‘Tell it to the Trees’ by Anita Rau Badami

Reviewed by Hubert O’Hearn

Being called creepy is rarely taken as a compliment — in romantic relationships it’s the round of grapeshot announcing that a dumping is off the port bow — with the exception being in literature. Tell it to the Trees is a very creepy novel. In a brisk and economic story of a family living under the shadow of abuse, it packs more genuine spine shivers than a dozen monster horror chillers. One doesn’t need to see a monster arise from a peat bog waving a Husqvarna chain saw to get spine shivers; you just need to marry the wrong man and live in the wrong place.

The Dharma family lives in the remotest possible house on the edge of the remotest possible logging town of Merrit’s Point somewhere in British Columbia. Merrit’s Point is not doing well, and as I write this from a northwestern Ontario city surrounded by similar towns which aren’t doing well either I can attest that imminent economic collapse applies a certain pressurization of stress roughly equivalent to pumping excess air into a decompression chamber — the ingredient may be invisible, but the effect palpable. One watches the advance of gangrene while hopelessly hoping it stops before it reaches the heart.

Anita Rau Badamai tells her story through four narrators drawn from a tidy, stage-sized cast of six, with two walk-on supporting characters. Indeed, as I think of it, Tell it to the Trees could be staged on one set, with only an occasional side-lit scene and it would work as an excellent piece of theatre. Much like Elia Kazan’s movie version of A Streetcar Named Desire where he subtly and barely perceptibly narrowed the walls in successive scenes, the compression of scene and rising tension of characters eventually hit an explosive ignition point.

As to those characters, the Dharma family is composed of the dying and shrewd grandmother Akka; her son Vikram who was abandoned by his now-deceased first wife; Vikram’s daughter Varsha; his second wife Suman; their son Hemant and the tenant in the cottage on the back of their property, Anu. If the names are not indication enough, I’ll make clear that all of the above are East Indian by nationality.

Right from the outset it is made clear that Anu (younger, thoroughly modern, would-be writer) is dead — found frozen to death outside the Dharma home. In that way, Tell it to the Trees is a classic mystery plot. At first it is a howdunnit, later a whodunnit, but the art of the piece is in the whydunnit.

Ultimately, the success or failure of a novel based around an initially unexplained death is in the whydunnit, now isn’t it? (Like the fated Anu, I stepped outside to have a cigarette to think about things. Thankfully, unlike the fated Anu I returned to tell this tale.) This is why mysteries with psychopathic monster villains are so often dull and forgettable. You’re sick. You kill things. This knowledge adds nothing to my life, so who cares? I certainly don’t care.

I’ll reluctantly get to the failures of this novel, yet happily they are out-numbered by its successes. The resonant texture of Badami’s story is its consideration of the secrets that all families hold (Don’t tell the neighbours!) and how they can become self-destructive. The only confidante the children have is (title spoiler alert!) a tree on the property, where they are sent by Akka to unburden their souls.

Vikram beats his wife and children. He is frequently described as, literally, a cloven-hoofed monster who dissolves into regretful tears and regret whenever he is interrupted in his beatings. ‘Why do you make me do this?’ he frequently bleats in the classic mode of the criminal blaming the victim. ‘She made me do it your Honour!’

Badami aptly and skillfully lays out how the victims of abuse become either compliant cases of Stockholm Syndrome — Suman — or abusers themselves, as the pre-adolescent Varsha seems well on her way to becoming. The answer to the obvious reader’s question, ‘Why doesn’t Suman just leave the bastard?’ is clearly supplied by her lacking money, a place to go, or a passport to get there. This is good. One needs logical behaviour in a mystery in order to totally buy in to the plot.

What is left unexplained however is why this situation happened in the first place. There are frequent references to Akka’s deceased husband, Vikram’s father, and his own habitual abuse of his family. Yet the mystery as to why he moved his bride and son to this land on the edge of nowhere is left unresolved. I think this is a mistake. That secret should not remain unresolved or unrevealed. The old boy’s sole entry in his journal, ‘Finally there is silence’ raises more questions than it answers. Silence? What is the sound that one doesn’t wish to hear?

Because that issue rests stated yet unexplained, Akka’s regretful verdict in her son’s behavior — genetics — comes off as pat rather than complete. And this really is critical. If Suman is in a trap, and Anu eventually is entrapped, because of the isolation, then we as readers must be told why that isolation was necessary in the first place. Otherwise, one is reminded of the story when Orson Welles was directing one of his later films and Peter Bogdonavitch, acting in that film (yes really), asked Welles for his motivation in running across the roof of a building. Welles responded, ‘We’re losing the light and we’re out of money.’ This is a difficult motivation for an actor to play.

I really did enjoy Tell it to the Trees. While it is true that Vakram may be a stereotype of the psych-abuser and another central character is perhaps revealed too abruptly as someone suffering from psychological issues, it kept the pages eagerly turning and that is the crucial goal of story-telling. Do you want to know what happens next? You certainly will want that here. You just won’t know what happened then.