Review: The Trees

The Trees by Percival Everett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

My penultimate book from the Tournament of Books shortlist, and I had to reread the end before I weighed in. This is an engaging read, about mysterious deaths in the town of Money, Mississippi, and they seem to be related to racist killings from previous generations. The white sheriff's department comes up against two Black MBI agents as they try to figure out what's happening. (MBI = Mississippi Bureau of Investigation)

There is satire in the sense that many characters have funny names and some have argued that the white people are written to the extreme but... I don't know that they are. I appreciated that the satire was there but not everything. My reason for rereading the ending was this feeling that it ended abruptly and it does, but I liked the little turn a few chapters from the end featuring Trump, basically, giving a speech about how he never uses the "n" word while frequently using it.

It should be an interesting one to discuss in the tournament!

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