Hanya Yanagihara won my heart in her book ‘A Little Life’ which I read last year. That book deserves its own review, because it is one of the best books I have ever read, but recently she released her next book; ‘The People in the Trees’. It was on my list of books to read for a while, and so I was so excited to get stuck in, expecting the same magic as ‘A Little Life’. Maybe that was an unfair assumption to make, because it is a completely different vibe of the book. I started reading it though and thought that this entire storyline was made up because it was so far fetched, and certainly parts of the story are made up (the immortal humans living on a Pacific Island is the main part) but the book was actually based on Daniel Carleton Gajdusek, which I wish I knew before I started, because that does make the story more interesting.
On first impressions, this book is a veryyyyyy slow narration about a Scientist’s journey into an untouched island community, discovering its medical mysteries, the fall of that community due to Western intervention, and then the adoption of these children into the Scientist’s family. Without giving much more away, the book delves into the psyche of Gajdusek throughout the whole experience, although I am unsure whether this is his actual thoughts, or just what Yanagihara expects them to be.
Without knowing that this is based on a true person, this is just a very tedious, long book, that I had to force myself to keep reading. I think at one point I got a little hooked but about 20 pages later I was bored again. Similar to ‘A Little Life’ there is so much detail in the stories, that it really draws out the story and you feel like you’re not getting anywhere despite having read pages and pages. The difference with its predecessor, though, is that you aren’t invested in the characters. You don’t feel warmly towards any of the characters, or want to see things turn out well for them. Instead you just follow the story of the villain, even though there are attempts to humanise them.
Hanya is a beautiful writer, and she can paint a wonderful picture, but without exploring characters that you’re actually invested or interested in, her writing is just a little too slow for my liking. Again, I wish I knew it was based on a real person to begin with but I don’t even think this would have been enough to make me more invested.
I give this book a 3 out of 5, and I hope that her next book hits the mark just like ‘A Little Life’ did.
A Turtle Stranger 