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Greenwood
It's 2034 and Jake Greenwood is a storyteller and a liar, an overqualified tour guide babysitting ultra-rich vacationers in one of the world's last remaining forests.
It's 2008 and Liam Greenwood is a carpenter, fallen from a ladder and sprawled on his broken back, calling out from the concrete floor of an empty mansion.
It's 1974 and Willow Greenwood is out of jail, free after being locked up for one of her endless series of environmental protests: attempts at atonement for the sins of her father's once vast and violent timber empire.
It's 1934 and Everett Greenwood is alone, as usual, in his maple syrup camp squat when he hears the cries of an abandoned infant and gets tangled up in the web of a crime that will cling to his family for decades.
And throughout, there are trees: thrumming a steady, silent pulse beneath Christie's effortless sentences and working as a guiding metaphor for withering, weathering, and survival.
A shining, intricate clockwork of a novel, Greenwood is a rain-soaked and sun-dappled story of the bonds and breaking points of money and love, wood and blood—and the hopeful, impossible task of growing toward the light.
It's 2008 and Liam Greenwood is a carpenter, fallen from a ladder and sprawled on his broken back, calling out from the concrete floor of an empty mansion.
It's 1974 and Willow Greenwood is out of jail, free after being locked up for one of her endless series of environmental protests: attempts at atonement for the sins of her father's once vast and violent timber empire.
It's 1934 and Everett Greenwood is alone, as usual, in his maple syrup camp squat when he hears the cries of an abandoned infant and gets tangled up in the web of a crime that will cling to his family for decades.
And throughout, there are trees: thrumming a steady, silent pulse beneath Christie's effortless sentences and working as a guiding metaphor for withering, weathering, and survival.
A shining, intricate clockwork of a novel, Greenwood is a rain-soaked and sun-dappled story of the bonds and breaking points of money and love, wood and blood—and the hopeful, impossible task of growing toward the light.
528 pages, Hardcover
First published September 24, 2019
1,871 people are currently reading
49k people want to read
About the author
Michael Christie
29 books778 followersMICHAEL CHRISTIE is the award-winning author of the novel If I Fall, If I Die, which was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Kirkus Prize, was selected as a New York Times Editors' Choice Pick, and was on numerous best-of 2015 lists. His linked collection of stories, The Beggar's Garden, was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, shortlisted for the Writers' Trust Prize for Fiction, and won the Vancouver Book Award. His essays and book reviews have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Globe & Mail.
Greenwood, his most was released in September 2019. A bestseller in Canada, it has been nominated for numerous awards.
A former carpenter and homeless shelter worker, he divides his time between Victoria, British Columbia, and Galiano Island, where he lives with his wife and two sons in a timber frame house that he built himself.
Greenwood, his most was released in September 2019. A bestseller in Canada, it has been nominated for numerous awards.
A former carpenter and homeless shelter worker, he divides his time between Victoria, British Columbia, and Galiano Island, where he lives with his wife and two sons in a timber frame house that he built himself.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 3,863 reviews
January 26, 2023
“There aren’t any normal lives, son. That’s the lie that hurts us most.”
This novel pierced my heart with its extraordinary beauty and simple grandeur. I knew right away that I was reading an excellent book due to the quality of the prose, but it was only with the book’s completion that I realized the superb writing I’d just experienced. It was a slow burn at the beginning. Author Michael Christie doesn’t get in a hurry. Just like a tree builds up its layers year after year, Christie developed his characters and a plot that I came to understand was quite stunning only after peeling through many layers. The format is ingenious. A frontispiece illustration shows the cross-section of a tree, with captions along the line of an arrow. The captions along the tree’s rings begin with the outermost ring, the year 2038, then continuing with the years 2008, 1974, 1934, and 1908 at the tree’s heart delineated. As we follow the arrow out the other side of the tree, the same years are captioned. In Christie’s tale, these are the years in which he presents his characters. In the middle of the book, the reader finds the year 1908 and a chapter entitled, ‘Heartwood.’
As Christie begins his story in 2038, the world’s forests are razed by fungal infections and insect infestations. People are making pilgrimages to an island off British Columbia, to one of the few remaining old-growth forests. Even as nature has been decimated to this extent, there’s a buck to be made from such spiritual journeys. One of the tour guides, Jake Greenwood recognizes the hypocrisy behind the words she utters to society’s upper crust Pilgrims every day, “Earth’s once-thundering green heart has not flatlined.”
While this narrative is about trees and the devastating cost of man’s exploitation of nature, it is also a story about people and the slim edge of hope. Characters who seem real, peculiar, eccentric, striking, familiar, tragic, and ordinary as people I call ‘my people’ live within the pages of this book. My favorite was Everett Greenwood. One of two brothers who will for their lifetimes be connected to trees, his path sees him enlisted in World War I. The tragedies of those war years bend the boughs of Everett’s spirit causing him to become a hobo, a vagrant who taps sugar maples on another man’s land. What he finds one night, hanging from one of the nails he’s plunged into a maple, will change the course of his life.
Everett’s brother, Harris, finds his ambitions fulfilled in the lumber industry. While he comes across as materialistic, in every way Everett’s opposite, the tragedy of his life is that he is unable to live as who he truly is. His willingness to sacrifice familial love for romantic interest causes a selfish action that will reap repercussions.
In a sense, Christie seems to say that our singular lives are pretty insignificant. That it’s only how they can be viewed over time, as family, as a community, as a forest of connections that has importance. In our lifetime, we will likely never know the significance of our own lives, but we can take comfort in knowing that it’s important to keep trying, to keep building connections and relationships between each other and nature. Even the most tragic life may hide a gem-like connection that is never visible to another human soul.
In this story, a rich man wants to sire an heir to whom he will leave his great wealth. A woman will relinquish her inheritance to serve what she perceives as a higher calling. An old woman will leave a woodlot to two young men. Christie goes to great lengths to make us think about how we begin, how we deal with our inheritance (what we’ve been given), and what we leave in the end. He does it in an impactful way with skill and verve; a profoundly affecting read.
Longlisted for the 2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize
Shortlisted for Canada Reads 2023
This novel pierced my heart with its extraordinary beauty and simple grandeur. I knew right away that I was reading an excellent book due to the quality of the prose, but it was only with the book’s completion that I realized the superb writing I’d just experienced. It was a slow burn at the beginning. Author Michael Christie doesn’t get in a hurry. Just like a tree builds up its layers year after year, Christie developed his characters and a plot that I came to understand was quite stunning only after peeling through many layers. The format is ingenious. A frontispiece illustration shows the cross-section of a tree, with captions along the line of an arrow. The captions along the tree’s rings begin with the outermost ring, the year 2038, then continuing with the years 2008, 1974, 1934, and 1908 at the tree’s heart delineated. As we follow the arrow out the other side of the tree, the same years are captioned. In Christie’s tale, these are the years in which he presents his characters. In the middle of the book, the reader finds the year 1908 and a chapter entitled, ‘Heartwood.’
As Christie begins his story in 2038, the world’s forests are razed by fungal infections and insect infestations. People are making pilgrimages to an island off British Columbia, to one of the few remaining old-growth forests. Even as nature has been decimated to this extent, there’s a buck to be made from such spiritual journeys. One of the tour guides, Jake Greenwood recognizes the hypocrisy behind the words she utters to society’s upper crust Pilgrims every day, “Earth’s once-thundering green heart has not flatlined.”
While this narrative is about trees and the devastating cost of man’s exploitation of nature, it is also a story about people and the slim edge of hope. Characters who seem real, peculiar, eccentric, striking, familiar, tragic, and ordinary as people I call ‘my people’ live within the pages of this book. My favorite was Everett Greenwood. One of two brothers who will for their lifetimes be connected to trees, his path sees him enlisted in World War I. The tragedies of those war years bend the boughs of Everett’s spirit causing him to become a hobo, a vagrant who taps sugar maples on another man’s land. What he finds one night, hanging from one of the nails he’s plunged into a maple, will change the course of his life.
Everett’s brother, Harris, finds his ambitions fulfilled in the lumber industry. While he comes across as materialistic, in every way Everett’s opposite, the tragedy of his life is that he is unable to live as who he truly is. His willingness to sacrifice familial love for romantic interest causes a selfish action that will reap repercussions.
In a sense, Christie seems to say that our singular lives are pretty insignificant. That it’s only how they can be viewed over time, as family, as a community, as a forest of connections that has importance. In our lifetime, we will likely never know the significance of our own lives, but we can take comfort in knowing that it’s important to keep trying, to keep building connections and relationships between each other and nature. Even the most tragic life may hide a gem-like connection that is never visible to another human soul.
In this story, a rich man wants to sire an heir to whom he will leave his great wealth. A woman will relinquish her inheritance to serve what she perceives as a higher calling. An old woman will leave a woodlot to two young men. Christie goes to great lengths to make us think about how we begin, how we deal with our inheritance (what we’ve been given), and what we leave in the end. He does it in an impactful way with skill and verve; a profoundly affecting read.
Longlisted for the 2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize
Shortlisted for Canada Reads 2023
October 1, 2019
This is an outstanding multi-generational family saga. It covers four generations of the Greenwood family. The characters are complex and fully developed. The setting is mainly on an island off the coast of B.C, with towering Douglas Fir trees growing amidst thick rainforests. The story also shifts to other areas of Canada. Like the trees dominating the story, always in the background with their tangled and branching roots, the Greenwood family tree is also entangled. Who really are the Greenwoods?
This is a strong warning about environmental devastation and the necessity to preserve nature. There is suspense, thrilling action with a focus on greed, estrangement, sacrifice, crime, and secrets.
It covers the Greenwood family from 1934 up to a future date of 2038, through wealth, big business, poverty, tragedy, imprisonment, eco-tourism, environmental protests and blockades. It addresses an important question of what makes up a family. This is a powerful, well crafted, beautifully written novel.
This is a strong warning about environmental devastation and the necessity to preserve nature. There is suspense, thrilling action with a focus on greed, estrangement, sacrifice, crime, and secrets.
It covers the Greenwood family from 1934 up to a future date of 2038, through wealth, big business, poverty, tragedy, imprisonment, eco-tourism, environmental protests and blockades. It addresses an important question of what makes up a family. This is a powerful, well crafted, beautifully written novel.
March 24, 2020
There have been many fine reviews of this novel, but I don't possess the words that would adequately convey its brilliance. It has been referred to as a Masterpiece, and I would wholeheartedly agree. Very highly recommended.
October 10, 2022
A saga, through the generations, of families, trees, the earth and our fragile dependence on each other. I like the structure of this sprawling novel which winds back through the history of the intertwined characters, Harris, Willow, Liam and Jake, and reveals how each generation affects the next. Interestingly, the characters in this novel are connected mostly not by blood, but by love and chance. Slow-starting but once I got involved, I didn't want to put it down.
April 29, 2021
"What if a family isn't a tree at all"..."What if it's more like a forest? A collection of individuals pooling their resources through intertwined roots, sheltering one another from wind and weather and drought"..."if not a part of her family tree, then part of her family forest. And no one knows better than a dendrologist that it's the forests that matter"..."And like all stories, families are not born, they're invented, pieced together from love and lies and nothing else."
Wow. This book captured me. Its unique structure mirroring the inner rings of a tree, it offers a multi-generational story centered on all things wood. Those who love and protect it, those who use it to advance their own lives or abuse it, those who hide in it, those who lovingly carve it into beautiful creations. As the story unfolds, we travel through each section of this unique group of people to the inner core to where their story begins, as though boring slowly through the hidden rings, allowing the sap of history to seep out, a drip at a time. An insight at a time. A truth at a time.
I loved the metaphorical nature of this book, captured by those top quotes. Complicated people and events intertwined at their roots, growing in their own directions, not always succeeding with that family task of sheltering one another. Just like the trees, they are susceptible to forces of nature and the evils of man. There are those you root for, those you despise, and those who puzzle you. I particularly enjoyed the narrative voice of this story, which is hard to describe. The flow kept me wanting to know more, and more, and answered questions while still leaving things open for wonder.
There is suffering in this book. Suffering brought on by nature and by man's nature. But there is also love, sacrifice, generosity, resilience, and transformation.
"...she has made him into a new kind of creature entirely. Not a good man. Nor one worthy of any respect or adulation. But one who values the life of another over his own. And this transformation has closed a wound that had long festered and seeped inside him."
"Because even after you cut a piece of wood, and lay it straight, it lives on after you're finished, soaking up moisture, twisting, bowing, and warping into unintended forms. Our lives are no different."
I loved many aspects of The Overstory, for many of the same reasons. But even with that love, I think it lost a star due to being excessively long and wearing out its welcome in my mind. This one never did. I loved it to the end, and am still thinking about what an enjoyable read it was. There are clearly elements of climate change concerns in this story, but the overwhelming focus was on the people and their interconnected roots. That said, the prose dedicated to everything tree fed my soul in ways a book rarely does. One tree product--books--was an important thread in the story, and led to this delicious quote:
"Her books won't lift anyone from their low station They won't right wrongs or save wandering souls from perdition or fill grumbling stomachs. But they might let a few scraps of sunlight fall into some lean, desolate lives, and that's something."
This book let a rainbow of light into my life. Highly recommend it.
Wow. This book captured me. Its unique structure mirroring the inner rings of a tree, it offers a multi-generational story centered on all things wood. Those who love and protect it, those who use it to advance their own lives or abuse it, those who hide in it, those who lovingly carve it into beautiful creations. As the story unfolds, we travel through each section of this unique group of people to the inner core to where their story begins, as though boring slowly through the hidden rings, allowing the sap of history to seep out, a drip at a time. An insight at a time. A truth at a time.
I loved the metaphorical nature of this book, captured by those top quotes. Complicated people and events intertwined at their roots, growing in their own directions, not always succeeding with that family task of sheltering one another. Just like the trees, they are susceptible to forces of nature and the evils of man. There are those you root for, those you despise, and those who puzzle you. I particularly enjoyed the narrative voice of this story, which is hard to describe. The flow kept me wanting to know more, and more, and answered questions while still leaving things open for wonder.
There is suffering in this book. Suffering brought on by nature and by man's nature. But there is also love, sacrifice, generosity, resilience, and transformation.
"...she has made him into a new kind of creature entirely. Not a good man. Nor one worthy of any respect or adulation. But one who values the life of another over his own. And this transformation has closed a wound that had long festered and seeped inside him."
"Because even after you cut a piece of wood, and lay it straight, it lives on after you're finished, soaking up moisture, twisting, bowing, and warping into unintended forms. Our lives are no different."
I loved many aspects of The Overstory, for many of the same reasons. But even with that love, I think it lost a star due to being excessively long and wearing out its welcome in my mind. This one never did. I loved it to the end, and am still thinking about what an enjoyable read it was. There are clearly elements of climate change concerns in this story, but the overwhelming focus was on the people and their interconnected roots. That said, the prose dedicated to everything tree fed my soul in ways a book rarely does. One tree product--books--was an important thread in the story, and led to this delicious quote:
"Her books won't lift anyone from their low station They won't right wrongs or save wandering souls from perdition or fill grumbling stomachs. But they might let a few scraps of sunlight fall into some lean, desolate lives, and that's something."
This book let a rainbow of light into my life. Highly recommend it.
February 25, 2020
The roots, rings, stretching branches, and changing leaves of trees represent the lives of a family connected to timber over time. Beginning in the not too distant future an island serves as a tree museum as this history of a family unfurls backwards and finally returns forward. A Canadian island provides sanctuary, refuge, a means of profit as well as contention and is the focal point of the novel. Is family determined by bloodline or is family a connection based upon shared history, love and lies? This is a wonderfully written and well plotted warning as well as a multigenerational narrative of family with more than its share of complexities.
October 15, 2020
Two weeks before I began reading Michael Christie's Greenwood, my beautiful peninsula in northwest Washington state entered lockdown. Not another Covid-19 panic; this time the fright was visible, its effects immediate and distressing to all. Our hazardous air was thick with smoke from forest fires that approached from every direction. It stayed that way for several dim, cold days. My brother texted from the Bay Area, where the sky was orange. At 1:00 in the afternoon, the streetlights had clicked on.
Greenwood's dystopian opening chapters set in 2038 don't feel all that distant. The world has succumbed to The Great Withering, a devastating series of dust storms that eliminated nearly all of the world's forests and inflicted a tuberculosis-like disease known as rib-retch; societal collapse is imminent.
A few green havens remain and Jacinda "Jake" Greenwood, a dendrologist who can find work only as a forest guide for wealthy eco-tourists, lands in one of them: Greenwood, an island off the coast of Vancouver still covered in old growth forest. The shared name is not a coincidence, of course, and like the cross-section of a felled tree, the novel explores the layers of bloodlines that brought the world to the brink of environmental catastrophe, and Jake to a point of personal crisis.
Greenwood is an epic saga that touches down in 1908, 1934, 1974 and 2008, before circling back to 2038. Christie's sprawling storylines are centered on a few key characters and because we come to know these characters so well, the cross-sections are easy to follow. Not just easy — exhilarating. Despite the book's length and density, Greenwood maintains a thriller's pace, while not sacrificing depth of character or beauty of language.
This is first-rate fiction: immersive, relevant and inspired. Highly recommended.
Greenwood's dystopian opening chapters set in 2038 don't feel all that distant. The world has succumbed to The Great Withering, a devastating series of dust storms that eliminated nearly all of the world's forests and inflicted a tuberculosis-like disease known as rib-retch; societal collapse is imminent.
A few green havens remain and Jacinda "Jake" Greenwood, a dendrologist who can find work only as a forest guide for wealthy eco-tourists, lands in one of them: Greenwood, an island off the coast of Vancouver still covered in old growth forest. The shared name is not a coincidence, of course, and like the cross-section of a felled tree, the novel explores the layers of bloodlines that brought the world to the brink of environmental catastrophe, and Jake to a point of personal crisis.
Greenwood is an epic saga that touches down in 1908, 1934, 1974 and 2008, before circling back to 2038. Christie's sprawling storylines are centered on a few key characters and because we come to know these characters so well, the cross-sections are easy to follow. Not just easy — exhilarating. Despite the book's length and density, Greenwood maintains a thriller's pace, while not sacrificing depth of character or beauty of language.
This is first-rate fiction: immersive, relevant and inspired. Highly recommended.
December 29, 2019
Tough gig having this come out the year after Richard Power's incredible Overstory but Michael Christie absolutely delivers the goods. The stories are concentric rings of a tree as we go backwards in time, passing the central core and radiating outwards again. But we kick off in the not too distant future.
We're on a remote island off the coast of BC that is one of the world's last old-growth forests where only the wealthy can come to commune with the trees in the "Greenwood Arboreal Cathedral." Little green is left after the Great Withering. It's all dust-choked cities and folks battling rib retch - a cough that can snap ribs.
From here we dive back through four generations of Greenwoods over 130 years. Christie drops threads as we work our way back to 1908. Despite starting in the future we won't see the forest for the trees (sorry/not sorry) until we make our way back from the turn of the century. It's a beautiful bit of storytelling. Each generation seems a mystery to the next.
The Greenwoods legacy is one of hardship and suffering and yet in Christie's hands remains ever hopeful. A sweeping family saga of resilience filled with compelling characters whose lives are tied to the trees that ultimately fit together like a perfect dovetail joint.
The book itself it a piece of work too. (At least my Canadian edition) The hardback is made with 100% recycled paper using vegetable-based inks and water-based adhesives. Thiis one of "the most sustainably published books in Canada ever ...connecting the reading experience and the physical object of the book.
We're on a remote island off the coast of BC that is one of the world's last old-growth forests where only the wealthy can come to commune with the trees in the "Greenwood Arboreal Cathedral." Little green is left after the Great Withering. It's all dust-choked cities and folks battling rib retch - a cough that can snap ribs.
From here we dive back through four generations of Greenwoods over 130 years. Christie drops threads as we work our way back to 1908. Despite starting in the future we won't see the forest for the trees (sorry/not sorry) until we make our way back from the turn of the century. It's a beautiful bit of storytelling. Each generation seems a mystery to the next.
The Greenwoods legacy is one of hardship and suffering and yet in Christie's hands remains ever hopeful. A sweeping family saga of resilience filled with compelling characters whose lives are tied to the trees that ultimately fit together like a perfect dovetail joint.
The book itself it a piece of work too. (At least my Canadian edition) The hardback is made with 100% recycled paper using vegetable-based inks and water-based adhesives. Thiis one of "the most sustainably published books in Canada ever ...connecting the reading experience and the physical object of the book.
April 30, 2021
4.5 🌲🌲🌲🌲
Solastalgia: Like a nostalgia for the depleted natural world, for the earth of the past, for the present that we know is vanishing.
From the Interview conversation with the author by Shanti Escalante
https://www.interviewmagazine.com/cul...
🌿
That quote evokes how I felt upon finishing this story.
I was fully engaged through all 501 pages though some were fashioned from harder wood than others.
In solidarity with the spectacular The Overstory, if you’re attuned to environmental concerns and family sagas, this deserves a place on your TBR shelf.
🍁
A wondrously structured story spanning four generations of a family whose stories are compelling and humanely profound dating from 2038 to 1908, and back again. As the rings of a tree attest to changes in weather and health through the years, so the individual lives in this family have their own history to reveal. The tone is precariously balanced like a seesaw between doom and hope as it tiptoes just slightly into where we seem to be headed and leaves the reader with much to ponder.
🍂
“Take heart, she seems to say. The world has been on the brink of ending before. The dust has always been waiting to swallow us. People have always struggled and suffered. Your poverty is not shameful. It is not a failure of your character. Life, by its very nature, is precarious. And your struggles are never for nothing.”
Solastalgia: Like a nostalgia for the depleted natural world, for the earth of the past, for the present that we know is vanishing.
From the Interview conversation with the author by Shanti Escalante
https://www.interviewmagazine.com/cul...
🌿
That quote evokes how I felt upon finishing this story.
I was fully engaged through all 501 pages though some were fashioned from harder wood than others.
In solidarity with the spectacular The Overstory, if you’re attuned to environmental concerns and family sagas, this deserves a place on your TBR shelf.
🍁
A wondrously structured story spanning four generations of a family whose stories are compelling and humanely profound dating from 2038 to 1908, and back again. As the rings of a tree attest to changes in weather and health through the years, so the individual lives in this family have their own history to reveal. The tone is precariously balanced like a seesaw between doom and hope as it tiptoes just slightly into where we seem to be headed and leaves the reader with much to ponder.
🍂
“Take heart, she seems to say. The world has been on the brink of ending before. The dust has always been waiting to swallow us. People have always struggled and suffered. Your poverty is not shameful. It is not a failure of your character. Life, by its very nature, is precarious. And your struggles are never for nothing.”
February 8, 2020
3.5 Stars
Thank you to Scribe UK for my free copy.
Think of your dream sandwich filling. Something you would never eat every day, an indulgent filling. (Yes this is a book review, stick with me.) Now imagine someone’s offering you this dream sandwich, but they’ve smushed it between two stale end pieces of white bread (no shade if you enjoy the ends of bread, it’s called a METAPHOR). Would you still eat it? Like, I would, and I did, and I don’t even like sandwiches that much, but I do LOVE multigenerational sagas.
.
Greenwood certainly delivers on three out of four of its generations, but I feel like the 2038 generation got seriously shortchanged. I loved the unique structure of this book, as we start from 2038, then go back to 1974, then 1934, then 1908 and then back up again, 1934, 1974, 2038 - like the rings of a tree, get it? Unfortunately that means 2038 starts and ends the book and those sections just do not compare to the middle sections. CONFLICTED.
.
I feel like Christie just pulled a fast one on Jake, who is a girl btw. I’m so annoyed because the other characters in the book show he’s capable of so much more. I absolutely LOVED Everett, Temple, Liam, and Everett’s time spent looking after a baby as a vastly under-qualified, essentially HOMELESS person was just the sweetest. I loved the complicated relationship between the two brothers, Harris and Everett. The exploration of same-sex relationships in the 30s, PTSD, addiction, capitalism, eco-tourism, climate change... so many topics were addressed in this book and done well, which makes Jake’s sections feel all the more like a slap in the face, she was so FLAT.
.
But there is a lot to love in this book. It’s 500 pages and yet I sped through it because I was so invested in the Greenwood family. That’s the way you want to feel with a saga, you want to feel bereft when you’re finished because you’re no longer reading about this one family, whose secrets and lies and betrayals and hopes you’re now privy to. And there is such an important message about climate change, with a startling prediction of what the future could look like in 20 years.
.
This is why I often have mixed feelings about reviewing, because I’d hate to put people off a book they might love. But I think you all know by now how personally I review books, and you’re all capable of knowing whether a book is right for you. These are just my two cents as usual!
.
Had Jake’s section been tucked away in the middle somewhere I might have been more forgiving, but given she starts and ends the book, it felt more obvious.
Thank you to Scribe UK for my free copy.
Think of your dream sandwich filling. Something you would never eat every day, an indulgent filling. (Yes this is a book review, stick with me.) Now imagine someone’s offering you this dream sandwich, but they’ve smushed it between two stale end pieces of white bread (no shade if you enjoy the ends of bread, it’s called a METAPHOR). Would you still eat it? Like, I would, and I did, and I don’t even like sandwiches that much, but I do LOVE multigenerational sagas.
.
Greenwood certainly delivers on three out of four of its generations, but I feel like the 2038 generation got seriously shortchanged. I loved the unique structure of this book, as we start from 2038, then go back to 1974, then 1934, then 1908 and then back up again, 1934, 1974, 2038 - like the rings of a tree, get it? Unfortunately that means 2038 starts and ends the book and those sections just do not compare to the middle sections. CONFLICTED.
.
I feel like Christie just pulled a fast one on Jake, who is a girl btw. I’m so annoyed because the other characters in the book show he’s capable of so much more. I absolutely LOVED Everett, Temple, Liam, and Everett’s time spent looking after a baby as a vastly under-qualified, essentially HOMELESS person was just the sweetest. I loved the complicated relationship between the two brothers, Harris and Everett. The exploration of same-sex relationships in the 30s, PTSD, addiction, capitalism, eco-tourism, climate change... so many topics were addressed in this book and done well, which makes Jake’s sections feel all the more like a slap in the face, she was so FLAT.
.
But there is a lot to love in this book. It’s 500 pages and yet I sped through it because I was so invested in the Greenwood family. That’s the way you want to feel with a saga, you want to feel bereft when you’re finished because you’re no longer reading about this one family, whose secrets and lies and betrayals and hopes you’re now privy to. And there is such an important message about climate change, with a startling prediction of what the future could look like in 20 years.
.
This is why I often have mixed feelings about reviewing, because I’d hate to put people off a book they might love. But I think you all know by now how personally I review books, and you’re all capable of knowing whether a book is right for you. These are just my two cents as usual!
.
Had Jake’s section been tucked away in the middle somewhere I might have been more forgiving, but given she starts and ends the book, it felt more obvious.
December 15, 2019
From the world's dust-choked cities they venture to this exclusive arboreal resort – a remote forested island off the Pacific Rim of British Columbia – to be transformed, renewed, and reconnected. To be reminded that the Earth's once-thundering green heart has not flatlined, that the soul of all living things has not come to dust and that it isn't too late and that all is not lost. They come here to the Greenwood Arboreal Cathedral to ingest this outrageous lie, and it's Jake Greenwood's job as Forest Guide to spoon-feed it to them.
They took all the trees
Put 'em in a tree museum
And they charged the people
A dollar and a half just to see 'em
It would seem that trees are really having a moment: as I was reading Greenwood, I thought, “This is like Richard Powers' The Overstory meets David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas”, but then I came to Goodreads and saw that that's exactly what the publisher's blurb says, so I'll offer out instead that this is like a mix of Annie Proulx's Barkskins and Harley Rustad's Big Lonely Doug, informed by Peter Wohlleben's The Hidden Life of Trees (So. Many. Tree. Books. Good thing I like them.). Greenwood itself is a sprawling, multigenerational family saga that not only uses trees as overt subject matter (their exploitation as resource, their physiology and importance to the ecosystem, their use in art and craft) but also uses trees and forests as ongoing metaphors for people, families, and society at large. This is definitely my favourite of what I've read of author Michael Christie, and despite its length and unconventional format, probably the most accessible read on 2019's Giller Prize longlist. Always interesting and often touching, this was a very good read indeed.
One is subject to much talk nowadays concerning family trees and roots and bloodlines and such, as if a family were an eternal fact, a continuous branching upwards through time immemorial. But the truth is that all family lines, from the highest to the lowest, originate somewhere, on some particular day. Even the grandest trees must've once been seeds spun helpless on the wind, and then just meek saplings nosing up from the soil. We know this for certain because on the night of April 29, 1908, a family took root before our eyes.
The opening quote takes place in the future: it's 2038, and after an ecological disaster known as the Withering (in which an uncontrollable fungus decimated most of the world's trees – leaving a few, mostly island-based, forests untouched and the rest of the world plagued by killer duststorms), forest guide Jake (for Jacinda) Greenwood counts herself lucky to have a job in the severely depressed economy; even if it is leading megarich tourists through her beloved old growth woodlands while they stare at their phones and pose for faux-pious selfies with towering Douglas firs. An orphan with no known relatives, Jake's present is bleak and she despairs for the future and the burden of student loans that she knows she'll never be able to repay. But when a former acquaintance appears on the island with an old diary and some information about Jake's unknown family tree, a mystery is presented that will eventually take the reader back in time over a hundred years and clear across to Canada's east coast.
Time, Liam has learned, is not an arrow. Neither is it a road. It goes in no particular direction. It simply accumulates – in the body, in the world – like wood does. Layer upon layer. Light then dark. Each one dependent upon the last. Each year impossible without the one preceding it. Each triumph and each disaster written forever in its structure.
There is an illustration at the beginning of Greenwood of the cross-section of a tree, with its outermost ring labelled as 2038, several other important years identified, and its centre, the “heartwood”, labelled as 1908. And that's how the narrative is structured (and why it recalls Cloud Atlas): After meeting Jake in the first section, set in 2038, the story rewinds to 2008 (and the story of Jake's father, Liam), then jumps back to 1974 (and the story of Liam's mother, Willow), to 1934 (and the stories of the two Greenwood brothers; one a lumber tycoon and the other a rail-hopping hobo), and then finally to 1908 and the genesis of the Greenwood line. The mysteries pile up with every cut to an earlier timeline, but after the middle section in the earliest setting, the story expands outwards again, revisiting 1934, 1974, 2008, and finally gets back to 2038, with information and revelations accumulating along the way until a satisfying resolution is arrived at. Spending time in so many different eras allows for a fascinating overview of Canadian history – a soldier from rural New Brunswick suffers the effects of shell-shock after WWI, a widow runs a Saskatchewan farm during the Great Depression, we explore Vancouver's twentieth century opium dens, and later, its eco-warrior ethos – and we meet the high and the low; everyone given a sympathetic portrayal. It was interesting that in each year Christie decided to set his story, characters are wondering if it's fair to bring children into their fallen world, and his answer, every time, seems to be that people don't so much choose to procreate as they, like a forest of trees under ecological pressure, throw their genetic material into the wind and trust that something will take root and begin its own struggle to survive. And like a forest of trees that appear to be competing for sunlight in the canopy while sharing resources underground, humanity operates through a combination of selfishness and generosity, and against all odds, even the under-resourced find ways to carry on into the future.
What are families other than fictions? Stories told about a particular cluster of people for a particular reason? And like all stories, families are not born, they're invented, pieced together from love and lies and nothing else.
I liked the overall narrative and the intriguing history it explores, the characters and the ways in which I was made to care for them, and the unconventional structure kept me totally engaged. I found the tree and forest metaphors became a little laboured, but did like the organic introduction of tree science; I liked the line-by-line writing, but some points of plot and philosophy underwhelmed. Ultimately, this is an epic of Canadian fiction and deserves a wide readership.
August 31, 2020
This book is gorgeous. I want to make out with it.
July 4, 2019
Astonishing. Like the trees and forests that form the backdrop of much of this book, Greenwood is a remarkable, majestic whole, comprised of characters big and small, and stories both epic and modest.
Greenwood is the sort of book you encounter only every several years, if you’re lucky.
Greenwood is the sort of book you encounter only every several years, if you’re lucky.
November 3, 2019
So, so good! So grand and layered, all the generations, their stories - it was so great! Clearly I don't read the same pages of the Giller judges because this should definitely have been on the shortlist, in my opinion. The winner of the prize really, if I were to choose.
It's going to feel strange not reading about the Greenwood family any longer.
It's going to feel strange not reading about the Greenwood family any longer.
July 11, 2021
When I finished reading “ Greenwood” I had sawdust in my nose, splinters in my hands and roots tangled around my feet.The imagery in this novel is so expressive that you can feel the wood as you turn the pages.Michael Christie weaves a wealth of thematic concepts into a twisting family saga that slithers into different time periods covering more than a century.
The chronicle begins in 2038 .The environment has been despoiled.Fungi and pestilence are attacking the world population.The ecosystem is in collapse.Money and food are scarce and people are dying of heretofore unimagined diseases.Canada, with its abundance of natural resources, has avoided some of this devastation.The Greenwood Arboreal Cathedral, located on an island off the coast of British Columbia, has retained its majestic Douglas Fir trees.People of means rush to the Cathedral, reminiscent of pilgrimages to Lourdes, hoping for spiritual regeneration and increased health.It has become a playground for the rich while most of the population is withering away.Jacinda “Jake” Greenwood is a guide at the Cathedral.Saddled with debt and an uncertain future, she encounters a former boyfriend who is a guest on the island.She learns that there are links in her lineage that may impact her future prospects.
The author employs this framework to unfold a search for identity, redemption and salvation.Sifting through timelines of 2008, 1974, 1934 and 1908, we encounter an array of people who have either direct or tangential connections to Jake’s lineage.The past has links to the forestry industry that are punctuated with desire, greed and missteps.Conveyed with prose that is spare yet elegant, the author constructs a polemic describing environmental disaster that is enclosed in a search for identity, fulfillment and family connections.
Throughout this saga, the search for family connections fuses with the development of forests, trees and their roots. We learn that wood is time captured, a cellular memory of our history.Gradually we realize that environmental roots and the moorings of family and identity are connected.By ignoring the welfare of either connection, we place our own well being at risk.
The chronicle begins in 2038 .The environment has been despoiled.Fungi and pestilence are attacking the world population.The ecosystem is in collapse.Money and food are scarce and people are dying of heretofore unimagined diseases.Canada, with its abundance of natural resources, has avoided some of this devastation.The Greenwood Arboreal Cathedral, located on an island off the coast of British Columbia, has retained its majestic Douglas Fir trees.People of means rush to the Cathedral, reminiscent of pilgrimages to Lourdes, hoping for spiritual regeneration and increased health.It has become a playground for the rich while most of the population is withering away.Jacinda “Jake” Greenwood is a guide at the Cathedral.Saddled with debt and an uncertain future, she encounters a former boyfriend who is a guest on the island.She learns that there are links in her lineage that may impact her future prospects.
The author employs this framework to unfold a search for identity, redemption and salvation.Sifting through timelines of 2008, 1974, 1934 and 1908, we encounter an array of people who have either direct or tangential connections to Jake’s lineage.The past has links to the forestry industry that are punctuated with desire, greed and missteps.Conveyed with prose that is spare yet elegant, the author constructs a polemic describing environmental disaster that is enclosed in a search for identity, fulfillment and family connections.
Throughout this saga, the search for family connections fuses with the development of forests, trees and their roots. We learn that wood is time captured, a cellular memory of our history.Gradually we realize that environmental roots and the moorings of family and identity are connected.By ignoring the welfare of either connection, we place our own well being at risk.
December 27, 2020
What if a family isn't a tree at all? What if it's more like a forest? A collection of individuals, pooling their resources by intertwined roots, sheltering each other from wind and weather and drought... what are families other than fictions? Stories told about a particular cluster of people for a particular reason. And like all stories, families are not born, they're invented. Pieced together from love and lies and nothing else
She’d always imagined the Greenwood family as a house built of secrets, layers upon layers of them, secrets encased in more secrets, and she’d long had the suspicion that to examine them too closely would be to pull the whole edifice down around her.
This book is an epic multi-generational family saga, telling the story of a family whose very existence is intimately connected at each turn with trees (from timber magnates to carpenters to illegal tree-sappers to anti-logging eco-activists to a forest scientist reluctantly working as a forest guide)
And the many epochal events in the book (a row over an inherited woodlot, a baby literally left hanging in a branch and stolen from there, a hidden lover’s rendezvous in a designer log cabin, a treacherous sale to the Japanese, a series of sabotage actions on loggers bulldozers, the cabin later being riddled with bullets, a live curtailing fall while working on a roof beam, a storm destroying a library, a much sought journal, a subterfuge felling of a diseased tree) are based in, on, around or about forests, trees, wood and paper.
And as the opening quotes of my review show (and I could have picked many more) it is also a book which explicitly acknowledge tree related metaphors for its basic themes and ideas.
And the book’s meta structure is very explicitly based on the inner section of a cut tree as shown in the book’s opening illustration which substitutes for a linear chapter listing
Even when a tree is at its most vital, only ten per cent of its tissue – the outermost rings, its sapwood – can be called alive. All the rings of inner heartwood are essentially dead, just lignin-reinforced cellulose built up year after year, stacked layer upon layer, through droughts and storms, everything that the tree has lived through preserved and storied in its own body. Every tree held up by its own history, the very bones of its ancestors. And since the journal came to her, Jake has gained a new awareness of how her own life is being held up by unseen layers, girded by lives that came before her own. And by a series of crimes and miracles, accidents and choices, sacrifices and mistakes ...
The book uses what I would call an inverse Cloud Atlas structure, a series of stories spaced over around 40 years intervals which are structured 2038, 2008, 1974, 1934, 1908, 1934, 1974, 2008, 2038.
The 2038 sections take place after the Withering – a climate change induced fungus has devastated the world’s trees (think a multi-species version of Dutch Elm disease or Ash dieback) and the resulting duststorms have devastated the world’s economy, led to a fatal rib-racker cough and exacerbated inequalities (which all sounds even more prescient now than when the book was published earlier in 2020). Jake (Jacinda) Greenwood is a forest guide in one of the few remaining forests – a Canadian island which is now a luxury eco-tourist resort. Other than this development the language and technology of 2038 feels rather too close to 2020 (albeit this does avoid the need for Atwood like invention of portmanteau words and also shows well how the future portrayed here is only a small step from our present world).
The 2008 sections are Jake’s estranged father Liam – an ex opioid addict now a much sought after designer of distressed wood installations to the rich (even post crash). An accident causes him to reflect on his panful past – both the daughter he abandoned and his difficult relationship with his eco-activist mother Willow, who gave away her family logging fortune to an eco-charity to pursue a life of protest. The reflections work well, and the way in which Jake’s own relationship fails due to his attempts to look to it for compensation from his mother’s deficiencies is very well done. The limited action however quite literally crawls along and seemed unnecessary to me.
The 1974 sections are Willow, around the time of Liam’s birth. Her blind, driven and distant timber-magnate father Harris asks her to pick up her Uncle Everett (his brother) from hospital after around a 40 year jail sentence for an unspecified crime involving a minor. These sections work well as a link.
The 1934 sections tell the tangled tale that lead to Everett’s imprisonment. To say much more would spoil the story as this is the real heart of the novel (with a brief 1908 section serving more as an origin story – albeit one which disappointingly repeats the idea of a mother lost in a train crash). These sections (which given the brevity of the 1908 part run almost back to back) are completely disproportionate to the rest of the book (well over half its length). I think your reaction to them will largely determine your overall views on the book. For me, I missed the author’s clever ability in the other sections to sketch a back story, capture an era and explore a character in only a few pages. Instead I found this section rather melodramatic and one which seemed to pile rather implausible events and relationships on each other (and rely on too many cliffhangers -and one tree hanger!) and above all to seemingly disregard the basics of infant survival.
For many others they will I think define the epic nature of the novel and the characters and actions here cleverly resurface and reverberate in the last part of the book as we revisit the 1974/2008 and particularly 2038 sections – the latter cleverly tying the novel together.
Finally an element of the book I liked was the complexity of its examination of history. The 1934, 1974 and 2008 sections all take place against economic disaster – and all with their own ecological disasters (the dust bowl, acid rain, the early recognition of climate change) – which puts the 2038 section, and our own predicament, into a longer term perspective – one that is simultaneously hopeful (we have been here before, we have found a way out) and depressing (each generation is convinced it will change the world before succumbing to intertia) and the novel I feel puts both ideas alongside each other.
Overall a book which I am glad I read – even if I would have preferred more and evenly spaced rings.
How Willow wondered, could anyone possibly believe in old-fashioned political change in an era like this? An era when the president of the United States is a lying ghoul, the rain melts your skin, the food is laced with poison, wars are eternal, and the world’s oldest beings are felled to make popsicle sticks. This whole sick system is in its death throws Harris. And in my opinion, those holding the levers of power ought to be the first to get dragged down with it.
“Oh, people said the same thing back in the thirties”, Harris said, waving his hand dismissively “and they’ll be saying the same in forty year from now, mark my words. Time goes in cycles. Everything comes back eventually. You learn that at my age”
May 17, 2021
This book! I sometimes struggle with family sagas – not because of length, but because the characters aren’t often fully developed enough for me to feel a connection (much of that, of course, is based on publishing industry limitations on book length. An author can’t devote 200 pages to each character when a book spans 130 years and seven characters).
But this book somehow managed not only to hold my attention, but also to plunge me into the hearts and minds of all of the characters – even the ones with fewer pages devoted to them. Oh how I loved Everett and Temple! And how I ached for Liam and grew to understand and love Willow. So. Well. Done.
To be honest, I approached this book with reservations, only because I so, so, so adored The Overstory. But let’s be clear: these are two very different books. Just because they both appear to be about trees doesn’t make them even remotely the same. I would say that anyone who did not appreciate The Overstory because of its heavy-handed literary/thematic messaging, would, indeed, like this one. Both books are amazingly written, and Greenwood is, also, undoubtedly literary (and thematic). The difference, I think, is that Christie’s novel emphasizes ‘story’ over ‘theme’ (or perhaps the themes are just much more quietly woven into the piece). In the end, while this is a tale abundant with trees, it is ultimately a book about family, what defines a family, the ways families love and hurt one another, the sacrifices they make, and what family means to us.
Even the structure of the book, which borrows its timeline from the rings of a tree, subtly reveals messages about roots, family history, how ancestral history is cumulative (in the same way tree rings build their own history to tell a story over time).
This passage that weaves trees and family together:
The old saying goes that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. But in Willow’s experience, the opposite is more likely true. An apple is nothing but a seed’s escape vehicle, just one of the ingenious ways they hitch rides – in the bellies of animals, or by taking to the wind – all to get as far away from their parents as they possibly can.
More drink-worthy samples:
But, more than the words, it’s the voice – a sweet, exalting instrument – that ensnares him. It’s a mere cousin to the man’s speaking voice, though an elevation of it. The clean tone of a stringed instrument – a cello, yes, that’s it – yet more expressive, sopping with life, his vowels and consonants fitting together as neat as a joined wooden box.
Falcons dogfight and turn high circles as the train passes over deep gorges upon steel trestles, and the cars arc before them, each one the nodule of a spine, a great iron dragon flying low over the land.
Little did those old fools know: green things are all that keeps the land and sky from trading places.
So, yes, drink this one up, readers (even if you’re not a tree hugger like me!)! It may be heftier in page count, but it will satisfy your thirst for incredibly well-written, cinematic, character-driven fiction.
But this book somehow managed not only to hold my attention, but also to plunge me into the hearts and minds of all of the characters – even the ones with fewer pages devoted to them. Oh how I loved Everett and Temple! And how I ached for Liam and grew to understand and love Willow. So. Well. Done.
To be honest, I approached this book with reservations, only because I so, so, so adored The Overstory. But let’s be clear: these are two very different books. Just because they both appear to be about trees doesn’t make them even remotely the same. I would say that anyone who did not appreciate The Overstory because of its heavy-handed literary/thematic messaging, would, indeed, like this one. Both books are amazingly written, and Greenwood is, also, undoubtedly literary (and thematic). The difference, I think, is that Christie’s novel emphasizes ‘story’ over ‘theme’ (or perhaps the themes are just much more quietly woven into the piece). In the end, while this is a tale abundant with trees, it is ultimately a book about family, what defines a family, the ways families love and hurt one another, the sacrifices they make, and what family means to us.
Even the structure of the book, which borrows its timeline from the rings of a tree, subtly reveals messages about roots, family history, how ancestral history is cumulative (in the same way tree rings build their own history to tell a story over time).
This passage that weaves trees and family together:
The old saying goes that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. But in Willow’s experience, the opposite is more likely true. An apple is nothing but a seed’s escape vehicle, just one of the ingenious ways they hitch rides – in the bellies of animals, or by taking to the wind – all to get as far away from their parents as they possibly can.
More drink-worthy samples:
But, more than the words, it’s the voice – a sweet, exalting instrument – that ensnares him. It’s a mere cousin to the man’s speaking voice, though an elevation of it. The clean tone of a stringed instrument – a cello, yes, that’s it – yet more expressive, sopping with life, his vowels and consonants fitting together as neat as a joined wooden box.
Falcons dogfight and turn high circles as the train passes over deep gorges upon steel trestles, and the cars arc before them, each one the nodule of a spine, a great iron dragon flying low over the land.
Little did those old fools know: green things are all that keeps the land and sky from trading places.
So, yes, drink this one up, readers (even if you’re not a tree hugger like me!)! It may be heftier in page count, but it will satisfy your thirst for incredibly well-written, cinematic, character-driven fiction.
July 15, 2019
Does for Western Canada what John Steinbeck’s East of Eden did for Salinas Valley, California. 1908 to 2038, multi generational saga of the Greenwood family. I read this slowly, savouring every scene and there were so many memorable ones. This novel is a perfect blend of setting, character and story.
And then there are the trees. The Greenwood family patriarch is a lumber baron, clear cutting trees with wild abandon. The following generations each have their own way of dealing with that family legacy. “...the greatest storehouse of natural materials the world has ever known....Harris pities the trees. Especially for the trusting way they declare themselves to the world with their grand upward reach. At least gold and oil have the common sense to hide.”
Best of 2019! Thank you Michael Christie for this masterfully written novel. Thank you to McClelland & Stewart for the ARC.
“Open -
Wood is time captured. A map. A cellular memory. A record. This is why, Liam believes, carpenters like himself will never go out of business. Because people always keep wood close. In our houses and on our floors, ceilings and walls; in our trusted canes and our finest musical instruments, in our heirloom tables and old rocking chairs; and most tellingly in the very capsules that ease our journey into the ground. When carpenters call a piece of wood clear, they mean it's free of knots and wanes and blemishes. And during his many years of fussing over wood, cutting it to exact lengths and lovingly fitting it together just right, all before buffing it to a soul-warming shine, Liam Greenwood has often thought that people like clear wood best because they need to see time stacked together. Years pressed against years, all orderly and clean. Free from obstruction or blemish. The way our own lives never are.”
And then there are the trees. The Greenwood family patriarch is a lumber baron, clear cutting trees with wild abandon. The following generations each have their own way of dealing with that family legacy. “...the greatest storehouse of natural materials the world has ever known....Harris pities the trees. Especially for the trusting way they declare themselves to the world with their grand upward reach. At least gold and oil have the common sense to hide.”
Best of 2019! Thank you Michael Christie for this masterfully written novel. Thank you to McClelland & Stewart for the ARC.
“Open -
Wood is time captured. A map. A cellular memory. A record. This is why, Liam believes, carpenters like himself will never go out of business. Because people always keep wood close. In our houses and on our floors, ceilings and walls; in our trusted canes and our finest musical instruments, in our heirloom tables and old rocking chairs; and most tellingly in the very capsules that ease our journey into the ground. When carpenters call a piece of wood clear, they mean it's free of knots and wanes and blemishes. And during his many years of fussing over wood, cutting it to exact lengths and lovingly fitting it together just right, all before buffing it to a soul-warming shine, Liam Greenwood has often thought that people like clear wood best because they need to see time stacked together. Years pressed against years, all orderly and clean. Free from obstruction or blemish. The way our own lives never are.”
February 1, 2022
As I was well into the thick of this sprawling novel, the word "Inheritance" popped into my mind. To me, the author kept posing questions about inheritance throughout the story. Some are:
*What kind of natural world do we want our children to inherit?
*What type of family ties can we give them?
*What values and personal qualities are important to pass on?
Greenwood is part of a growing literature called eco-fiction. The author imagines a near future where most of our trees are gone and the wealthy can plan a vacation trip to an arboreal resort on a remote island, just to experience being in a forest. Christie writes:
"They come for the trees. To smell their needles. To caress their bark. From the world's dust-choked cities, they venture... to be transformed, renewed and reconnected."
Christie gives us a chilling picture of how our once green world might be in 2038, before going backwards in time to 1908. Then the book tells the story of the Greenwood family through four generations. In the first generation, Harris Greenwood had started life as an orphan and became a rich and powerful owner of a logging corporation. At his direction, the company was responsible for deforesting huge domains of land. Harris' brother Everett becomes shell-shocked from fighting in the war and follows a very different path. Rather than spoil the story for other readers, I'll merely say that in each generation, adopted family becomes more important than genetic ties. Trees play a big role in their lives. Just as Harris views trees as business, some of his descendants will become passionate about conserving them.
I enjoyed the book and found it hard to put down.
Just as I was finishing the story, NYT reporter Nicholas Kristof posted this article about how loggers and an environmental lawyer found common ground. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/10/op...
4.5 stars
*What kind of natural world do we want our children to inherit?
*What type of family ties can we give them?
*What values and personal qualities are important to pass on?
Greenwood is part of a growing literature called eco-fiction. The author imagines a near future where most of our trees are gone and the wealthy can plan a vacation trip to an arboreal resort on a remote island, just to experience being in a forest. Christie writes:
"They come for the trees. To smell their needles. To caress their bark. From the world's dust-choked cities, they venture... to be transformed, renewed and reconnected."
Christie gives us a chilling picture of how our once green world might be in 2038, before going backwards in time to 1908. Then the book tells the story of the Greenwood family through four generations. In the first generation, Harris Greenwood had started life as an orphan and became a rich and powerful owner of a logging corporation. At his direction, the company was responsible for deforesting huge domains of land. Harris' brother Everett becomes shell-shocked from fighting in the war and follows a very different path. Rather than spoil the story for other readers, I'll merely say that in each generation, adopted family becomes more important than genetic ties. Trees play a big role in their lives. Just as Harris views trees as business, some of his descendants will become passionate about conserving them.
I enjoyed the book and found it hard to put down.
Just as I was finishing the story, NYT reporter Nicholas Kristof posted this article about how loggers and an environmental lawyer found common ground. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/10/op...
4.5 stars
December 20, 2021
C'è poco da fare, trovare le parole per descrivere i libri che più ci colpiscono è complesso, quasi impossibile.
In questo momento mi sembra che non esistano termini adatti a riassumere tutto ciò che questa lettura mi ha regalato.
Potrei dirvi che si tratta di un'appassionante saga multigenerazionale, di una storia intensa e brulicante di personaggi eccentrici a cui si impara a volere un bene dell'anima.
Potrei dirvi che è un romanzo che parla di appartenenza, di esseri umani che si prendono cura di altri esseri umani al meglio delle loro possibilità.
Potrei dirvi che al centro di tutto c'è la natura e che gli alberi sono tra i grandi protagonisti di questa storia.
Potrei dirvi che la prosa è emozionante come solo le cose più semplici e autentiche sanno esserlo.
Potrei dirvi che, per me, è bello da morire.
In questi casi però penso che sia sufficiente anche un semplice "leggetelo".
Senza se e senza ma.
In questo momento mi sembra che non esistano termini adatti a riassumere tutto ciò che questa lettura mi ha regalato.
Potrei dirvi che si tratta di un'appassionante saga multigenerazionale, di una storia intensa e brulicante di personaggi eccentrici a cui si impara a volere un bene dell'anima.
Potrei dirvi che è un romanzo che parla di appartenenza, di esseri umani che si prendono cura di altri esseri umani al meglio delle loro possibilità.
Potrei dirvi che al centro di tutto c'è la natura e che gli alberi sono tra i grandi protagonisti di questa storia.
Potrei dirvi che la prosa è emozionante come solo le cose più semplici e autentiche sanno esserlo.
Potrei dirvi che, per me, è bello da morire.
In questi casi però penso che sia sufficiente anche un semplice "leggetelo".
Senza se e senza ma.
November 5, 2019
I recieved this through giveaways. It was okay, it was told over 5 different time periods of which the 2030, 2008 and 1970s began and ended the book which for me where the worse parts they were preachy in tone and I didnt really care about the characters. The bulk of the novel was during the 1930s with a bit from early 1900s which I did enjoy, the plot was involved and things aside from whining actually happened lol. Plus this section focused on the only character I really ended up caring about, Everett.
December 4, 2020
QUICK TAKE: I think this is one of those books that has kinda flown under the radar, which is unfortunate, because GREENWOOD is a quiet masterpiece. For fans of multigenerational family stories (think THE MOST FUN WE EVER HAD, THE CORRECTIONS, ASK AGAIN YES), for fans of historical fiction (I swear I got Kristin Hannah THE GREAT ALONE vibes), for fans of fiction tackling climate change and ecology (THE OVERSTORY, AFTER THE FLOOD), and for fans of long, world-building books (this one clocks in at 501 pages), this book is for you. A family story spanning 100+ years centered in and around trees and the various industries that depend on them, the Greenwood family kept me captivated all weekend. The characters and world-building are rich and incredibly well-written, the narrative format is unique and lends itself to the story, and overall this was one of the best of the year for me.
May 27, 2022
Ein Lese Highlight ....intensiv, literarisch, spannend und emotional...!
Auf vier Zeitebenen spielend handelt dieser außergewöhnliche Roman von der Familiengeschichte der Greenwoods, ihrer Liebe zu Bäumen....und unser aller Verantwortung für unsere Umwelt.
In geschliffener Sprache entführt Michael Christie seine Leser/innen in die verwobene Welt einer kanadischen Familie und entwirft das Gesamtbild unserer Gesellschaft....und unseren verheerenden Umgang mit unserer Umwelt.
Ein tiefsinniger Roman, der mehr sein will, als bloß eine einfache Familiengeschichte....und für mich eines meiner Lieblingsbücher des Lesejahres 2022 geworden ist....!
Außergewöhnlich LESENSWERT!
Auf vier Zeitebenen spielend handelt dieser außergewöhnliche Roman von der Familiengeschichte der Greenwoods, ihrer Liebe zu Bäumen....und unser aller Verantwortung für unsere Umwelt.
In geschliffener Sprache entführt Michael Christie seine Leser/innen in die verwobene Welt einer kanadischen Familie und entwirft das Gesamtbild unserer Gesellschaft....und unseren verheerenden Umgang mit unserer Umwelt.
Ein tiefsinniger Roman, der mehr sein will, als bloß eine einfache Familiengeschichte....und für mich eines meiner Lieblingsbücher des Lesejahres 2022 geworden ist....!
Außergewöhnlich LESENSWERT!
March 26, 2023
I read this novel for Canada Reads 2023.
It is a multi-generational family saga covering four generations of the Greenwood family.
The story is unique by beginning in the future, gradually making it's way back to the past, and then back to the future again. The story involves climate change and the mindless destruction of trees.
A mixture of Eco-drama, dystopia and historical fiction.
It is a multi-generational family saga covering four generations of the Greenwood family.
The story is unique by beginning in the future, gradually making it's way back to the past, and then back to the future again. The story involves climate change and the mindless destruction of trees.
A mixture of Eco-drama, dystopia and historical fiction.
June 1, 2022
Andiamo per parole chiave: saga famigliare; un’isola al largo del Canada; alberi: alberi da proteggere, alberi decimati, alberi malati, alberi morti, alberi che lottano.
Si parte dal 2038, si retrocede al 2008, al 1974, al 1934, al 1908 per poi continuare col 1934, col 1974, col 2008 e col 2038. Una saga lunga cento anni.
Una cosa che non mi aspettavo quando ho iniziato questo libro è la devastazione che caratterizza il futuro, ambientato nel 2038. Non è una devastazione che vedo plausibile da qui a 15 anni, ma sicuramente la vedo plausibile, purtroppo. Fatto sta che è una piega della storia che mi ha stupita perché diventa quasi distopica, mentre io mi aspettavo una “semplice” saga famigliare.
Il discorso si basa molto sulle radici: le radici della propria famiglia, le radici degli alberi. Famiglia che è data non esclusivamente da legami di sangue, ma più dalle relazioni che si portano avanti. Alberi che sviluppano modi per sopravvivere al fuoco e al calore; alberi che quando sono più morti che vivi decidono di abbandonare la vita per permettere ad altri alberi di vivere.
E forse allora alla base di queste radici ci sono i sacrifici: sacrifici che ogni membro della famiglia fa per gli altri famigliari, sacrifici che ogni albero deve compiere per permettere la sopravvivenza di altri alberi.
E forse allora alla base di queste radici, di questi sacrifici c’è la lotta: si deve lottare per proteggere chi si ama, si deve lottare se si vuole che chi amiamo continui a vivere, sia esso essere umano o pianta.
Se c’è una cosa che mi ha delusa di questo libro è stato solo il finale: non c’è una conclusione. E non è un problema di finale aperto di per sé, anche perché un futuro incerto è più che comprensibile, tanto più in un mondo distrutto, ma è proprio per come è finito. Un po’ frettoloso, tanti dubbi non risolti, tante domande senza risposta. Un peccato.
Si parte dal 2038, si retrocede al 2008, al 1974, al 1934, al 1908 per poi continuare col 1934, col 1974, col 2008 e col 2038. Una saga lunga cento anni.
Una cosa che non mi aspettavo quando ho iniziato questo libro è la devastazione che caratterizza il futuro, ambientato nel 2038. Non è una devastazione che vedo plausibile da qui a 15 anni, ma sicuramente la vedo plausibile, purtroppo. Fatto sta che è una piega della storia che mi ha stupita perché diventa quasi distopica, mentre io mi aspettavo una “semplice” saga famigliare.
Il discorso si basa molto sulle radici: le radici della propria famiglia, le radici degli alberi. Famiglia che è data non esclusivamente da legami di sangue, ma più dalle relazioni che si portano avanti. Alberi che sviluppano modi per sopravvivere al fuoco e al calore; alberi che quando sono più morti che vivi decidono di abbandonare la vita per permettere ad altri alberi di vivere.
E forse allora alla base di queste radici ci sono i sacrifici: sacrifici che ogni membro della famiglia fa per gli altri famigliari, sacrifici che ogni albero deve compiere per permettere la sopravvivenza di altri alberi.
E forse allora alla base di queste radici, di questi sacrifici c’è la lotta: si deve lottare per proteggere chi si ama, si deve lottare se si vuole che chi amiamo continui a vivere, sia esso essere umano o pianta.
Se c’è una cosa che mi ha delusa di questo libro è stato solo il finale: non c’è una conclusione. E non è un problema di finale aperto di per sé, anche perché un futuro incerto è più che comprensibile, tanto più in un mondo distrutto, ma è proprio per come è finito. Un po’ frettoloso, tanti dubbi non risolti, tante domande senza risposta. Un peccato.
March 11, 2020
What a beautiful novel. This one stole my heart from the first couple chapters. Almost immediately in my head I was surrounded by trees under a lush canopy with a dappling of light and the scent of pines. I realize a book about families and forests wont be for everyone but it was an excellent fit for me.
I felt emotional attachments to the characters right away and could feel their raw emotions. This novel has a few main timelines, beginning in the future going back to the past then back again to the future. It includes beautifully unique characters and introductions to them. I found so much of this book to be unique and original and unlike anything else I have read. I loved the chapter titles and found myself going back to reference them when I completed a chapter to see how it tied in to what I had just read. I really adored it.
There were enough elements of surprise to keep things moving but primarily was a beautifully done multi-generational story about family. And not always biological family but chosen and acquired family also. The author was incredibly descriptive and made everything feel incredibly real.
I really loved the full circle this book made, how everything tied in just so. It just was one of those perfect fits for me book wise. I was dreading being done with it and didn’t want to leave it. Much of the forestry portions of this story resonated with me. I’m from a family tree myself that includes multiple generations of tree/nature lovers owning much property and studying much of nature and plants. I’m confident this one will remain on my list of favorites that I’ve read in 2020.
I felt emotional attachments to the characters right away and could feel their raw emotions. This novel has a few main timelines, beginning in the future going back to the past then back again to the future. It includes beautifully unique characters and introductions to them. I found so much of this book to be unique and original and unlike anything else I have read. I loved the chapter titles and found myself going back to reference them when I completed a chapter to see how it tied in to what I had just read. I really adored it.
There were enough elements of surprise to keep things moving but primarily was a beautifully done multi-generational story about family. And not always biological family but chosen and acquired family also. The author was incredibly descriptive and made everything feel incredibly real.
I really loved the full circle this book made, how everything tied in just so. It just was one of those perfect fits for me book wise. I was dreading being done with it and didn’t want to leave it. Much of the forestry portions of this story resonated with me. I’m from a family tree myself that includes multiple generations of tree/nature lovers owning much property and studying much of nature and plants. I’m confident this one will remain on my list of favorites that I’ve read in 2020.
December 8, 2023
Well, this was a surprise.
Told backwards, and then forwards, this is a family saga where the bloodlines are more complicated than most.
Woven between the decades, the trees grow strong, a life force of their own.
When I read the blurb, I really didn't think this would work, but it does beautifully.
As the people in a small village in Canada would say, it could have gone either way.
Four stars.
Told backwards, and then forwards, this is a family saga where the bloodlines are more complicated than most.
Woven between the decades, the trees grow strong, a life force of their own.
When I read the blurb, I really didn't think this would work, but it does beautifully.
As the people in a small village in Canada would say, it could have gone either way.
Four stars.
March 31, 2021
4,5 ⭐️
Meeslepend. Boeiend. Bijzonder mooi.
Mooie uitwerking van alle personages.
En wat een prachtige lay-out!
Meeslepend. Boeiend. Bijzonder mooi.
Mooie uitwerking van alle personages.
En wat een prachtige lay-out!
April 23, 2022
Es dauert sehr sehr lange, bis ein Baum in voller Stärke und Pracht groß gewachsen ist. Ein wenig dauerte es auch, bis ich in die Geschichte rein fand. Es war wie ein Samen, der gepflanzt wurde und natürlich Zeit braucht, um sich zu entfalten. Die Handlung nahm immer mehr Fahrt auf. Zwei von den Hauptcharakteren sind mir besonders nah gekommen. Everett und Harris …. zwei Brüder, die auf unterschiedliche Weise extrem starke Figuren waren und von dem Autor unheimlich gut gezeichnet wurden. Mit Jack tauchen wir immer tiefer in ihre Familiengeschichte ein und erfahren wie sie verwurzelt ist und wie das Leben ihrer Vorfahren ihr Eigenes bedingt hat. Eine Geschichte, die mich tief berührt hat. Ich hätte Jacks Geschichte noch sehr gerne weiter verfolgt.
April 30, 2021
Fantastic book! Highly recommend this one!
Will post my review after discussing the book with my reading buddies.
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