3 out of 4 stars
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Stephen Christiansen has not had the easiest lot in life, but things are finally starting to look up. He’s an editor at a publishing company and has successfully published three books despite his young age, one of which is on course to break into the New York Times Best Sellers List. He’s been engaged to the same beautiful woman for 8 years, and he’s ready to get out of their small apartment and move on to the next big step in their lives. Unfortunately, things get waylaid when Stephen steps out of his office for a morning walk – and right into the scene of a robbery.
Things go surprisingly well -- the cops catch the bad guys, he becomes friends with the man he saved, and he only had to go through one surgery to heal his bullet wound. Of course, this is only the calm before the storm. Before he even has time to heal physically, Stephen is bombarded by mental and emotional storms stemming from issues in his personal life. Isaac, the man he saved, is an island he can escape to when it feels like his head is being pulled underwater. However, Isaac has his own storm clouds, schizophrenia being the biggest, hanging over his own head.
The Theory of Talking to Trees is a novel that explores the bond between these two unlikely allies. Karl Dehmeit artfully portrays two men who have nothing going for them, who can barely put one step in front of another on their individual paths in life, and yet who find comfort in each other’s sorrows. The novel focuses deeply on mental illness and the effects it can have on its prisoners. Despite the dark tone and serious discussions, the novel chips out small pinpoints of brightness – hope, compassion, love – in the midst of its stormy currents.
Dehmeit’s writing style is full of passion, and was the backbone for the entire novel. Every thought the characters had, every emotion and subsequent action was fully illustrated with rich and verbose description. At a mere 200 pages, the book could have been the dramatization for a film. More than anything, Dehmeit writes with heartfelt honesty and does not sugarcoat the harsh realities of his characters.
Unfortunately, despite the main character being an editor and the author having such great literary prowess, I found quite a few grammar mistakes throughout the novel. Many of the errors consisted of incorrect comma usage and occurred within dialogue. They were easily ignorable, but the manuscript would have been much neater if those tiny mistakes had been fixed beforehand.
Overall, I believe The Theory of Talking to Trees has earned a solid 3 out of 4 stars. I thought of giving it 4 stars, but the punctuation errors and the sense of restlessness it left me with made me mentally bump it down to 3.5 or lower. It truly is a disturbing novel in many ways, and is not for the faint of heart. There are many mentions of death and suicide, stemming from the aforementioned depression and schizophrenia. The novel may be triggering to some readers. However, readers who are unafraid to step into the world of those struggling with such illnesses will find a rich, literary treasure in their hands.
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The Theory of Talking to Trees
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I just thought it should be mentioned, since there are some readers who absolutely can't stand grammatical errors.
