The Red Tree Audiobook By Caitlin R. Kiernan cover art

The Red Tree

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The Red Tree

By: Caitlin R. Kiernan
Narrated by: Eileen Stevens, Katherine Kellgren, Christian Rummel
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Sarah Crowe left Atlanta, and the remnants of a tumultuous relationship, to live alone in an old house in rural Rhode Island. Within its walls she discovers an unfinished manuscript written by the house's former tenant - a parapsychologist obsessed with the ancient oak growing on a desolate corner of the property. And as the gnarled tree takes root in her imagination, Sarah risks her health and her sanity to unearth a revelation planted centuries ago.

©2009 Caitlin R. Kiernan (P)2010 Audible, Inc. Classics Fantasy Horror Paranormal Paranormal & Urban Supernatural Thriller & Suspense Urban Scary Fiction

Critic reviews

"[Caitlín R. Kiernan has] a gift for language that borders on the scary." (Neil Gaiman)
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I recommend this book quite highly. It’s smart, somewhat dense macabre fiction. It’s a bit psychological thriller, a bit dark erotica, a bit Lovecraftian cosmic horror. The main voice narrator is where I had problems. The voice actor inhabits her role well with regard to emoting and conveying the story. But she affects an old fashioned, stereotyped Southern accent that wouldn’t work even if she did it well—and she does it inconsistently. The main character claims to be a “redneck” from Alabama who lived much of her life in Atlanta, yet the voice actor makes her sound a lot like Vivien Leigh as Blanche DuBois in Streetcar. It’s an embarrassing misfire for anyone with any familiarity with people from the South. Since the actor didn’t have good command of the accent anyway, often changing the way she pronounced certain sounds, she should have just read in a more neutral accent and concentrated fully on conveying the emotions of the character.

Great weird fiction; mediocre narration

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A middle-aged Lesbian horror author burdened with grief, epilepsy, and writers’ block leaves her native Atlanta to reside a summer in an isolated farm house close to a gigantic oak tree with a sinister reputation. Though she can’t write a novel, she can keep a journal, and this, plus the contents of a notebook she finds in the house, constitutes most of the novel. She has horrifying experiences that drive her to suicide, but whether said experiences are “real” or “imaginary” is left to the reader. I wasn’t surprised to read Kiernan later admitting that the story was partly autobiographical.

The credits list three voice actors, one for the author, one for the editor who provides a preface, and one for the professor who wrote the notebook. I am convinced that Audible listed the actors in order of appearance, not importance, and that is Katherine Kellgren who is the voice of the doomed writer. Ms Kellgren did a fine job as Mina Harker in the Dracula audiobook I heard in October. Here, she is even better as a tough, foul-mouthed, gravel-voiced Southern gal who is going into the abyss kicking and cursing. An excellent performance.

Katherine Kellgren was the novelist?

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hmmm, strange, but once you start listening you have to continue to the end!

the red tree

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Be prepared for some spine tingles with this ones folks. I have not read too many horror storues and chose this one because the author is an advocate of HP Lovecraft and I was curious to read/hear this story.

I was surprised how chilling this book was aty times - I am a mature man with a wide variety of tastes - but Caitlin R. Kiernan took me on a journey of facination, suspense and yes . . horror.

But the horror was not "in your face" . . it was well scripted around a general story of a woman who rents a remote house ... simple . .yes ? . . well no - the background is well proportioned and the build up to the moments to real terror are irresistable.

A good read - but will make you sleep with the lights on once or twice.

A true "classic" horror story.

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Very difficult to put into words how much I enjoyed this reading, but I'll try. I'd read the book years ago, liked it, but probably didn't grasp it then like I do now with this second pass. The reading of it was both intoxicating and mystifying, opening up its many dimensions.

Many listeners will find this a little too slow, but once you get used to the pace, it flows so well you can't wait to find out what comes next. Quite interesting from both a horror and a historical perspective.

A great book if you are a patient listener, someone who likes movies like the Witch...even better if you're a writer listening to how a master story teller spins a yarn.

Slow, Cerebral Pulse

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The book is slightly intriguing. Its written as a journal and therefore; does not read like a normal novel. There are moments in the book which are great and put you on edge, but there are also a lot of moments that fall very flat. I think its a book that you have to listen to more than once, unfortunately, I don't know if the book is good enough to do such. The story has great potential, but...

It has its moments...

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This is the best horror novel I've read in some time, filled with mystery, the tangled legacy of history, personal tragedy and the difficult war with one's own grief, the awful recognition of losing one's creative capabilities and seeing an inescapable tragedy approaching, and some great surprises wonderfully presented. Kiernan brings her distinctive fusion of scientific and artistic appreciation of the world to bear on this chronicle of a life's final months.

Gripping, excellent horror

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The idea and execution were good, my only complaint is with the narrator being long-winded at times. Also - a great example of not judging the book by its cover!

Slow-Burn Creeper

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There's a story in there - hell there's a few stories in there - but they all pale in comparison to the writing and the narration. The author really knows how to turn a good phrase, how to describe things so perfectly, how to capture a characterization. The narrator - she's amazing - I've never heard a person switch in and out of southern drawl so seamlessly.

The story itself unfortunately.

And the very heavy doses of info-dumps and citations from boring periodicals or reference books - I want to believe that maybe this is a "House Of Leaves" kind of meta-story thing and just maybe half of it is lost in narration, or perhaps there's some much much MUCH deeper meaning that my feeble little mind just couldn't pick up because the writer was writing for other writers, who would be able to pick up on all the subtle literary references between mythology, Virginia Woolf, Yates, Jung - there was just so much going on that whatever kind of supernatural scary tale that might've been buried in there - it just never got a chance to breathe.

And there's no ending. Literally.

And the hard core erotica threw me for a loop; I'd already recommended the book to a few people because of the brilliant way the author explained her take on ghostly apparitions, and her writing, it was a really good book, but as soon as the lube came out, yeesh I had to do some serious back-pedaling.

So - we've got an author who is just amazing at writing themes and using her words in the best of ways, with a narrator who just NAILS a torn soul or two, but a story that is trying to be about seven things at once, and succeeds at MAYBE three of them, tops.

Great writing, Fantastic narration, Absent Story

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A very intense story. Not so much because of the horror done by some spectral force but because of the tragic experiences the main character has suffered. It is very well written, not exactly the nail biter I was looking for. It is worth reading because the main character is so fascinating, amusing and dark.

Very intense yet has humor too

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