on either way. Those who see this book as mediocre may not see the poignant commentary found even in the title- than even when we're being killed, or killing, we have a love for each other, for our humanity, for our innocence, lost. An absolutely unforgettable, affecting read.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
What a tightly atmospheric book!,
By A Customer
This review is from: Why the Tree Loves the Ax (Paperback)
I loved this book, though I felt irritated by how distant the reader was placed from the protagonist (of course, it accurately captured her own state of mind: she was outside of herself, observing). But I kept with it, because the prose was breathtaking, ideosyncratic. Reminded me of A. Roy's "The God of Small Things" in terms of language. Smith was very effective in capturing a woman's voice. The book ended abruptly, but it has haunted me since.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best novel I've read in the past ten years,
By A Customer
This review is from: Why the Tree Loves the Ax (Paperback)
Jim Lewis is a highly underrated writer, and "Why the Tree Loves the Ax" leaves me wondering why. Lewis takes a 40-something misfit and places her in a host of predicaments, including an "accidental" murder, her befriending a satan-like old man while working under an assumed name in a nursing home, and stumbling on the suspicious, seemingly pedophilic behavior of a group of men secreted in the woods. His ability to capture a woman's voice is impeccable, and his sentences read like well-wrought prose poetry: "At first the storm was a childish ambush, and then it seemed like a party joke; the sky was a box, the lid came off and the pebbles poured down, and as they fell they made a slapstick racket, rattling against the roof and pinging on the hood of Bonnie's car and the tin mailbox and the end of her walk." The plot left me in a state of suspended disbelief, much like the book's opening chapter, where the main character witnesses her own car accident and its aftermath: "There were thousands of glimmering stars, like bits of safety glass scattered in the grass, which were like stars. I said to myself, Caroline, Caroline. Oh, you really messed up this time." If nothing else, read this book for Lewis' incredible attention to detail and his ability to write the BEST sentences of anyone I've read in the past 10 years or so.
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