Context is everything and Kiernan’s inclusion of New England history of folklore adds to the depth and breadth of the novel’s impact lending an air of almost imperceptible inevitability of the horror that unfolds. While the titular oak remains central to the novel’s plot Kiernan manages to includes a sampler of New England folklore and myth that lends to the tale’s grounding in reality. Cosmic terror appears as an ingredient of the earliest folklore of all races, and is crystallised in the most archaic ballads, chronicles, and sacred writings.” While Lovecraft is here referring more to early Egyptian and Jewish mythology, and quickly veers into racist a couple paragraphs later, I maintain that his initial point remains a salient one and it is a theme that Kiernan uses to great effect in The Red Tree. “As may naturally be expected of a form so closely connected with primal emotion, the horror-tale is as old as human thought and speech themselves. In the second section of his essay, “Supernatural Horror In Literature” Lovecraft writes: If Threshold only hinted at this fact, then The Red Tree reveals it to be true in the most, dare I say, cyclopean of ways. And while I haven’t followed every bit of fiction she has written still remains the only author who manages to truly evoke those same sensations of dread while at the same time managing to do so in a voice entirely her own.

At least that is what I though before having first encountered Caitlin R.

Many writers have written works based on the mythos of Lovecraft, many others have written clever homages to his fiction (see “Shoggoth’s Old Peculiar” by Neil Gaiman) but few, if any, manage to capture or even expound upon the atmosphere of horror and fear of the unknown that Lovecraft so handily elucidate. Lovecraft was a writer who managed to overcome his faults (frequently racist overtones and often stiff language) and evoke an atmosphere of dread and despair that turns even the hottest summer day into something dark and chilling.

The Red Tree by Caitlín R. Kiernan