Noooooooooooooo.
This round pitted two books I
loved against one another, so I really couldn’t have been happy (and I would
have either of these trade spots with THE GOOD LORD BIRD in a heartbeat). It
confuses me that there are people who don’t like either of these books—I have
never felt that I need to love a main character, or approve of him; I probably
need to empathize with him, but he doesn’t have to be a good person, and I feel
I was let into the hearts and minds of both of the main characters of these
novels.
Why might one choose THE PEOPLE
IN THE TREES over THE SON? I still remember the scenery and the islands of Ivu’ivu.
I would happily go there for vacation, and its demise through colonization and
predation hurt me, as though I were losing a paradise I would otherwise have
had access to. The novel had a deeper understanding of, and relationship with,
animals than THE SON did, despite THE SON’s explorations of hunting, of pets,
of the love of horses and the use of horses, and of the Native American
practices of making bowstrings and blankets from animals. The latter part of
THE PEOPLE IN THE TREES became a strange Phillip Roth pastiche, with a moneyed
non-traditional suburban family exploring every conformation of dysfunction. Is
there ever a situation in which a single father—and one who has a career
outside of the home that he is very much dedicated to—successfully raises forty
adopted children in rapid succession? Is this ever not an unregulated and
unsupervised orphanage? What are we to make of the adult children who come home
from college to wash the dishes and thank Norton for raising them? Was that
even true? We may believe in our hearts that love is more important than money,
and that a teenager who can’t go to college because he can’t afford it but who
has his parents’ undying love and support will go farther than one given a
trust fund and completely ignored growing up. But we also have to imagine,
reading this narrative, that the unimaginable gap between growing up on a tiny
island—I can’t even call it rural because there’s nothing like a city near Ivu’ivu
to position itself against—and growing up in a rich American suburb is only
bridgeable with a great deal of privilege, and private tutors, and strongly held
expectations. I would read the memoir of one of Norton’s adopted daughters with
great interest.
Of course, I would also gladly
read the memoir of one of Eli’s Comanche brothers, even for the scenes in which
the Comanches are decimated by a disease that Eli was vaccinated against—in his
previous life, the life that he has entirely rejected, his mother’s care for
him that early in his life protected him in this unimaginable new life he has
entirely embraced. I still don’t understand why Eli’s mother opened the door to
the Comanches, as she must have known what would happen, but that scene made me
feel that she was still looking out for her son, that despite her own life, and
that of her daughter’s, and that of her more sensitive son, the entire
McCullough trajectory had as its purpose, its fate, bringing Eli McCullough
into the world and helping him tear his way through it. And the glory of this
novel is that it made me believe he was worth it.
My winner: THE SON
ToB’s winner: THE PEOPLE IN THE
TREES
Read the official Tournament
judgment here.
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