The Trees is not a book for everyone. It is black satire, very dark, and it covers shameful events in American history that took place over centuries.
In Money, Mississippi, a dismal small town, a brutal murder occurs, or maybe two. A White man is found bound in barbed wire, his testicles removed. With him is the body of a Black man unknown to anyone in town, his hand wrapped around the testicles.
Shortly, the Black man’s body is stolen from the morgue and ends up at the scene of another murder, holding another White man’s testicles. Both White men are descendants of Granny C, an old lady who turns out to be the woman who claimed Emmett Till disrespected her, resulting in the famous lynching. Then Granny C is found dead.
And this is what the novel is about, in its sly, sometimes stereotyped (at least in the case of the White redneck characters), brutal way. It’s about the history of lynchings that continued in this country up until not that long ago (Wikipedia says, shockingly, 1981), thousands of them, mostly Black males, but also some women, as well as Chinese, Native Americans, and even one Japanese man.
The novel has a strange, sort of overdone anti-Southern humor that leads to additional gruesome scenes as two Black detectives from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation come to investigate.
I read this novel for my Booker Prize project.
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What? Me Read? 
Hmm, I would like to try something else by Percival Everett, having admired his writing in James even though I didn’t get on with the book. But this one sounds too dark for my current mood – maybe at a later date!
You might like Erasure more. I have James on my pile, but I also have another one I have to read for one of my projects. So far, I haven’t been thrilled.
Thanks, I’ll check Erasure out!
I have had to read several Everetts in a short time. I haven’t read James yet, though. Seems like I have one more on my list. He keeps getting nominated for awards.
Yes, he seems to be all over the place at the moment. I’m not sure how I’ll get on with him but I decided James had been the wrong one to start with given that I don’t much like Huck Finn, so I’d like to try at least one more.
I have that problem with Huck Finn, too, but I have to read James because it’s on one of my shortlist projects.
Whatever, you do, I would not start with The Trees, unfortunately my first encounter with him.
Noted! I must say the blurb of it doesn’t appeal!