Why the Tree Loves the Ax - Hardcover

Lewis, Jim

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0609601091 ISBN 13: 9780609601099

Publisher: Crown, 1998

Synopsis

After an astounding debut with his novel Sister, Jim Lewis once again proves his remarkable talent with Why the Tree Loves the Ax.

Caroline Harrison is a young woman drifting across the country from a secret past to an uncertain future. Stranded by accident in a small Texas city, she decides to settle down and stay, only to have her peace destroyed by a moment of inspired fury. From there she's on the run, to New York City to confront her ex-husband, and then upstate, where she lands in a small house in the woods inhabited by three men and an eight-year-old boy--a tiny criminal community. But will they help her or hurt her? And what exactly are they scheming?

This is a story of female violence, fear, and resourcefulness. It is a meditation on identity and memory. Lewis's writing is deft and haunting, and the story establishes a new model for women's narrative. Why the Tree Loves the Ax is sure to put Lewis in the pantheon of important young American writers.

About this title

About the Author

Jim Lewis has taught philosophy and literature at Columbia University, and he has written extensively about the visual arts for numerous national and international magazines and museum publications. His first novel, Sister, was published in 1993. He lives in New York City.

From the Back Cover

Advance Praise for Why the Tree Loves the Ax

"Jim Lewis's writing possesses a luxuriant and learned beauty rarely found these days, and his sly manipulations of genre allow him to use the familiar mechanisms of a detective story to reveal both the mystery contained in his narrator's story and the subtleties contained within her psyche. Why the Tree Loves the Ax deftly combines quiet evocations with the kind of engaging plot found in thrillers. Simply put, this book has the makings of a masterpiece."
--Dale Peck

"Why the Tree Loves the Ax comes on like a speedball, in a euphoric rush of language and image. It makes you feel caught in the cross fire, everything brightly lit and blurred around the edges, and it hangs in your blood long after it ends. This is the real thing."        
--Larry Clark

Praise for Sister

"Haunting and poetic, a remarkable first novel of teenage love and alienation . . ."                        
--Publishers Weekly, starred review

"An intimately charged narrative of voyeurism, emotional longing, and psychological abuse."        
--San Francisco Chronicle

"A seductive debut novel . . . with a languorous pace and a taste for complexity."         
--Village Voice

"We are spellbound by Lewis's scrupulously measured and charmed prose, and the inexplicable occurrences and overwhelming fecund sensuality it describes. A rare and magical interpretation of the enigma of desire and the omnipotence of the life force."        
--Booklist

"Among our generation of remembered novelists."        
--Interview

"Sister is richly erotic, and its dreamy, insistent voyeurism is disturbing. A precise, beautifully written story of adolescent obsession."
--London Sunday Times

"This book is perfect. . . . Sister is so good it left me breathless."
--Time Out, London

From the Inside Flap

ounding debut with his novel Sister, Jim Lewis once again proves his remarkable talent with Why the Tree Loves the Ax.<br><br>Caroline Harrison is a young woman drifting across the country from a secret past to an uncertain future. Stranded by accident in a small Texas city, she decides to settle down and stay, only to have her peace destroyed by a moment of inspired fury. From there she's on the run, to New York City to confront her ex-husband, and then upstate, where she lands in a small house in the woods inhabited by three men and an eight-year-old boy--a tiny criminal community. But will they help her or hurt her? And what exactly are they scheming? <br><br>This is a story of female violence, fear, and resourcefulness. It is a meditation on identity and memory. Lewis's writing is deft and haunting, and the story establishes a new model for women's narrative. Why the Tree Loves the Ax is sure to put Lewis in the pantheon of important young American writers.

Reviews

With his labored, sometimes overwrought style, second-novelist Lewis (Sister, 1993) gussies up a rather ordinary tale of deception and intrigue: a study in identity that never fully explores the unreliability of its strange narrator. The first-person story is told in the voice of a fortyish woman, originally named Caroline Harrison, who--we find out by the end--is speaking to her teenage daughter, explaining her aimless life of reinvented selves and a crime committed nearly 20 years earlier. As a 27-year-old fleeing a bad marriage in New York City, Caroline literally crashes in Sugartown, Texas, a small, idyllic community where she finds work as an orderly in an old-age home and friendship with a fellow drifter named Bonnie Moore. The novel veers into improbability when the two women get caught up in a Sugartown riot (over police brutality), during which Bonnie dies and Caroline bashes in the skull of a policeman. Assuming Bonnie's identity, Caroline heads back east, eventually ending up in upstate New York, where an old codger from the nursing home has sent her with a mysterious package. In a remote house in the woods, Caroline can't figure out whether she's a prisoner or a guest of the three ex-cons holed up there; nor is she certain what they're doing with the eight-year-old who's living with them. Eventually, the trio lets her in on their scam--they're counterfeiters, not the pornographers she'd suspected. As soon as they finish their work, they head west, where, with a new identity, Caroline gives birth to a daughter fathered by one of the cons--the same daughter to whom she directs this entire narrative, an explanation of their endless moves and of the cops who finally burst through the door. The elements of the thriller--unexpected turns and surprising coincidences--serve to propel a novel that never seems entirely sure of itself. Despite bursts of sharp imagery and startling turns of phrase, Lewis's odd book falls short both as art and mystery. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

During a random drive across the country, an automobile accident lands Caroline Harrison in a hospital in a small Texas town. Once recovered, she gets a job at a nursing home and befriends Billy, an elderly resident. A race riot breaks out and, afraid that she accidentally killed a policeman during the melee, Caroline heads back to New York to confront her ex-husband about why he deserted her and to fulfill Billy's request that she deliver a mysterious box to an address in upstate New York. After meeting with her ex-husband, she leaves the city to find the recipient of Billy's box. What she discovers at the address is a group of men clearly engaged in some shady deal, who refuse to let her leave the house. Once their project--high-class counterfeiting--is over, everyone leaves the area, but not before Caroline becomes pregnant by one of the men, who turns out to be Billy's son. The prose is beautiful, but Lewis leaves so many large and small points unexplained that the patience of the majority of readers may wear thin. Nancy Pearl

Caroline has been wandering from city to city trying to find a place to settle. Literally crashing into Sugartown, Texas, she decides to stay. She takes a job in a nursing home and meets Billy, a mean old man who nevertheless intrigues her. She also befriends Bonnie, who like Caroline is wandering through life. During a Labor Day celebration that turns into a riot, Caroline kills a policeman. Before skipping town, she pays one last visit to Billy, who gives her a mysterious box to deliver to an address in upstate New York. Arriving at a house in the woods, Caroline discovers three men and a boy who are up to something. Are they friendly or not? Is she responsible for the policeman's death? Part mystery, part psychological sketch, this intriguing novel from the author of Sister (Graywolf, 1993) is slow to start, but the narrative soon picks up, taking the reader through the many mental twists and turns of the life of a very disturbed woman. For larger collections.?Robin Nesbitt, Columbus Metropolitan Lib., Ohio
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Crown
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0609601091
• ISBN 13: 9780609601099
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 276