The People in the Trees

The People in the Trees

Cover of the first edition
Author	Hanya Yanagihara
Country	United States
Language	English
Publisher	Doubleday
Publication date	2013
Pages	362

The People in the Trees is the 2013 debut novel of author Hanya Yanagihara. Yanagihara stated that her novel was in part inspired by Daniel Carleton Gajdusek who was revered in the scientific community before being accused of child molestation.^[1]

Yanagihara based the physical look and shape of Ivu'ivu on Angra dos Reis.^[2]

Plot

In the late 1990s Dr. Ronald Kubodera, a colleague of Nobel Laureate Dr. Abraham Norton Perina, mourns Norton's downfall after his conviction of sexually abusing his children. Kubodera encourages Norton to write his memoirs from his prison isolation and marks them with footnotes.

Norton writes of his childhood in small town Lindon, Indiana, where his interest in science was piqued by his paternal aunt Sybil, a doctor. While attending medical school Norton attracts the attention of Gregory Smythe, and is hired to work in his lab. Norton is eventually invited to Smythe's home for dinner where Smythe cries in front of him. Repulsed by Smythe, Norton quits the lab. Shortly before graduation however Norton is approached to be the medical doctor on an anthropological mission to U'ivu led by a man named Paul Tallent. Norton realizes that Smythe recommended him in order to send him as far away as possible from him. Despite the fact that the mission is considered career suicide Norton accepts.

Norton meets Tallent for the first time before they leave from Hawaii to U'ivu and finds him beautiful and enigmatic. When they arrive in U'ivu they meet the other member of the team, a woman named Esme Duff whom Norton immediately dislikes. Tallent leads Norton and Esme to a smaller island that is part of U'ivu called Ivu'ivu. There they meet three hunter guides who lead them deep into the jungle of the island where eventually Tallent reveals to Norton that there is a legend among the U'ivu people about a lost tribe that has been gifted with eternal life but also deep stupidity and that their guides have actually seen one of these people. Shortly after they discover a woman who is devoid of language, completely nude and seems unable to function as a regular human being. The explorers dub the woman Eve and quickly discover a tribe of other people like her whom they dub "Dreamers" all of whom have varyingly poor grasp of language. Through some of the more lucid dreamers Tallent discovers that though they all have a mark of a turtle on them, which indicates they are 60, they are actually all well over a hundred years old.

Shortly after discovering the Dreamers the explorers also discover a group of Ivu'ivu's who had lost contact with the U'ivuians. They are allowed to observe the village as long as they do not bring the Dreamers in contact with them. While there Norton observes the villagers engaging in the ritualistic rape of a young ten-year-old boy. While Esme finds the ritual disturbing Norton decides that it is not rape or abuse but simply a cultural difference. Later on he has a sexual encounter with the boy who was raped.

He and the group also observe the chief of the village engaging in a ritual to celebrate his 60th year where he eats a turtle. Norton quickly realizes that there is a link between eating the turtle and the seeming immortality and brain damage exhibited by the dreamers. After interviewing one of the dreamers he is taken to a small pond where the turtles comes from and later, against Tallent's advice, returns and kills one of the turtles bring back its flesh for experiments in America. He and Tallent also bring back four of the Dreamers for further observation.

Back in America, working at Stanford, Norton feeds the turtle to mice and realizes that their life cycle can be extended 6 times that of regular mice. He publishes his paper at first to derision and eventually to acclaim. Tallent warns him that his paper has condemned the people of U'ivu and this eventually proves true; the turtles of Ivu'ivu are eventually hunted to extinction by pharmaceutical companies and the island itself destroyed, eventually U'ivu is colonized as well. Norton continues to visit the island and begins to adopt local abandoned children in great numbers. In 1980 he sees a decrepit man he believes was the boy he had the sexual encounter with when he first came to Ivu'ivu who foists his son on Norton. Norton takes the boy home and names him Victor.

As Victor grows older he and Norton develop an increasingly contentious relationship. Norton claims that on Christmas Victor locked Norton out of his home leaving him to die after which Norton locked Victor in the basement for a few days. When Victor is a teenager he goes to Norton's brother, Owen, and tell him that Norton raped him causing a rift between the brothers and leading to Norton's imprisonment.

In December 2000, Dr. Kubodera writes that he and Norton have escaped from his parole officer. He confesses to feeling guilty for having omitted a portion of Norton's memoirs and includes it as a post-script. The omitted portion reveals that Norton raped not only Victor but many of his other adopted sons.

Reception

Yanagihara received rave reviews for her novel. The New York Times called her " a writer to marvel at" while The Guardian called it an "ambitious debut".^[3][4] A review in The Independent was also overwhelming positive calling the novel "an absorbing, intelligent and uncompromising novel which beguiles and unnerves."^[5]

References