Trees

Percival Everett is author to more than thirty books. He voted for Joe Biden.

"Everett has mastered the movement between unspeakable terror and knockout comedy."--The New York Times Book Review"[The Trees] blends Everett's wit with elegy and solemnity."--The Boston Globe "With a highwire combination of whodunnit, horror, humor and razor blade sharp insight The Trees is a fitting tribute of a novel: Hard to put down and impossible to forget."--NPR.org "In The Trees, Everett's enormous talent for wordplay--the kind that provokes laughter and the kind that gut-punches--is at its peak. . . . He makes a revenge fantasy into a comic horror masterpiece. He turns narrative stakes into moral stakes and raises them sky-high. Readers will laugh until it hurts."--Los Angeles Times"The Trees is a wild book: a gory pulp revenge fantasy and a detective narrative. . . . [It] is just as blood-soaked and just as hilarious as Inglourious Basterds or Django Unchained, but it comes with more authentic historical weight for being set in a dreamlike counterpresent."--Bookforum"Uproarious and grisly. . . . Everett forces readers to confront atrocities endured by Black Americans in this briskly paced hybrid of whodunit, madcap comedy, and horror story. . . . It's a testament to Everett's immense skill as a writer that he is able to take such grim material and make it hilarious, poignant, and infuriating."--Michael Magras, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette"The Trees is unlike any other. Everett draws from a series of genres--literary novel, police procedural, horror--to create a book that's both unique and difficult to describe. It's a delicate balancing act that he pulls off masterfully, another brilliant book by one of the most essential authors in American literature."--Michael Schaub, Alta Journal "Everett is going for an unstable cocktail of broad parody, mystery and social justice, and the result feels thrillingly volatile, and brave, a swing at a new kind of novel on American violence."--Chris Borrelli, Chicago Tribune, 10 Best Books of 2021"This fierce satire is both deeply troubling and rewarding."--Booklist, starred review"At points witty, surreal, and farcical, The Trees is a timely commentary by an American master on the ways that white supremacy continues to haunt us whether we realize it or not."--Oprah Daily"The delicate tonal balance of [The Trees] could only be executed by a master like Everett. If there is one commonality of his work, it's his consistent boldness in executing ideas."--Lincoln Michel, Biblioracle"The Trees weaves tropes of pulp-cop noir with trademark acuity and genre-bending inventiveness to deliver a swift, startlingly expansive take on the legacy of lynching in the American South."--Porter House Review "A darkly amusing read, The Trees directly addresses racism, police brutality, and a culture of violence in a way that's as urgent as it is uproarious."--Ploughshares