Treehouse by Morton Edmund Burke

Giving new meaning to e-book, the unfolding fantasy novel Treehouse by Morton Burke gets emailed to me weekly via his substack. Each delivery brings a new chapter propelling the story into increasingly psychedelic locales like a floating river in the sky and the US state of Missouri. Treehouse is immediately gripping, an effect helped along with my intrigue in the format, and follows the unnamed narrator after waking up from a car accident during a pizza delivery. He has new and increasingly weird mental abilities, allowing him to occasionally switch between conscious perspectives and with a compulsion to track down two mysterious figures, Eleanor, the drunk and Markon the skateboarder. The narrator’s accident affords them the ability to understand the entire lives of the other characters – a device that allows for disposing of a lot of explanatory context, adding to the trippy nature of the story. It’s a great device for talking about skating, as Burke doesn’t need to explain anything to anyone and can let it roll out as post-accident awe of life. “Some skateboarders strong-armed the trick into completion,” Burke writes of a seminal Tom Penny kickflip, “Penny was relaxed to the point that he seemed indifferent. His arms barely rose above his waist as his left hand remained open, a signature of his style that suggested an openness, the opposite of a fist.”

The periodic nature of Treehouse’s publishing allows Burke to be playful and off-the-cuff. Each chapter has a slightly different mood and tone, which no doubt reflects the author’s each week and allows readers to mull good and long. The imagery gets more and more surreal, sometimes reading like an art critic would describe the contents of a Dalí painting, but calls to mind the clear and astute world building of fantasy writers like Susanna Clarke, with a dash of the deep world building of Phillip Pullman and the American wasteland style of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. Burke sometimes leaves gaps in knowledge or time for the reader to do with as they please. 

These gaps don’t detract from the writing, however, but rather adds to it, leaving space for readers to consider previous poignant passages about dark, realistic things everyone goes through, such as addiction and childhood. The clear, clever writing leaves a lot of open space to play around in while at the same time building specific scenarios. When Burke writes, “What his father intended with this tone was to communicate, “I love you so much that it is a great, beautiful burden.” What Markon heard was, “You’re being alive makes my life difficult,” we get a complex understanding of Markon’s character through actions rather than description.

Notably, the weekly chapters of Treehouse are a quick read, but that does not mean they do not pack a bunch. Burke easily plays around with style and voice, affording gifts and delights of differing kinds each week. Simple, poetic passages such as “It was a blue-green day. The green of the grass answered the blue of the sky. I looked through the top of the rental windshield into the sky and followed it as the blue changed from grey to a muted powder blue, to a royal blue as the sun fell over the horizon,” create dancing images. Short, simple sentences resonate philosophies: “Skating always felt like communion with the ground.”  Like a treehouse, this substack has created a small space for imagination. If you’re reading this review through the Skate Book Club email, signing up for Mort’s substack is a no-brainer. Even if you’re not, the ongoing story of Treehouse is a compelling and light-hearted addition to your reading regime or an easy startup for those looking to get more fiction in their lives.

Special giveaway: As a paid subscriber, I have five one-month paid subscriptions to Mort’s substack. First five people to respond to this get ‘em!

-Abada