The Red Tree is the story of Sarah Crowe, a writer who rents a rural Rhode Island house. Sarah is running from a lot of things: her career, her agent, the book she can’t seem to write, and her girlfriend Amanda’s suicide. There, in the cellar of the stifling old house, she finds typewriter and an old manuscript. Titled The Red Tree, the manuscript is the historical work of the house’s former tenant, an academic who hung himself with an extension cord before completing his work. His subject is the ancient red oak near the house, and the tragedies that seem to surround it. Sarah becomes obsessed with the manuscript, as well as with Constance, the young artist who rents the attic.
Kiernan writes a line in this book talking about the old horror versus the new horror. The old horror, specifically Algernon Blackwood, whom she mentions by name, was largely atmospheric, defined almost as much by what you weren’t shown. The new horror, blatantly influenced by horror cinema, often shows you everything. Blood splatters as monsters crawl, saliva dripping from their teeth. As a result, a lot of horror writers are torn between two worlds of the Gothic, the new and the old.
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