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The Family Tree by Sheri S. Tepper
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The Family Tree (original 1997; edition 1997)

by Sheri S. Tepper

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1,0502219,317 (3.87)43
THE ONCE FERTILE EARTH OF DORA HENRY'S CHILDHOOD HAS BEEN UNDERVALUED AND OVERDEVELOPED. NOW NATURE, APPARENTLY, HAS DECIDED TO FIGHT BACK. Police officer Dora Henry is investigating the bizarre murders of three geneticists. Meanwhile, strange things are happening everywhere she turns. Weeds are becoming trees; trees are becoming forests. Overnight, a city is being transformed into a wild and verdant place. And, strangest of all, Dora can somehow communicate with the rampaging flora. A potential civilization-ending catastrophe is in the making. The bearer Dora gets to a murderer--and to the truth--the more seemingly disparate events begin to entwine. And the answers she seeks today to the salvation of humankind may lie in afar distant future. . .one which is suddenly much closer than anyone imagines. An exhilarating and enchanting novel that deftly combines fantastic invention with insight and a social conscience, from one of the most lyrical and important voices in contemporary speculative fiction.THE ONCE FERTILE EARTH OF DORA HENRYS CHILDHOOD HAS BEEN UNDERVALUED AND OVERDEVELOPED. NOW NATURE, APPARENTLY, HAS DECIDED TO FIGHT BACK.Police officer Dora Henry is investigating the bizarre murders of three geneticists. Meanwhile, strange things are happening everywhere she turns. Weeds are becoming trees; trees are becoming forests. Overnight, a city is being transformed into a wild and verdant place.And, strangest of all, Dora can somehow communicate with the rampaging flora.A potential civilization-ending catastrophe is in the making. The bearer Dora gets to a murderer--and to the truth--the more seemingly disparate events begin to entwine. And the answers she seeks today to the salvation of humankind may lie in afar distant future. . .one which is suddenly much closer than anyone imagines.An exhilarating and enchanting novel that deftly combines fantastic invention with insight and a social conscience, from one of the most lyrical and important voices in contemporary speculative fiction.… (more)
Member:penga_librarian
Title:The Family Tree
Authors:Sheri S. Tepper
Info:Avon Books (T) (1997), Hardcover, 377 pages
Collections:Your library
Rating:*****
Tags:fantasy, environment, trees, future

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The Family Tree by Sheri S. Tepper (1997)

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» See also 43 mentions

English (21)  Spanish (1)  All languages (22)
Showing 1-5 of 21 (next | show all)
I found this one in the second hand store! Whoo hoo! Probably the best book to read if one is just starting Sheri S. Tepper. Wicked twists and turns! Changes your thinking...I dare you to read it! (If you do read and hate it, don't tell me....I'd be sad....really). ( )
  BarbF410 | May 22, 2022 |
This is one of my favorites of Tepper's work. ( )
  jennybeast | Apr 14, 2022 |
I have to agree with other reviewers who have commented on how the individual stories are difficult to follow -- until it all comes together unexpectedly. ( )
  resoundingjoy | Jan 1, 2021 |
On the one hand, this is a clever and entertaining story. On the other hand . . . It relates with approval a near-total genocide of the human race by environmental terrorists. So. ( )
  elenaj | Jul 31, 2020 |
A parable, tho I thought parables were usually much shorter. You could call it a fairy tale, or two fairy tales that eventually join up. In the one tale, there is an ordinary woman whose world is taken over by trees. In the other, Scheherazade setting with a quest, mystery to solve and journeys. As the chapters alternated between the 2 settings, I wondered what could these two tales have in common.
This book had a kind of "surface" feel to it: lighthearted despite talking about serious matters, targetted to your head instead of your heart. I was reminded a little of Piers Anthony's series with his play-on-words approach. Happily Tepper didn't go as far overboard.
This was not the kind of writing I expected from Tepper, but in the end I thought it was a very appropriate read during this year of the pandemic. ( )
  juniperSun | May 22, 2020 |
Showing 1-5 of 21 (next | show all)
"[Tepper] takes the mental risks that are the lifebloodof science fiction and all imaginative narrative.
added by cmwilson101 | editLos Angeles Times, Ursula K. Le Guin
 
In Tepper's latest consciousness-raising venture (the splendid Gibbon's Decline and Fall, 1996, etc.), cop Dora Henry investigates three supposedly unrelated and apparently motiveless murders whose victims were all leading geneticists. Dora's husband, Jared, takes no sexual or other interest in her--viewing her as merely a live-in housekeeper. One day a strange weed springs up outside their house. Jared, who loathes disorder, tries to uproot it, but the weed resists and stings him nearly to death. In a matter of days, the weed multiplies into a forest blanketing the suburbs--and Dora finds she can talk with the trees! Encouraged, she leaves Jared and teams up with biologist Abilene McCord. Meanwhile, 3,000 years in the future, a peaceful, low-tech, multi-tribal civilization writhes in turmoil when a dreadful prophecy warns that all intelligent life faces extinction. So a diverse group of travelers--among them magician-polymath Prince Izakar, arrogant Prince Sahir, and harem slave and part-time narrator Nassif--seek the remote Hospice of St. Weel, where, according to the prophecy, some way of averting the catastrophe might be found. The intricate yet exquisitely controlled plot, impossible to summarize but involving time travel, plague, genetic experiments on animals, sorcery, a secret society, and the astonishing identity of the travelers themselves, reveals how, why, and what happens after Nassif and the princes materialize in Dora's newly forested backyard. Beautifully realized, full of delightful surprises and sparkling wit, this out-and-out charmer is unquestionably Tepper's best work so far.
added by cmwilson101 | editKirkus Associates
 
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.
added by cmwilson101 | editAmazon
 

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Midmorning, a Tuesday in July, went out the front door of Jared's place to get the paper that the paper boy had, as usual, dropped just over the picket fence.
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Seeing the things I do every day, I think sometimes it's better if we just let the nonsurvivors go. They don't enjoy life. They suffer through it, being angry all the time, hating people, grieving over things, and everyone who loves them suffers right along. They're like a fish out of water, flapping the whole time, from this disaster to that disaster, and we flap with them, feeling the air burning our gills, getting drier and drier with the pain. Better if we let them go.
The Ghotian council of bishops said it was not a former time in the bubble your father longed for, but some other bubble altogether.
Why is it that in every cycle, people start out able to do magic, and then as time progresses, they are unable to do it anymore?
In the universe of all things that could happen, there are some events with vanishingly small probability of happening. Still, occasionally, things do happen which have a very small probability, and these things are called miracles. Some of them are quite nice, like instantaneous cures for incurable diseases or escapes from certain death. Some are quite nasty, like rains of frogs.
True, Izakar had said a number of things I had not at all understood, almost as though he lived in some other world. Or visited some other world, from time to time.
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THE ONCE FERTILE EARTH OF DORA HENRY'S CHILDHOOD HAS BEEN UNDERVALUED AND OVERDEVELOPED. NOW NATURE, APPARENTLY, HAS DECIDED TO FIGHT BACK. Police officer Dora Henry is investigating the bizarre murders of three geneticists. Meanwhile, strange things are happening everywhere she turns. Weeds are becoming trees; trees are becoming forests. Overnight, a city is being transformed into a wild and verdant place. And, strangest of all, Dora can somehow communicate with the rampaging flora. A potential civilization-ending catastrophe is in the making. The bearer Dora gets to a murderer--and to the truth--the more seemingly disparate events begin to entwine. And the answers she seeks today to the salvation of humankind may lie in afar distant future. . .one which is suddenly much closer than anyone imagines. An exhilarating and enchanting novel that deftly combines fantastic invention with insight and a social conscience, from one of the most lyrical and important voices in contemporary speculative fiction.THE ONCE FERTILE EARTH OF DORA HENRYS CHILDHOOD HAS BEEN UNDERVALUED AND OVERDEVELOPED. NOW NATURE, APPARENTLY, HAS DECIDED TO FIGHT BACK.Police officer Dora Henry is investigating the bizarre murders of three geneticists. Meanwhile, strange things are happening everywhere she turns. Weeds are becoming trees; trees are becoming forests. Overnight, a city is being transformed into a wild and verdant place.And, strangest of all, Dora can somehow communicate with the rampaging flora.A potential civilization-ending catastrophe is in the making. The bearer Dora gets to a murderer--and to the truth--the more seemingly disparate events begin to entwine. And the answers she seeks today to the salvation of humankind may lie in afar distant future. . .one which is suddenly much closer than anyone imagines.An exhilarating and enchanting novel that deftly combines fantastic invention with insight and a social conscience, from one of the most lyrical and important voices in contemporary speculative fiction.

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