So I just finished "The People in the Trees" by Hanya Yanagihara...
By PhotonIsland48
I just finished this book like a couple minutes ago and I honestly feel like I need to talk to someone about it. I haven’t had a book leave me feeling this messed up and unsure how I’m supposed to even think about it—or about the world around it. The descriptions were really beautiful in this way that still felt real, like it actually captured the emotional and physical spaces it was showing. And the writing is so specific to the viewpoint that it kind of forces you to question the narrator, which I did not expect. But wow… it’s also really dark. There’s graphic animal death, descriptions of a child being gang-raped, and there’s this nasty desire sitting underneath basically the whole story. I feel like I probably liked it, but I’m also disgusted and confused, and I can’t get my feelings to line up. Has anyone else read it? What did you think, and what did you take from it?