The Hanging Tree

by David Lambkin

Overview

Palaeontologist Kathryn Widd is in the Kenyan wild investigating hominid skull fragments. She becomes intrigued by a 1908 safari and the British nobleman who died mysteriously. The further she probes, the more deeply she is drawn into past lives and ancient, mysterious forces of violence.

When palaeontologist Kathryn Widd is called to the Kenyan wilderness to investigate a set of hominid skull fragments, she little suspects how profoundly the journey will change her. As she studies the ancient fossils, she becomes intrigued by the tale of a 1908 safari and the British nobleman who died mysteriously near the site of her dig. The further she probes, the more deeply she is drawn into past lives and a world turned upside down by ancient, mysterious forces of violence.

Surrounded only by the vast wasteland of African desert, her forgotten sexuality is gradually reawakened - first by Marion Macmillan, the neglected wife of Kathryn's alcoholic colleague, then by the mystic nomad Daniel Tregallion. As the academic significance of the findings begins to attract worldwide attention, Kathryn finds herself drawn into a vortex of dark passion, native curses, and devastating political violence.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781887178716
Publisher:	Catapult
Publication date:	06/01/1998
Edition description:	1 AMER ED
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

David Lambkin is an English novelist. Born in England, he spent many years in South Africa and Kenya. He was voted South Africa’s Author of the Year in 1995, and his debut novel won the South African Central News Agency Literary Award in 1992.

Editorial Reviews

Magic and science, past and present, collide in Lambkin's fast-paced thriller, which was a bestseller in South Africa. Kathryn Widd, a paleontologist specializing in violence, goes to Kenya to examine an ancient skull and gets involved in a mystery surrounding a death that occurred on a 1908 expedition, led by John Henry Patterson, to the same locale. From her office in present-day Johannesburg, she recounts the tale of her expedition in a foreboding tone. Accompanied by researcher Ray Chinta, museum administrator Victor Macmillan and his beautiful and enigmatic wife, Marion, Widd makes historic discoveries among the fossils that lend disturbing insight into the origins of human violence. But as the expedition continues, the party begins to relive events that occurred during the ill-fated Patterson expedition. Soon, they find their research straying from the exactitude of science into the realm of magic and mysticism. Looking for metaphysical heft, Lambkin juxtaposes scientific theory with black magic, quantum physics and Bach and uses the metaphor of a fugue to add layers of depth. He falls short of illuminating the implied connections among his many competing themes, and his characterizations rarely rise above stereotype. He does, however, deliver a page-turning puzzler filled with suspense and a richly evoked sense of the African landscape. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The American edition of last year's South African bestseller, a brooding meditation on humankind's violent nature.

A peaceful but troubled woman, Kathryn Widd, the junior paleontologist of a South African museum, is sent to the Nyika Desert of Kenya and Somalia by her director. She is to investigate the discovery of an ancient skull while he heads off on a more promising dig. The skull predates other skeletal remains of early humans but, the director figures, belongs to an ape who walked about on all fours, rather than an upright hominid. Turns out he's wrong, and glories accrue to Kathryn, but that's the only triumphant note in this dark novel. Kathryn quickly becomes intrigued by the story of the turn-of-the-century white hunter J.H. Patterson. Patterson either killed or had a hand in the suicide of an English lord after having a steamy affair with his wife, scandalizing colonial Kenya. Patterson's book on the affair, In the Grip of the Nyika, which Kathryn reads with great absorption, turns out to offer a grim foreshadowing of events in the present. Loveless Kathryn unwittingly recapitulates the older story as she falls in love with a latter-day hunter, Tregallion. The tragic violence Patterson found himself drawn into occurs again, leaving Tregallion dead. And this death is in turn mirrored by discoveries at Kathryn's dig, where evidence of a truly ancient murder is unearthed. Kathryn returns to South Africa a mother and an internationally respected scholar, but also a grieving widow, bewildered by the dark, violent nature of humankind and the inscrutability of God.

Kathryn is not an entirely convincing character, and the references to the Patterson case seem like overkill, but Lambkin is extremely skilled in evoking the raw malevolence of backcountry Kenya. Heart of Darkness from a woman's point of view.

Kirkus Reviews