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3.79 AVERAGE
3.79 AVERAGE
Proulx gives the Michener treatment to the lumber industry in New France and colonial US. Some of the sections really sing but it is somewhat uneven. Overall a beautiful book.
Entertaining and thought provoking. A narrow but deep slice of development in the new world. Issues such as privilege, social justice and unfettered capitalism are woven into the lives of two families with powerful effect. It is only February, but this could be the best book I read in 2017.
adventurous
reflective
slow-paced
“Take what we can get as soon as we can get it is what I say. I am not interested in fifty years hence as there is no need for concern. The forests are infinite and permanent."
Of course, we readers know today that that's entirely untrue and that what we do does actually matter on this earth. Everything is finite when it's a commodity. So it's all the more heartbreaking to follow 300+ years of the colonization of North America and the development of the timber trade. We follow two poor Frenchmen who arrive in America together and quickly go their separate ways. Charles Duquet, who's obsessed with earning the riches he believes he deserves to show he's better than others, and René Sel, who marries a Mi'kmaw woman and lives closer to the land. Their descendants weave around each other, leading us through history.
This is a book with not one but two family trees for reference, and I found it more pleasant to just be taken along for the ride in each time period rather than try to remember the exact relations of who was who. Then I could be swept up in the sense of place and action and noise in Proulx's prose. For all the terrible ways the North American land and people have been treated, she does end on a hopeful note that minds can wake up from the veil of blind consumption and the pendulum may one day swing back towards respect and reverence of the life all around us.
Of course, we readers know today that that's entirely untrue and that what we do does actually matter on this earth. Everything is finite when it's a commodity. So it's all the more heartbreaking to follow 300+ years of the colonization of North America and the development of the timber trade. We follow two poor Frenchmen who arrive in America together and quickly go their separate ways. Charles Duquet, who's obsessed with earning the riches he believes he deserves to show he's better than others, and René Sel, who marries a Mi'kmaw woman and lives closer to the land. Their descendants weave around each other, leading us through history.
This is a book with not one but two family trees for reference, and I found it more pleasant to just be taken along for the ride in each time period rather than try to remember the exact relations of who was who. Then I could be swept up in the sense of place and action and noise in Proulx's prose. For all the terrible ways the North American land and people have been treated, she does end on a hopeful note that minds can wake up from the veil of blind consumption and the pendulum may one day swing back towards respect and reverence of the life all around us.
Ambitious history of the timber industry. So many characters that I just gave up (even with the help of the geneaology chart in the back of the book). Wish there had been a map.
I was with her for the first half of the book but James and Lavinia went on far too long to the neglect of the Sels and then the remainder of the book felt phoned in. I really felt cheated to go from having a decade covered at a time to having a whole century covered in the same span of pages. I realize the book truly would have become unwieldy if Proulx had given the same attention to all the descendents but the unevenness was jarring, especially in that it came at the end (lazy?) and that it largely came at the expense of the Mi'kmaq characters.
Excellent book in all ways. Great fan of Proulx's but this was a surprise in many ways. Long book but always riveting - and great subject matter - indigenous peoples of North America and our decimation of our natural habitat. Does not proselytise or preach but the case against man's decimation of the world's and particularly North America's woodlands is devastating. Told through the medium of the lives of two families and their descendants, it is really gripping. I live her crisp no-nonsense style of writing although it is tempered here by more description and background than usual.
Favourite book of the last couple of years.
Favourite book of the last couple of years.
4.5 stars. Impressive undertaking. Proulx tells the story of North American forests and their destruction by following the timelines of two indentured servants and their descendants over the centuries. One man escapes servitude and builds a logging empire. The other marries into the native population and encounters the effects of logging very differently. Over the course of time they will share a common relative whose interest is in reseeding the forests and attempting to return the land to what it once was. I thought the author did an admirable job putting each descendent into the context of his/her time. Interesting to see how the attitudes shifted over the centuries right up the current times.
Moments of brilliance and fluidity, surrounded by quite a bit of meandering. I felt let down tremendously by the ending. But overall, an epic, aweinspiring work of a lifetime.
So long!! Very sad and interesting.