by Melissa Goodnight
March 11, 2024
Melissa Goodnight's work has appeared in Moon City Review, Mud Season Review, and Litro, among others. Melissa earned a BA from Missouri State University, an MA from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and an MFA from Mississippi University for Women. She lives in Atlanta.
The Tree Doctor by Marie Mutsuki Mockett; Gray Wolf Press; 256 pages; $17.00.
In Marie Mutsuki Mockett’s latest novel The Tree Doctor, the author examines themes of motherhood, marriage, and middle age through the lens of an unnamed Japanese American woman caring for her mother at the start of the pandemic. While Mockett relies on a multitude of craft choices to bring this novel to life, among them the decision to keep the protagonist unnamed, none is more striking than her reliance on place. The Tree Doctor is, at its heart, a story about home during a global pandemic. But even more than that, it’s the story of one woman’s journey to self-discovery through tending a failing garden, examining love through various relationships, and transitioning into what she considers “adulthood.”
When her mother moves to a care facility at the start of the pandemic, the unnamed protagonist—alone in her childhood home in Coastal California—falls into a routine of virtual teaching and tending her mother’s beloved garden. Like many people during the pandemic’s early days, she keeps busy with projects and news while struggling to stay connected to loved ones, including her husband and daughters living in Hong Kong. In an attempt to save a particular tree, she meets an arborist known only as the Tree Doctor. She is immediately drawn to him and the two begin a short, passionate affair while the complex realities of life blend and blur in an uncertain world.
Mockett delves into her protagonist’s sense of place with surprising but appreciated specificity. The novel is set in Carmel, California, an enigmatic city with unique landscape, traditions, and people. But throughout the novel, the reader is taken on unexpected journey’s to other locations as well. Through memories unearthed by the protagonist during her teaching of the 11th century Japanese novel, The Tale of Genji, readers experience the bustling city of Hong Kong and the smallest of Japanese villages. Reflecting the protagonist’s world, Mockett gives readers a solid foundation of home in California while showing the profound effects that leaving home can bring.
It’s worth noting that Mockett herself was born in Carmel to a Japanese mother and American father, calling on what feels like her own experiences to create a rich mixture of place and culture throughout. This mixture only elevated my enjoyment of this novel. I found myself fascinated by the names of native California conifers to teas only found in Japan, often Googling to learn more about the intricate, esoteric details in this novel.
Mockett’s expert juxtaposition of these beautiful scenes against the anxious fear that came with “the sickness,” as the protagonist calls it, feels real and relatable. It does more than paint a vivid portrait, it allows the woman in the novel to see her own life unfolding in new ways, while offering the reader an inside look at her self-conceived missteps into adulthood, some of which readers will relate to, a nod that comes up several times in the novel. An attempt by the author perhaps, to express the inexplicable bond of life and art.
At the start of the fifth chapter, Mockett likens the woman’s life to being one big story with an overstory existing outside of herself. Here the author introduces a narrative layer that is both complex and significant. This is evident when the protagonist explores her feelings, “She, along with everyone else, measured herself against this story all the time, knowing where she had or had not taken the correct steps and thus whether she was properly placed on the path to adulthood. By the time she was an adult, she knew it was impossible to mold herself to the story and that plenty of people were also dissatisfied with the story, but no one seemed to have any idea what to replace it with."
The adept way Mockett uses the overstory is particularly poignant when she introduces the 11th century novel, The Tale of Genji written by the Japanese poet and lady-in-waiting, Murasaki Shikibu. Mockett introduces the novel when the protagonist, a professor, begins teaching a remote class with students living in Hong Kong. The Tale of Genji depicts the high courtiers of the Heian Period and it leads the class into conversations of individual growth, the exploration of changing place, and most importantly the pain and trauma that can accompany love. The fact that Mockett’s protagonist is teaching a modernist view of a novel written by a woman about women—whom centuries ago grappled with the same complications—is not lost on the reader. This story (and the overstory, as it were) adds to the pleasure of delving into Japanese history and culture, which is also the protagonist’s and the author’s history and culture. Likewise, it provides provocative topics to explore. Topics like love, lust, art, and envy are present throughout the novel, but highlighted with The Tale of Genji. The overstory is so well done that when Mockett remind readers, “Tragedy plus romance was particularly potent,” we are left with a nod and a knowing smile. It’s a reminder that if we examine our own tragedies and romances, we too can learn to love ourselves and others more deeply than ever before. This is why Mockett’s novel is a success.
While some might consider The Tree Doctor just another pandemic story, this novel is set apart by Mockett’s invitation to consider these experiences that though unique to this woman and this place, are still so universal. Essentially, the author uses the pandemic as another carefully-crafted character for the protagonist to figure out, like her family, her lover, and herself, just like we are still trying to figure out what happened.
The Tree Doctor gives us a portrait of one woman in one moment of time, but she truly is every woman everywhere on the cusp of middle age weighed down by familial obligations, societal expectations, and the realization that mid-life enrages and entangles. She is a mother, a wife, a lady patiently waiting for the second half of her life, learning from where she came and where she’s headed. And while there is isolation and anxiety in this novel, there is also relatability and intrigue, skillfully accomplished with craft and compassion. Because of that, I could read this novel again and again and continually be delighted by this often messy protagonist, in spite of—or maybe because of—her obvious missteps.
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Lady in Waiting: An Exploration of Identity through Place in Marie Mutsuki Mockett’s The Tree Doctor
FICTION REVIEW
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