Title: Arborescence
Author: Rhett Davis
Publisher: Hachette, July 2025; RRP: $32.99
Reviewed by: Jason Nahrung
Arborescence had me hooked from the prologue, in which an unidentified ‘she’ stands unmoving in the backyard, while the narrator and someone called Travis have a brief exchange. The passage is 10 sentences long. Who is this ‘she’? Why is she standing in the rain and not caring for a brolly? If she hasn’t given up – as the narrator asserts – what is going on here?
This is Geelong-based Davis’s second novel – his first, Hovering (2022), won the 2020 Victorian Premier’s Unpublished Manuscript Award, and is now on my library list – and it fulfils the promise.
As the prologue suggests, the prose is economic and to the point, savvy, no words wasted. The first chapter is a series of vignettes that introduce the narrator Bren’s ecosystem – his mysteriously pointless job, the friends he meets at the pub, his relationship with Caelyn and their families. While the vignettes continue to feature, longer passages are introduced as the listless Bren and aimless Caelyn find something of a calling – a sense of purpose, even as the world is getting the wobbles.
As it turns out, as the blurb indicates so no spoiler here, there is a growing international movement of people turning into trees. For reasons little understood, they stand still in a spot and become at one with the planet, quite literally putting down roots. In investigating this phenomenon, Caelyn finds her direction, and Bren is pulled along in her wake.
This arborescence is contentious and challenging for the world, and in Davis’s hands becomes the entry point for topics such as the messiness of life (as opposed to the order of fictional narratives), climate change, and connections between people as well as between humanity and the natural world. For instance, says Caelyn to Bren,
(H)umans hoard and consume far more than we need just to make life slightly easier for ourselves. We will never give up anything, not really, unless we’re forced to…trees do not do this.
Those left behind by those who undergo the transformation face confusion, anger and guilt, trying not only to find a rationale for this change of being, but how to cope with a world where systems begin to break down due to population loss. Arborescence is not a simple solution, either to the stresses of modern life or the overheating of the planet – people die, directly and indirectly. As with any solution, there is a cost. Bren’s self-aware narration, leavened with dry humour and pithy observations, acknowledges this: even AI are left adrift.
There’s more, of course – Bren’s boyhood friend Miles and the comic they loved, for instance – but mostly it’s a beautiful story beautifully written about compassion and care, for each other and the planet that sustains us.
As for that ‘she’ in the backyard, well, we get to that in due course. Much like the book, it’s a moment of sadness and hope, and quite touching.
Review copy provided by the publisher
