Reviews

The Hardy Tree: A Story about Gang Mentality by Iphgenia Baal

lukerik's review

challenging mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

A very unusual book.  As much a piece of visual art as a story.  The art starts on the cover which is a mock-up of an old document, but the text on it is a flyer for a rave.  There are a number of ‘forged’ documents throughout the text, but they don’t make an attempt to pass close inspection.  Something else is going on.  For example, Rev Arrowsmith’s letter, which is written in modern handwriting.  It says on the back cover ‘A book with its roots in the past and its head nowhere in particular.’  Pretty accurate.  Running throughout the book is a historical novella in which Thomas Hardy oversees the clearance of Old St Pancras’s graveyard, but there’s no concerted attempt to give it historical verisimilitude.  There are all these juxtapositions between past and present / life and death where neither one is quite itself.  So the graveyard, officially out of use, but the ground level having risen 12 foot because of all the illegal burials.  I suppose the big visual image here is the Hardy Tree itself – something alive, but stacked round by death.  I believe the author is afflicted by artistic vision.

At least, that’s my guess for what’s going on here.  I didn’t understand everything the author said to me.  I’m not a visual art kind of a guy and she expresses herself strangely.  Worth a look if you want something uncompromising and unconventional.