Reviews
I want to share, with you a favorite review of mine – just out.
Published 7/2014
Written by, Anthony Ewart, Associate Editor
HOLLYWOOD WEEKLY MAGAZINE
You don’t have to like people to be a writer. That’s a fact. Some authors can describe characters brilliantly. You can picture them in your mind, envision them walking down a sidewalk in front of you – but that’s as far as you go. Like strangers you see around you, you can guess what they’re thinking about, but you can never know. Even if you had coffee with some of them and engaged in small talk, what could you glean from such a shallow interaction?
This is not the case with author Andrea Carr and her new novel “Family Tree.” Her characters never leave your side, even after the book is closed. Like ghosts they live with you, haunting you with their pain. What does this prove? It proves Andrea Carr loves people. She loves telling their stories. Only a writer with this level of love can make characters on a page this real…but be warned, this is a blessing and a curse, because the pain these characters endure is raw and sensitive to the touch; their lives the equivalent of an open wound.
Aristotle described the elements in Andrea Carr’s Family Tree in his “Poetics,” where he famously stated that the goal of Greek Tragedies was “to bring about a catharsis of the spectators — to arouse in them sensations of pity and fear, and to purge them of these emotions so that they leave the theater feeling cleansed and uplifted.” Franz Kafka went even further, saying, “What we need are books that hit us like a most painful misfortune, like the death of someone we loved more than we love ourselves.”
These two quotes are what I constantly had to remind myself of while reading Family Tree – I had to experience the lives of these characters; somehow, at the other end of this novel, I would grow as a human being. As Aristotle said, my emotions would be purged. Andrea Carr worked as a Psychiatric Technician for the State of California, and it shows in her literary understanding of the human condition. Family Tree is a first-person narrative, and we’re guided through the branches of this family by Angel Harper, a character who is a testament to the incredible strength of a woman. If you were to condense the townspeople of Grace Metalious’ Peyton Place to one family, you’d have Family Tree.
The story begins with Angel Harper incarcerated, and learning from her estranged mother by phone that her sister, Lady, has hung herself in the backyard. Angel’s son, Malcolm, who Lady was taking care of, is nowhere to be found. I haven’t read an opening scene of a novel this potent since anything James M. Cain ever wrote. Slowly, through the steady hand of a literary surgeon, Andrea Carr reveals the sordid secrets of Angel’s family, and the devastating effect it’s had on her siblings.
Family Tree is a novel that is begging for a sequel. I want to know what happens to these characters. Angel’s relationship with her son, Malcolm, is a saga I want to follow. I want to see Angel confront her mother about more than just the issues tackled in this book. I want to know that Lady didn’t die in vain. Like Grace Metalious’ 1959 follow-up novel “Return to Peyton Place,”
I’m ready to start a campaign for Andrea Carr’s follow-up to Family Tree. May all our emotions be purged…
Anthony Ewart Associate Editor, HOLLYWOOD WEEKLY MAGAZINE
Filed under: Uncategorized
