Cherie Thiessen

by Karen Rivers
Cormorant Books, Toronto
S.C.. $21.95, 201 pp.

It sounds like a fairy tale.  Karen’s first two books, one for young adults (reviewed in December¹s issue of Focus) and one for adults, were both accepted almost simultaneously by two different publishers, something that rarely happens to a new writer.  With her inner voice advising against it, what was it that altered Karen¹s professional direction?

"I got ill the second year of pre med.  My heart actually stopped beating.  I had been ill for a while, and my family and I just thought it was stress.  By the time I recovered, I had missed all my mid terms and when I came back to school I was in a different place."

The place she’s in is a good one.  The Tree Tattoo, which took over 20 rewrites and several years to write, is going to take you on a journey you won¹t want to leave. "I really had fun with the language…did whatever I wanted with it.  It was like a piece of needlework that I took out of the drawer and worked and reworked whenever I felt like it.  I loved it.  I actually love rewriting too."

She must have had fun ignoring the rules as well; rules like starting with fresh story ideas, building characters readers can identify with, and creating suspense. Karen takes the most clichéd plot of all, the wife, older man, younger woman triangle, and makes it work.  She also plays with a difficult structural device, that of revealing to the reader the outcome of the story at the beginning.  Many readers like to read avidly to find out what happens next.  This book you read to
discover what happens now.  Instead of suspense we have understanding.

And the characters are not fully drawn. The man does not have a name and the girl’s name is not revealed until the end of the book.  Other characters such as the wife and their children are mere sketches. We do not connect with these characters on any deep level.

So here we have a bleak tale in which no-one achieves happiness, husband and wife are alienated and no-one’s needs are met. We have dependent women with diminished lives who seem to exist solely for their man, and yet I’m raving about the work. Why?  Because it’s crammed with sensual writing that draws clear pictures and emotions so vividly you can reach out and touch them.  "…..His words are heavy and roll towards her like heavy boulders on a grassy slope…" Or…."..her
voice like tiny pieces of coral breaking underfoot…."   Phrases like this are on nearly every page.

Because the style, condensed like a good poem, is focused like a well crafted film, directing the reader to "look", "listen" "wait" "smell".  You are led through the book and you won¹t find it easy to break away. The sparse style is uniquely Karen Rivers.  She really did have fun playing with words.

And because the symbolism is rich and right. The image of the tree¹s roots growing ever deeper evokes universal associations for the reader. The sharks swimming ever further north due to the effects of El Nino mesh with the image of the ex-husband traveling ever closer toward the girl called Nina. The predator with his fascination for sharks, his inability to speak, and his sudden flashes of violence, slides through the story like the man eaters that obsess him.

With its sparse, poetic style and sense of an unavoidable outcome, this novel resembles a Greek tragedy. The isolated characters act in automatic predestined ways they can¹t seem to control, and destiny unfolds  You may hate or cheer this destiny, but you will welcome the book and the writer.