📚 Hanya Yanigahara is no stranger to heart-wrenching fiction. Though her acclaimed novel A Little Life certainly steals the spotlight in this category, we would argue that its lesser-known predecessor, The People in the Trees, does not play around when it comes to delivering an emotional uppercut.

The jury isn’t out for long. The 362-page novel begins with a letter written by a Dr. Ronald Kubodera, which provides testimony to the character of Norton Perina, an American doctor on trial. Perina is the novel’s focal character, whom the reader quickly discovers is — to put it plainly — not a good person.

Perina tells all. From that point onwards, the novel is presented through the memoirs of Perina himself. It’s a slow burn, and it’s an uncomfortable one. Perina’s inner monologue hints at a twisted nature — one that lacks a moral compass and does an incredible job of pretending otherwise. This sheer unflinching honesty is precisely why this book is unputdownable.

So what has this mystery doctor been up to? The People in the Trees, more or less operates on a linear timeline, with a few time jumps here and there. The real action starts when Perina joins an anthropological expedition to a Micronesian island on a goosechase for a “lost tribe” who are said to have discovered biological immortality.

Shockingly, it wasn’t a sham. Perina eventually does find the immortal tribe who have defied science, and discovers their “elixir,” only for everything to — expectedly — come crashing down at his hands. Author Hanya Yanigahara masterfully writes a character that is drunk on power, leaving no door unopened to the path of fame and prestige, and she does so in a manner that forces her readers to question their own morals.

The People in the Trees isn’t for the faint of heart. Gore, sexual abuse, and the horrors of the human mind are laid out plainly and unceremoniously with no fair warnings or preambles — there is no savior in this story, and that is exactly the point. As the pages inevitably turn, we come to discover that Perina was, after all, an unreliable narrator — all the horrors he tells us himself do not begin to compare to the ones revealed towards the end.

WHERE TO FIND IT- The People in the Trees is available at Diwan.

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