William Tyce, the narrator of Elliot Reed's debut novel, A Key to Treehouse Living, is on a mission to do the impossible: create an encyclopedic glossary of all the terms that comprise his disjointed life. Starting from "Absence" and ending with "Yonder, The Wild Blue," William describes his life with his uncle after being abandoned by both his parents. When his uncle is arrested for insurance fraud, William sets off down river in a Huck Finn-esque journey that takes him physically and emotionally through mystical and awe-inspiring spaces.
William's clear and vibrant narration guides the reader through each entry, seamlessly moving among subjects such as "Baby Memories," "Mortal Betrayal" and "Philosophy of Nihilism." While the novel's format emphasizes the muggy atmosphere of William's lonely and stagnant childhood, the plot is always drifting along beneath the surface, offering increasingly illuminative insights and revelations. As William faces loss and confusion, he looks backward while he moves forward, with a sense of both listlessness and nostalgia. Meanwhile, the experimental structure gives Reed the opportunity to flex his imagistic talents as he zooms in on evocative minutiae like the "buoyant" memory of "my dad's shirt. It was warm and soft, but crisp in its wrinkles where my face was pressed to it" or "the sound of a little radio playing fuzzy country music." These moments glitter like found gems in the darkness of William's mind, giving a book about existential darkness an undeniable sense of beauty and wonder. --Alice Martin, freelance writer and editor