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3.79 AVERAGE
3.79 AVERAGE
I wanted to give this book 5 stars, just for the sheer accomplishment of covering 300 years of American and Canadian history, focused on the destruction of forests and the Mi’kmaw people. Geographically, while mostly centered on New England and the mid-west, it stretches out to New Zealand and to the Pacific shores of the U.S. The problem is that to cover this much ground in 700 pages, you really have to move quickly. So, before you get to know a character, they’ve died (usually horribly, but maybe that’s just the time period). There’s just too little detail to understand the people and the times. Still the genocide perpetrated on the Mi’kmaw is so heartbreaking I almost stopped reading 1/3 the way in. The destruction of the forests isn't much easier to read.
This book reminded me a lot of Beverly Swerling’s Old New York series in scope, but that series runs to something like 2,000 pages in 4 volumes and covers fewer centuries.
As you can imagine, there are hundreds of characters in this book. My strategy was to keep notes as to the family tree (there are two central families), not an easy thing to do, and a bit distracting. Imagine my thoughts when I got to the end of the book only to find a family tree included, after the acknowledgements! Publishers! If you include maps and family trees (which are helpful), do so at the beginning of the book!
This book reminded me a lot of Beverly Swerling’s Old New York series in scope, but that series runs to something like 2,000 pages in 4 volumes and covers fewer centuries.
As you can imagine, there are hundreds of characters in this book. My strategy was to keep notes as to the family tree (there are two central families), not an easy thing to do, and a bit distracting. Imagine my thoughts when I got to the end of the book only to find a family tree included, after the acknowledgements! Publishers! If you include maps and family trees (which are helpful), do so at the beginning of the book!
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
As much as I don't want to admit it, this book lost the sense of story about halfway through, and became a treatise on boardroom decisions that ruin the environment and oppress the native. If I weren't so neurotic, I would have quit and when I finished I felt it would have been fine to do so. And yet. . .
And yet I can't quit thinking about it, and everywhere I look I see trees, and I want to plant them, and I want us to figure out how to save the environment and I want - well I think the book did what its author intended.
And yet I can't quit thinking about it, and everywhere I look I see trees, and I want to plant them, and I want us to figure out how to save the environment and I want - well I think the book did what its author intended.
Since I couldn't finish, I don't feel I can review with any real authority. The beginning was ok, I just kept falling asleep after reading a page or 2 (because I read at bedtime, not because the book is boring 😁). I have a bit of a commute and thought I would try it on audiobook and be able to really plow through it that way. But the horrid fake French accents were distracting, the names were many and foreign, making them hard to remember since they all sounded like someone in various stages of coughing up phlegm. Again, not the authors fault. So I think my head just wasn't in this one for now. Might try again later.
Indeed a sweeping history of America and the fortunes and misfortunes that persist across generations, but something about the narrative still felt lacking to me. I liked the focal perspective of trees and I got a lot out of this, and yet... hard to put my finger on it in hindsight.
Wonderful book about the making of northern America, the role of capitalism in what the continent is now and creating environmental problems. A warning for the way we handle Earth, told in the whereabouts of two familie lines.
This was really excellent. It's a very sweeping novel, centered mainly around the European settlement and "development" of the New England/Maritime area, although the action does spread. I really enjoyed reading about places that are somewhat familiar to me from my time in Nova Scotia. At the same time though, I found the book incredibly difficult to read at times. One of the families runs a lumber business, and with the benefit of knowing the future, it's very obvious they're rushing headlong into environmental destruction. The overall message of the book is discouraging I think, although there is a note of optimism at the end. There are people trying to fix the problems, but I wonder if it's going to be possible.
A work with a wide temporal range - from the 17th century to the present day - which tells the parallel stories of the descendants of two French migrants, indentured servants put to work in the woods of what is now Canada. Endless forests of ancient and marvellous trees, of which there is no end in sight and which seem eternal, but which in the space of a few decades disappear due to the greed and ignorance of the new arrivals, who at the same time also destroy the local inhabitants, the Native Americans, again due to greed, ignorance and incomprehension. An epic and truly beautiful book, which does not tire despite being extremely long, and of which one wishes for a sequel, bringing hope for a necessary understanding of the damage caused by humans and their future repair.
adventurous
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I started this book in 2016 and after a few hundred pages, got bored and stopped reading. Recently I tried to pick it up again and despite reading a few hundred more pages, decided to quit this book forever. It's too long. Too much time spent reading a bad book. The author has done a poor job of making the characters feel real or relatable. There is no emotional attachment to any of them, which is just as well since the characters come and go so quickly. Too much content, not enough quality.