Driven by Yanagihara's gorgeously complete imaginary ethnography on the one hand and, on the other, by her brilliantly detestable narrator, this debut novel is compelling on every level-morally, aesthetically, and narratively. Yanagihara balances pulpy adventure tale excitement with serious consideration in unraveling her fantastical premise: a scientist, Norton Perina, discovers an island whose inhabitants may somehow have achieved immortality. Perina sets out on an anthropological mission that became more significant than he could have imagined. His tale raises interesting, if somewhat obvious, ethical questions; what can be justified in the name of science? How far does cultural relativism go? Is immortality really desirable? The book doesn't end with his astounding discovery, though. It continues with seeming banality to recount the predictable progression of academic honors that followed it and the swift and destructive attempt to commercialize Perina's findings. The story of Perina as a man emerges with less show but just as much gruesome fascination as that of his discovery and its results. Evidence of his character worms its way through the book in petulant asides and elided virulence, at first seeming incidental to the plot and then reflecting its moral themes on a small scale. Without making him a simple villain, Yanagihara shows how Perina's extraordinary circumstances allow his smothered weaknesses to blossom horribly. In the end, he reveals the full extent of his loathsomeness explicitly, unashamedly, convinced of his immutable moral right. (Aug. 13) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Yanagihara's immersive debut, many years in the making, charts the trajectory of a Nobel laureate's reputation and subtly underscores the inadvisability of equating status with credibility. Consequent to discovering the source of a Micronesian tribe's unique longevity, Dr. Norton Perina gains significant power over more than one fragile domain whose future ultimately hinges upon his integrity. Within such worlds-pristine jungles, sterile labs, guileless native settlements, wary academic environs, his bizarrely assembled household-Perina's interactions propel the narrative toward admonitions against the hubris of scientific adventuring. News articles and footnotes effectively read by Erin Yuen and William Roberts grace Arthur Morey's suave, accomplished rendering of Perina's memoir. VERDICT Recommended for all literary fiction listeners, followers of Barbara Kingsolver, and fans of Mark Helprin's Memoir from Antproof Case. ["Yanagihara's work, which appears to be loosely based on the life of Nobel Prize-winning scientist Daniel Carleton Gajdusek, is fast-moving and intriguing, although it does darken toward the end," read the review of the Doubleday hc, LJ 5/1/13.-Ed.]-Linda Sappenfield, Round Rock P.L., TX (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Debut novelist Yanagihara tackles some ambitious and deeply vexing scientific and personal conundrums. By way of protagonist Dr. Norton Perina's memoir, the story unfolds of a lost tribe of Micronesian natives who have discovered the secret of immortality. At first anthropologist Paul Tallent and associate Esme Duff invite Perina along on what they describe as an investigation into a myth, but their real hope is to confirm the tribe's existence. After many pages of overlong, obtuse, parenthetical sentences describing the island's dense jungle, readers will be relieved when the team finally happens upon the fabled tribe. Despite the language barrier, Tallent convinces the leaders that the team means them no harm; they only want to learn about tribal customs. While the anthropologists take notes, Perina snoops around until he discovers the tribe's secret to immortality and, in time, exploits and abuses it for his own despicable purposes. Perina is a delightfully black-hearted protagonist trapped inside Yanagihara's unfortunately inelegant prose.--Chavez, Donna Copyright 2010 Booklist

IN 1976, Dr. D. Carleton Gajdusek won a Nobel Prize for identifying a fatal disease in a remote tribe in Papua New Guinea. By the time of his death in 2008, Gajdusek had achieved another kind of notoriety, having been imprisoned for sexually abusing one of the dozens of native children he had adopted. Hanya Yanagihara's suspenseful first novel, "The People in the Trees," is based loosely on this true story, with a number of horrifying twists. From the start, she sets her narrative dial to creepy, and challenges to the extreme the notion that a protagonist needs to be "likable." Yet thanks to her rich, masterly prose, it's hard to turn away from Dr. Norton Perina, her anti-hero inspired by Gajdusek Some might say he's a sociopath, and not even the charming kind (see Tom Ripley). In a voice at once baroque and chilly, the Nobel Prize-winning scientist tells the story of his ignominious downfall via an obsessively crafted "memoir." After being convicted in 1997 for the rape of one of his adopted children, Perina finds himself "living a strange kind of life, a life in which I have no one." His account, written from prison, has been meticulously transcribed and edited by Dr. Ronald Kubodera, his former lab assistant. Kubodera's sycophantic and often bizarre footnotes accompany the text. He serves as Smithers to Perina's Mr. Burns, a role made even more explicit at the end. In 1950, at the age of 25, Perina graduates from Harvard Medical School, where he "rather enjoyed killing the mice." He is invited to join a Stanford anthropologist, Paul Tallent, on an expedition to the fictional Micronesian island of Ivu'ivu in search of a lost tribe. (In a meta-twist, Tallent publishes a "landmark" book, "The People in the Trees: The Lost Tribe of Ivu'ivu.") Perina finds Tallent's physical beauty an immediate and unwanted distraction; he recalls being "disgusted by the ache I felt yet enjoying it too." The team tracks down the primitive Ivu'ivuan tribe, but even more extraordinary is the discovery of a group of forest dwellers ("the dreamers") who live for hundreds of years while suffering progressive brain damage. Their condition is both an affliction and a gift - a "parody of immortality," Perina says. He is awe-struck as he witnesses a dreamer for the first time: a woman whose movements are human, "but somehow poorly practiced, as if she had once, long ago, been taught how to behave as a human and was slowly, steadily forgetting." They name her Eve. The dreamers seem to achieve longevity by consuming the flesh of a sacred, enormous turtle called the opa'ivu'eke. While Tallent and his associate dutifully record the Ivu'ivuans' daily habits, recording the shape and texture of their feces, Perina has grander ambitions. Aware that he has struck scientific gold, he's eager to fully solve "the riddle that has preoccupied every culture since the beginning of time." He kills an opa'ivu'eke, smuggling the precious turtle meat back to America, and kidnaps some of the dreamers for extensive testing in his lab. Perina's cruel act will lead, predictably, to his ruin and to the tragic devastation of Ivu'ivu. The novel examines issues of moral relativism, Western hubris, colonization and ecological disruption in the name of science as it charts the disappearance of the wondrous flora and fauna and the grievous harm done to the indigenous people. Pharmaceutical companies pillage the island, creating turtle breeding farms in their quest to bottle the secret to longevity. But Perina is unrepentant about his role. "I did what any scientist would have done," he insists. Provocative and bleak, "The People in the Trees" might leave readers conflicted. It is exhaustingly inventive and almost defiant in its refusal to offer redemption or solace - but that is arguably one of its virtues. This is perhaps less a novel to love than to admire for its sheer audacity. As for Yanagihara, she is a writer to marvel at. CARMELA CIURARU is the author of "Nom de Plume: A (Secret) History of Pseudonyms."