Where once was a beautiful wood now stands a desolate field smothered in ash and garbage, and here a young man named Waller has terrorizing encounters with grotesque figures named 'the garbagemen.'
Writers writing about writing run the risk of alienating certain readers; writers writing about politics will sometimes feed us narrow partisan lines, thereby flattening an otherwise rich narrative. Hilbig is talented enough to avoid these traps. Far from building walls between us and an aptly named protagonist, the novella’s puzzle-like structure allows us to partake in Waller’s own disorientation ... [An] already powerful message is bolstered by Hilbig’s stunning prose.
Wolfgang Hilbig is a cleric of luminous accumulation ... Hilbig doesn’t write stories which develop into political allegories. He writes political allegories which decay into holy relics ... We want this novel to be about us as we see ourselves. We want it to be about our current North American political situation ... But this novel is too close to us to reveal anything but the deepest ontological underpinnings of matter and being. It urges us to keep digging, holes within holes ... mesmerizingly comic ... The Tidings of the Trees ends propulsively ... Hilbig’s novel is a hymn celebrating the disheveled vastness of existence.
...a sparse yet challenging novel ... The novel picks up steam in an excellent middle sequence ... Despite the short length, readers may find themselves wanting more to anchor them to the story.
