Great Reads for Great Readers

 

The Trees, by Percival Everett.

 

            Southern trees bear strange fruit

            Blood on the leaves and blood at the root

            Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze

            Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees

 

The verses of the song above help Percival Everett walk the fine line between horror and satire with great success in this novel of the complicated revenge struck by Black people for the killing – mainly lynching – of Black people for more than a century.  His portrayal of the murders of the Good Ole Boys whose families were responsible for the lynching of 14 year-old Emmet Till in Mississippi back in the day is chilling, especially for the fact that each corpse had his testicles removed, clutched in the hand of a dead Black man, also at the crime scene.  The redneck local Sheriff assumes, as anyone would, that said Black man is the killer, even though he was shot in the back of the head:  murder/suicide.  Wrap this up, guys.

            Except that the killing doesn’t stop:  more bodies are found further afield, along with their presumed Black killer clutching testicles, causing the redneck Sheriff to suffer the indignity of having to accept assistance from two Black detectives from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, followed by a frightening Black woman agent from the FBI – cain’t they even be left to clean up their own crap??  Apparently not.

            In fact, no-one can, for the country is in for a reckoning:  there have been so many hate crimes and racially based murders that Black spirits are not the only victims calling ghosts to Rise;  Asians are hearing the call of Genocide, too.  How will it all end, especially when the current leader in the White House (in this story Donald Trump) gets jammed under his desk and can’t get out, discovering wads of chewing gum stuck in his hair, a sure sign that his VP had been trying out the desk for size – while he was Making America Great Again!

            Mr Everett paints a frightening, shamefully true picture of the woeful state of race relations in America, overlaid with superb, satirical humour from  characters who speak truth in every sentence:   every country needs such a chronicler.  Even though the truth hurts and is frequently unpalatable, it’s always preferable to lies.  SIX STARS.