jillpadams 's review for:

Barkskins by Annie Proulx

3.0

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This book is as hard and moving as Overstory but longer and harder to endure. It’s about the timber industry and really about deforestation and Native disenfranchisement in Nova Scotia, Quebec, Maine, Boston, and eventually Michigan, and New Zealand, and the Pacific Northwest. As Proulx builds up the genealogical story over centuries, there are bleak chapters that read like Deuteronomy— A begat B begat C and terrible tree-related tragedies befell them all. In the midst of that, there’s an arc that’s largely depressing and educational about how we’ve absolutely consumed the natural resources around us since white folks laid hands on North America, and it’s incredible and disgusting and sad. And some folks persevered to try and conserve, and some just relentlessly kept making money. The American way. Don’t know if I’d really recommend it unless you’re ready to grieve forests for 700 pages.