Why the Tree Loves the Ax

by Jim Lewis

Book Overview

The brilliant second novel by a new US literary star. Caroline, 27, walks out of a marriage and into an old people's home where she meets cantankerous, lusty octogenarian Billy, who entrusts a secret... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0609601091
• ISBN13: 9780609601099
• Release Date: January 1998
• Publisher: Crown Publishing Group (NY)
• Length: 276 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.1" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Wry, inventive, provocative, ingenious, and yes, maddening

This is one of the darkest, most concise, most excrutiatingly beautiful tales I've ever read. It has all the marks of a cult classic masterpiece waiting to be read by many. One finds him or herself so detached and confused by what drives Caroline, the book's protagonist, that they literally begin to understand, in a weird kind of twilight-zone empathy, her nature, and thus our common human nature. The extremes of this novella are shocking at first, yet Lewis's imagery blends what can only be said to be THE most innovative techniques of metaphor and simile in modern fiction with a suspenseful plot that keeps you guessing and wanting to read on.I love how Lewis remains fundementally seperate from his character yet imbues her with such amorality that the reader can't help but reaccess their own lives and values. It's not moral, or IMMoral- the things Caroline does are mistakes, and we all make them, and the books deals with how life goes on either way.Those who see this book as mediocre may not see the poignant commentary found even in the title- than even when we're being killed, or killing, we have a love for each other, for our humanity, for our innocence, lost. An absolutely unforgettable, affecting read.

The best novel I've read in the past ten years

Jim Lewis is a highly underrated writer, and "Why the Tree Loves the Ax" leaves me wondering why. Lewis takes a 40-something misfit and places her in a host of predicaments, including an "accidental" murder, her befriending a satan-like old man while working under an assumed name in a nursing home, and stumbling on the suspicious, seemingly pedophilic behavior of a group of men secreted in the woods. His ability to capture a woman's voice is impeccable, and his sentences read like well-wrought prose poetry: "At first the storm was a childish ambush, and then it seemed like a party joke; the sky was a box, the lid came off and the pebbles poured down, and as they fell they made a slapstick racket, rattling against the roof and pinging on the hood of Bonnie's car and the tin mailbox and the end of her walk." The plot left me in a state of suspended disbelief, much like the book's opening chapter, where the main character witnesses her own car accident and its aftermath: "There were thousands of glimmering stars, like bits of safety glass scattered in the grass, which were like stars. I said to myself, Caroline, Caroline. Oh, you really messed up this time." If nothing else, read this book for Lewis' incredible attention to detail and his ability to write the BEST sentences of anyone I've read in the past 10 years or so.

Lovely, poetic, moving...

I just finished the last line on the last page of this engrossing story; a painful history told so tenderly...The author understands the subtle ironies and delights of the human experience, and I am enriched from the experience of reading this book.Go ahead, take a chance on this unknown author. You'll be glad you did.

Just a suggestion!

Just a suggestion! This isn't really a review-just a suggestion. I read the book and loved it. But thank god that I didn't read the reviews that you have reprinted here before I started to read the novel. I don't think that the reader needs to know beforehand that Caroline is addressing her psychiatrist. I also believe that we shouldn't know that the men who she meets up with are pornographers. That's taking all of the suspense out of it! Other than that, I think the reviews are pretty good.

Just a suggestion!

This isn't really a review-just a suggestion. I read the book and loved it. But thank god that I didn't read the reviews that you have reprinted here before I started to read the novel. I don't think that the reader needs to know beforehand that Caroline is addressing her daughter. I also believe that we shouldn't know that the men who she meets up with are counterfeiters. That's taking all of the suspense out of it! Other than that, I think the reviews are pretty good.