The Family Tree - Softcover

Tepper, Sheri S.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0006510167 ISBN 13: 9780006510161

Publisher: Voyager, 1998

Synopsis

From the much-loved author of Grass and Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, a fabulous story of time travel, murder ... and the revenge of trees.

Sheri Tepper’s gift is to address unflinchingly worst-case futures and confront the reader’s fears head-on. It’s a polemicist’s strategy, invigorating, addictive, sharing the burden of contemplating big issues and the threat they may pose to the world.

In The Family Tree trees suddenly become rampant, growing at a fantastic rate to conquer any spare land, obscure small roads, take over unoccupied rooms in houses – and possibly cause the disappearance of babies, always the fourth (at least) in a family.

Our police officer hero Dora Henry suspects the plague of trees began in the garden of the home she shared until recently with her husband Jared. But meanwhile, Dora is seeking a divorce and investigating the murders of three geneticists who were all working to develop intelligence in other species. And far in the future, when technology has all but vanished, two princes and their followers find themselves on similar quests that will take them back in time – to land in Dora’s new back garden.

About this title

Review:

This technically polished novel ingeniously combines elements from traditional quests, fables, and novels. A seemingly rhetorical question is posed in chapter 1: Why did sociable, smart Dora Henry marry cold, controlling Jared Gerber? But that question is the key to the book and to the parallel stories told by Sheri Tepper. The sets of characters unravel their separate puzzles until all become different aspects of the same web of events, shaking the reader's, and Dora's, perceptions to the core. Tepper's linguistic sleight-of-hand with metaphor and image is breathtaking; her storytelling is deft and funny; her characters are memorable and sympathetic. Topical, mythical, archetypal, and provocative, this is a book no fantasy or science fiction reader should miss.

Review:

‘A work where wry humour mingles with the gravest of concerns about ecology and the fate of the earth. Tepper has produced another work as witty, charming, deep-down serious and inventive as her classic Beauty, in this fable with an extra edge to it: a thorough-going relevance to our future.’
Locus

‘The worldbuilding is just great. The fantasy world comes alive and becomes more
“real". The real world becomes strange and different. Each step along the way is exciting and fascinating.’
Science Fiction Age

About this edition

• Publisher: Voyager
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0006510167
• ISBN 13: 9780006510161
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 479