Scan barcode
A review by mizukireads
The Tree Doctor by Marie Mutsuki Mockett
4.5
I don't think any summary of this book does justice to how beautiful the story is. Separated across an ocean from her family at the beginning of COVID, the unnamed, middle-aged narrator of this book is stuck in her childhood home in California to be close to her mother, who has been ill for a long time but is now declining rapidly. The pandemic prevents the narrator from visiting her mother at the care home or her family back in Hong Kong, so she spends a long, empty, aimless stretch of months alone, tending to her mother's garden, teaching a remote university course on the Tale of Genji, and observing all the unsuspecting ways both the natural world and this 11th century Japanese classic weave their way into her life.
On a trip to the garden store early in the novel, the narrator meets Dean: a gruff arborist known as the tree doctor who helps her revive a cherry tree in the garden. The two begin a sensual and intense affair that awakens her sense of her body, pleasure, selfhood, and sexuality. This entire book feels intimate, not only in its descriptions of sex but in the deep ways we get to know and understand the narrator. Even though it's written in third person, we go into her head and have access to the observations she has about herself, her relationships, and the world at a time when everything's standing still, holding its breath for the worst yet to come that seems like it's always just around the corner.
There were parts of this book that surprised me, especially the intense section where she's stuck at the center of the California wildfires. I felt like I was right back to last summer in the Okanagan, choking on thick wildfire smoke, refreshing the wildfire map every minute, watching a line of cars stuck in traffic trying to evacuate. So many aspects of this reminded me of Unearthing by Kyo Maclear: the connection to a mother through gardening, the relationship to self and identity as a half-Japanese woman, meditations on grief and loss, the slow, gentle, mono no aware descriptions of the natural world. All in all there was lots in this book that hit close to home for me which is a big reason why I was so moved by it, but I also think it's a book anyone could sink into and love.
On a trip to the garden store early in the novel, the narrator meets Dean: a gruff arborist known as the tree doctor who helps her revive a cherry tree in the garden. The two begin a sensual and intense affair that awakens her sense of her body, pleasure, selfhood, and sexuality. This entire book feels intimate, not only in its descriptions of sex but in the deep ways we get to know and understand the narrator. Even though it's written in third person, we go into her head and have access to the observations she has about herself, her relationships, and the world at a time when everything's standing still, holding its breath for the worst yet to come that seems like it's always just around the corner.
There were parts of this book that surprised me, especially the intense section where she's stuck at the center of the California wildfires. I felt like I was right back to last summer in the Okanagan, choking on thick wildfire smoke, refreshing the wildfire map every minute, watching a line of cars stuck in traffic trying to evacuate. So many aspects of this reminded me of Unearthing by Kyo Maclear: the connection to a mother through gardening, the relationship to self and identity as a half-Japanese woman, meditations on grief and loss, the slow, gentle, mono no aware descriptions of the natural world. All in all there was lots in this book that hit close to home for me which is a big reason why I was so moved by it, but I also think it's a book anyone could sink into and love.