reviews
FICTION Babayaga
The People in the Trees
Debut novel is an accomplished anthropological adventure
By Toby Barlow FSG $27, 400 pages ISBN 9780374107871 eBook available
fiction
Review By Stephenie Harrison
Every so often, you come across a book so spectacular that from the moment your eyes fall upon its first sentence the rest of the world ceases to exist. E-mails go unanswered, family members and household chores are neglected—everything is put on hold until you have seen your affair with this book through. Novels like these are reminders not only of why we read, but also of just how vital and downright magical storytelling can be. Hanya Yanagihara’s The People in the Trees is such a novel. Books like Yanagihara’s are to be treasured, for they are all too uncommon—about as rare as the turtles that hold the secrets of immortality in her dazzling debut. Written in the form of a memoir, The People in the Trees is the story of Norton Perina, a young medical researcher who joins a 1950 anthropological expedition to the remote Oceanic nation of Ivu’ivu in search of a lost people who are rumored to have discovered the secret of eternal youth. Perina’s mesmerizing tale recounts his journey deep into By Hanya Yanagihara the jungle, a living Eden, where he makes a discovery so revolutionary, Doubleday, $26.95, 384 pages it stands to change the very face of human existence: By consuming ISBN 9780385536776, audio, eBook available the flesh of a particular turtle, it is possible to arrest the body’s natural decay, resulting in lifespans that stretch across centuries. However, Perina’s discovery is not without its own monstrous consequences—not just for himself, but for the island and its people, who may have been better off never having been found. Part medical mystery, part anthropological adventure thriller, part meditation on the devastation that often results when worlds collide, The People in the Trees is an exhilarating tour de force that is practically perfect in every way. Yanagihara’s past experience as a travel writer serves her well: Her storytelling is so convincing that readers will find themselves debating which elements are based in fact rather than the author’s vivid imagination. The People in the Trees is flawlessly paced Visit BookPage.com for a Q&A and deeply nuanced—a gorgeous, meaty novel that is spellbinding, with Hanya Yanagihara. scandalous and supremely satisfying.
The Husband’s Secret By Liane Moriarty
POPULAR FICTION
At first, this reviewer wanted to warn readers not to be taken in by the light tone of Liane Moriarty’s The Husband’s Secret. On second thought, maybe readers should let this rather crafty novelist’s deceptive breeziness and humor sweep them along. It makes the shocks just that much more deliciously nasty, including the gob-smacking twist in the epilogue.
is Connor Whitby, the P.E. teacher at the school attended by Cecilia and Tess’ kids. Handsome and fit, Connor has everyone wondering why he remains unmarried well into his 40s. Perhaps there’s a reason that most everyone in the book is Catholic, given its themes of sin, both venal and mortal, of guilt and redemption, forgiveness and confession—as well as its images of Easter eggs and hot cross buns and wrong doings that erupt on Good Friday like the undead. The genius of The Husband’s Secret is that it makes us start to wonder what in our own lives would—or would not—have happened if, say, we had waited just five more minutes before we walked out the door, had not said that hurtful thing, had applied a bit of logic to that situation. The Husband’s Secret is as scary as it is familiar. —Arlene McKanic
—Matthew Jackson
r e a d m o r e at b o o k pa g e . c o m
Amy Einhorn $25.95, 416 pages ISBN 9780399159343 eBook available
On the surface, the story is about a group of nice, middle-class, mostly Catholic women living in modernday Australia. There’s Cecilia, the disconcertingly chipper and organized Tupperware salesperson with her mysterious, moody husband John-Paul and their beautiful young daughters. There’s Tess, who embarks on an affair of her own after she discovers her cousin Felicity is sleeping with her husband. And then there’s poor Rachel Crowley, whose daughter Janie was found dead in a park many years ago as a teenager. The case has never been solved, but Rachel’s sure she knows who killed Janie. A constellation of spouses, children and co-workers surrounds these women, giving the proceedings a cozy normality that we know can’t last. Though men tend to be background figures, the most developed
There’s an unclassifiable quality to Toby Barlow’s work—it’s not quite fantasy, not quite magical realism. With Babayaga, the Detroit-based writer returns to the strange mix of magic and raw human energy found in his debut, Sharp Teeth. Once you begin reading, you’ll stop trying to define this novel and simply term it an exhilarating ride. Barlow’s narrative focuses on the lives of several very different but equally fascinating individuals in 1950s Paris. Will is a down-on-hisluck American advertising agent whose firm just happens to be a CIA front. Oliver is an American partier who came to Paris with dreams of starting a literary journal. Inspector Vidot is a detective who went to an old woman’s home to investigate a murder and somehow found himself turned into a flea. And then there’s Zoya, a beautiful young woman who attracts men with ease. But then, Zoya has been a beautiful woman for centuries—and that’s just the beginning of her talents. Barlow has a gift for rendering the fantastic in a striking, matterof-fact way. Even at its most fanciful (we are, after all, talking about a novel that features a man being turned into a flea), Babayaga is grounded by firm and careful prose. Every page blends the realms of the impossible and bizarre with the realms of history, culture and the human condition—and in that blending, the magic begins to feel very, very real. But Barlow is not merely satisfied to believably inject magic into his narrative. As Babayaga meanders through the City of Light, it becomes deeper and even more fascinating— a meditation on love and secrecy and magic and what it means to be human that moves far beyond its intriguing premise. Babayaga is a book that, appropriately, casts a spell that’s hard to break.
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