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3.79 AVERAGE
3.79 AVERAGE
I can't do it. I have tried but this book is not for me.
I struggled to get into this book however the way the audio book was narrated caused me to give this a higher rating than i would have. I found this a hard book to connect with.
adventurous
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Truly epic. This is easily one of the best books I have ever read.
At its core, Barkskins is a meditation on the relationship between humans and nature; it is an exploration of environmentalism, capitalism, colonialism, and identity. Through the stories of Charles and Rene and their descendants over 300 years, Proulx shows how humans have transformed the natural world for their own purposes, with tragic results.
Despite its weighty themes, Barkskins is a beautiful novel in both form and content. Proulx writes such vivid descriptions of the natural (and unnatural) world and her characters are complex and nuanced, reflecting the complexity of the world around them.
I’m sure I will be reading this one again soon!
———
A few quotes that I liked:
“In every life there are events that reshape one’s sense of existence. Afterward, all is different and the past is dimmed” (p. 49).
“Americans have no sense of years beyond three—last year, this year, and next year” (p. 553).
“One must have faith in the power of a seed… We plant them knowing we will never see them when they are grown” (p. 583).
“Nothing in the natural world, no forest, no river, no insect nor leaf has any intrinsic value to men. All is worthless, utterly dispensable unless we discover some benefit to ourselves in it—even the most ardent forest lover thinks this way. Men behave as overlords. They decide what will flourish and what will die. I believe that humankind is evolving into a terrible new species and I am sorry that I am one of them” (p. 658).
At its core, Barkskins is a meditation on the relationship between humans and nature; it is an exploration of environmentalism, capitalism, colonialism, and identity. Through the stories of Charles and Rene and their descendants over 300 years, Proulx shows how humans have transformed the natural world for their own purposes, with tragic results.
Despite its weighty themes, Barkskins is a beautiful novel in both form and content. Proulx writes such vivid descriptions of the natural (and unnatural) world and her characters are complex and nuanced, reflecting the complexity of the world around them.
I’m sure I will be reading this one again soon!
———
A few quotes that I liked:
“In every life there are events that reshape one’s sense of existence. Afterward, all is different and the past is dimmed” (p. 49).
“Americans have no sense of years beyond three—last year, this year, and next year” (p. 553).
“One must have faith in the power of a seed… We plant them knowing we will never see them when they are grown” (p. 583).
“Nothing in the natural world, no forest, no river, no insect nor leaf has any intrinsic value to men. All is worthless, utterly dispensable unless we discover some benefit to ourselves in it—even the most ardent forest lover thinks this way. Men behave as overlords. They decide what will flourish and what will die. I believe that humankind is evolving into a terrible new species and I am sorry that I am one of them” (p. 658).
Barkskins tells the intertwined and intergenerational stories of the natives and immigrants of the North American territory once known as New France.
Because this novel takes place over more than 300 years, there are quite a few stories to tell; I found myself frequently consulting the two lengthy family trees in the appendix to keep track of the many characters that come and go.
But the primary (and most tragic) character of this novel is one with no dialogue at all.
As Annie Proulx noted in a recent interview with The New Yorker:
For me, the chief character in the long story was the forest, the great now-lost forest(s) of the world. The characters, as interesting as they were to develop, were there to carry the story of how we have cut and destroyed the wooden world. There was the real tragedy, and there was no way to make it seriocomic. But rather than calling it an environmental novel I think of it more in the sense of a writerly nod to human interplay with climate change, what some in the humanities and arts are beginning to think of as a cultural response to the environmental changes we have inherited in the so-called Anthropocene.
For early European settlers, the trees were a gold rush with no end. The patriarch of one family tree, Charles Duquet, devotes his life to harvesting as much of this gold as he can. And in a pivotal scene he sheds light on the rage that fueled his rise from poverty to timber baron:
Inside Duquet something like a tightly close pinecone licked by fire opened abruptly and he exploded with insensate and uncontrolled fury, a life’s pent-up rage. “No one helped me!” he shrieked. “I did everything myself! I endured! I contended with powerful men. I suffered in the wilderness. I accepted the risk I might die! No one helped me!”
Ultimately, there would be too many Duquets arriving in search of unlimited trees and land; natives suffered this violent and slow-moving disaster firsthand. As a Mi’kmaw elder observed:
“We are sharing our land with the Wenuj and they take more and more. You see how their beasts destroy our food, how their boats and nets take our fish. They bring plants that vanquish our plants. Most do not mean to hurt us, but they are many and we are few. I believe they will become as a great wave sweeping over us.”
Proulx, like Cormac Mcarthy, has a dark sense of humor that expresses itself through the bizarre and unpredictable ways many of the characters meet their demise. I sometimes felt like I was watching Game of Thrones in the sense that just as I become attached to a character he or she would be quickly expired.
In a work of this scale, it’s not surprising that some characters and scenes feel rush or underdeveloped. Proulx was forced to cut a good 150 pages out of the book, which could be a reason why some chapters feel this way. I would have gladly read another 200 pages.
I’m in awe of how Proulx balanced documentary like detail with a plot that takes readers not only across time but halfway around the world. It’s easy to attach “epic” to any novel that weighs in at more than 700 pages, but when I say this novel is epic, I’m talking about what Proulx set out to accomplish, and ultimately did accomplish. Where Sometimes a Great Notion is a testament to the forests along the coast range of Oregon, Barkskins is a testament to all forests.
Despite the overarching sadness of seeing so much beauty and innocence wiped away, there is hope. And it is the young who offer it up. Like the son of a compromised logger, Charley, who asks one day:
“Father, how do you feel about this logging enterprise? Better and better?”
“I give it my support, as we start replanting a year after they get out the cut. It is a balanced process.”
“I can’t image what you think will replace two-thousand-yer-old redwoods–Scotch pine seedlings? And what of the diversity of the soil? Erosion? All those qualities you once cared about? Are you cutting old-growth fir and cedar and planting pine? You mentioned Oregon and Washington.”
Living near the redwoods, where only 5% of these majestic trees remain from a forest that once stretched a thousand miles along the Pacific coast, we came all too close to losing it all.
Proulx dedicates this novel to “barkskins of all kinds” which includes not only those who fell trees for profit, but those who study them and those (we meet near the end of the novel) who devote their lives to protecting the trees we have left.
With each chapter, each passing generation, this book gains a presence that you don’t fully appreciate until you are near the end. At least I didn’t. As I approached the end, chronologically the present, I felt the weight of all that was lost. But I also felt a growing sense of optimism for what people are doing today to save what is still here and to regrow what is lost.
NOTE: This review first appeared on http://www.ecolitbooks.com
Because this novel takes place over more than 300 years, there are quite a few stories to tell; I found myself frequently consulting the two lengthy family trees in the appendix to keep track of the many characters that come and go.
But the primary (and most tragic) character of this novel is one with no dialogue at all.
As Annie Proulx noted in a recent interview with The New Yorker:
For me, the chief character in the long story was the forest, the great now-lost forest(s) of the world. The characters, as interesting as they were to develop, were there to carry the story of how we have cut and destroyed the wooden world. There was the real tragedy, and there was no way to make it seriocomic. But rather than calling it an environmental novel I think of it more in the sense of a writerly nod to human interplay with climate change, what some in the humanities and arts are beginning to think of as a cultural response to the environmental changes we have inherited in the so-called Anthropocene.
For early European settlers, the trees were a gold rush with no end. The patriarch of one family tree, Charles Duquet, devotes his life to harvesting as much of this gold as he can. And in a pivotal scene he sheds light on the rage that fueled his rise from poverty to timber baron:
Inside Duquet something like a tightly close pinecone licked by fire opened abruptly and he exploded with insensate and uncontrolled fury, a life’s pent-up rage. “No one helped me!” he shrieked. “I did everything myself! I endured! I contended with powerful men. I suffered in the wilderness. I accepted the risk I might die! No one helped me!”
Ultimately, there would be too many Duquets arriving in search of unlimited trees and land; natives suffered this violent and slow-moving disaster firsthand. As a Mi’kmaw elder observed:
“We are sharing our land with the Wenuj and they take more and more. You see how their beasts destroy our food, how their boats and nets take our fish. They bring plants that vanquish our plants. Most do not mean to hurt us, but they are many and we are few. I believe they will become as a great wave sweeping over us.”
Proulx, like Cormac Mcarthy, has a dark sense of humor that expresses itself through the bizarre and unpredictable ways many of the characters meet their demise. I sometimes felt like I was watching Game of Thrones in the sense that just as I become attached to a character he or she would be quickly expired.
In a work of this scale, it’s not surprising that some characters and scenes feel rush or underdeveloped. Proulx was forced to cut a good 150 pages out of the book, which could be a reason why some chapters feel this way. I would have gladly read another 200 pages.
I’m in awe of how Proulx balanced documentary like detail with a plot that takes readers not only across time but halfway around the world. It’s easy to attach “epic” to any novel that weighs in at more than 700 pages, but when I say this novel is epic, I’m talking about what Proulx set out to accomplish, and ultimately did accomplish. Where Sometimes a Great Notion is a testament to the forests along the coast range of Oregon, Barkskins is a testament to all forests.
Despite the overarching sadness of seeing so much beauty and innocence wiped away, there is hope. And it is the young who offer it up. Like the son of a compromised logger, Charley, who asks one day:
“Father, how do you feel about this logging enterprise? Better and better?”
“I give it my support, as we start replanting a year after they get out the cut. It is a balanced process.”
“I can’t image what you think will replace two-thousand-yer-old redwoods–Scotch pine seedlings? And what of the diversity of the soil? Erosion? All those qualities you once cared about? Are you cutting old-growth fir and cedar and planting pine? You mentioned Oregon and Washington.”
Living near the redwoods, where only 5% of these majestic trees remain from a forest that once stretched a thousand miles along the Pacific coast, we came all too close to losing it all.
Proulx dedicates this novel to “barkskins of all kinds” which includes not only those who fell trees for profit, but those who study them and those (we meet near the end of the novel) who devote their lives to protecting the trees we have left.
With each chapter, each passing generation, this book gains a presence that you don’t fully appreciate until you are near the end. At least I didn’t. As I approached the end, chronologically the present, I felt the weight of all that was lost. But I also felt a growing sense of optimism for what people are doing today to save what is still here and to regrow what is lost.
NOTE: This review first appeared on http://www.ecolitbooks.com
challenging
dark
informative
sad
slow-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
Great book. I've read some reviews quibbling about the Native American patois (sounds like Tonto talking to the Loan Ranger), the lack of character development (there are quite a few characters and over 95,000 days, give her a break), and how, once she gets to the 21st Century, it seems like she is in a hurry to finish (yeah, but I think the idea is, by then, irreparable harm has been done and our protagonists are not going to make the kind of impact made by the proceeding generations).
A bit heavy-handed towards the end, but a remarkable book documenting the systematic destruction of North American forests. I enjoyed the multi-generational aspect of the book tracing 2 lineages throughout history and how they're tied to the forests. Some characters were introduced and killed off on the same page. Others lasted many chapters. It was interesting to go back and forth between the two great families. A great read!
adventurous
challenging
dark
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
informative
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated