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Hanya Yanagihara

The People in the Trees

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The brooding, bold and brilliant first novel from the Man Booker— and Bailey's Prize-shortlisted author of A Little Life.
In 1950, a young doctor called Norton Perina signs on with the anthropologist Paul Tallent for an expedition to the remote Micronesian island of Ivu'ivu in search of a rumoured lost tribe. They succeed, finding not only that tribe but also a group of forest dwellers they dub 'The Dreamers', who turn out to be fantastically long-lived but progressively more senile. Perina suspects the source of their longevity is a hard-to-find turtle; unable to resist the possibility of eternal life, he kills one and smuggles some meat back to the States. He scientifically proves his thesis, earning worldwide fame and the Nobel Prize, but he soon discovers that its miraculous property comes at a terrible price…
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526 printed pages
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Impressions

  • Дина Кравченкоshared an impression7 years ago
    👍Worth reading
    🚀Unputdownable

    Darkish and disturbing

  • Marina Zalashared an impression7 years ago
    🙈Lost On Me
    💧Soppy

    The ending somehow makes me sad!

  • Лиляshared an impression6 years ago
    👎Give This a Miss

    Чёт хз, очень странные впечатления от книги. Не понравилось описание джунглей, большинство героев довольно плоские

Quotes

  • Anna Yarkovahas quoted8 years ago
    gaunt and cadaverous that it looked as if someone had reach
  • Vladimir Chernykhhas quoted4 years ago
    He had a particular way of talking, I noticed — there were no question marks in his sentences, no exclamation points, and yet his voice was not toneless but rather shaded and rich and somehow substantial, something that conjured a dense forest of variegated trees, all lush and stately and grand. It was a voice that betrayed nothing — not approval, not happiness, not fear or anger — but that might make you crazy with its promise of mysteries.
  • Vladimir Chernykhhas quoted4 years ago
    There is really no satisfying or new way to describe beauty, and besides, I find it embarrassing to do so. So I will say only that he was beautiful, and that I found myself suddenly shy, unsure even of how to address him — Paul? Tallent? Professor Tallent? (Surely not!) Beautiful people make even those of us who proudly consider ourselves unmoved by another’s appearance dumb with admiration and fear and delight, and struck by the profound, enervating awareness of how inadequate we are, how nothing, not intelligence or education or money, can usurp or overpower or deny beauty. As the months I spent in Tallent’s presence dragged by, I would alternately be tortured by and find solace in his beauty, and would find myself by turns surrendering to it, enjoying my proximity to it, and, less happily, trying to argue against it, as fruitless and pointless an activity as trying to convince yourself that sugar is sour.

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