Yanagihara, Hanya: The People in the Trees

This is one of the best books I have read in a while. Hanya Yanagihara wrote a fascinating novel, which comes along as an autobiography of Dr. Abraham Norton Perina a famous scientist and 1974 Nobel Laureate with along track history in several fields and medical anthropology. The autobiography is edited by his life long friend Dr. Kubodera. The story starts with two newspaper clippings that inform the reader that in 1995 Norton Perina is charged with rape and in 1997 sentenced to 2 years in prison. In confinement Perina starts to write his biography, his upbringing with a twin brother, parents and the start in academic training. This is a work of fiction but the description of the daily scores as a lab hand at the bottom of the lab hierarchy , working with other students being ignored by researchers and hassled by supervisors is perfect reading and actually reads like the autobiography of a real scientist, as if Francis Crick or James Watson had written this. In the middle of the book Perina joins a team of scientists to do field work on a small, remote Micronesian island. This part has indeed renderings to Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”, the difficult approach to the islands and to find the inhabitants and the actual study of their daily lives. Here Perina’s research starts and against the warning of his colleagues Perina - driven by relentless ambition and without considering what might happen to the island and its people, once he publishes his research results on the retarded aging of some of the islanders – he goes ahead and makes his findings public. This will make him famous and Perina will eventually win the Nobel Prize. The last part of the autobiography concentrates on Perina’s large family of adopted children, whom he all brings back form the Micronesian island and the story of why and how Perina falls from grace. I am not giving away how the story ends, but it left me stunned. Read it and read to the end. What is more, Yanagihara – as if the novel is actually some kind of real biography of a real scientist, comes up with a timeline and 83 footnotes explaining parts of the text and even giving a somewhat scientific explanation on the longer life span of the islanders.

Interesting story and idea. The plot starts slowly and is very detailed, which I liked as the idea is very interesting. The main topic of the book is introduced and evokes suspense. However the unraveling of the Plot is kind of fast and anticlimactic. I enjoyed the read but was a little disappointed by the denouement. I would recommend the book anyways as it was a fun read.