Michael Christie

A dazzling, immersive generational saga that charts a family's rise and fall, its secrets and inherited crimes, and conflicted relationship with the source of its fortune--trees--from one of Canada's most acclaimed novelists. 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.

Greenwood

A U.S. debut by the award-winning author of The Beggar's Garden follows the experiences of young Will, who is closeted in his home by a fiercely agoraphobic mother and who ventures out and makes a new friend with whom he searches for a missing boy.

A Novel

If I Fall, If I Die

Longlisted for the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize Brilliantly sure-footed, strikingly original, tender and funny, this collection of nine linked stories follows a diverse group of curiously interrelated characters--from bank manager to crackhead to retired Samaritan to web designer to car thief--as they drift through each others' lives in Vancouver's notorious Downtown Eastside. These engrossing stories, gleefully free of moral judgment, are about people who are searching in the jagged margins of life -- for homes, drugs, love, forgiveness. Ranging from the tragically funny opening story "Emergency Contact" to the audacious, crack-fuelled rush of "Goodbye Porkpie Hat" to the deranged and thrilling extreme of "King Me," The Beggar's Garden is a powerful and affecting debut, written with an exceptional eye and ear and heart.

Stories

The Beggar's Garden

Das Flüstern der Bäume

WINNER OF THE ARTHUR ELLIS AWARD LONGLISTED FOR THE 2019 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE A CBC BOOKS "BEST CANADIAN FICTION" TITLE OF THE YEAR NATIONAL BESTSELLER From the award-winning author of If I Fall, If I Die comes a propulsive, multigenerational family story, in which the unexpected legacies of a remote island off the coast of British Columbia will link the fates of five people over a hundred years. Cloud Atlas meets The Overstory in this ingenious nested-ring epic set against the devastation of the natural world. They come for the trees. It's 2038 and Jacinda (Jake) Greenwood is a storyteller and a liar, an overqualified tour guide babysitting ultra-rich-eco-tourists in one of the world's last remaining forests. It's 2008 and Liam Greenwood is a carpenter, sprawled on his back after a workplace fall and facing the possibility of his own death. It's 1974 and Willow Greenwood is just out of jail for one of her environmental protests: attempts at atonement for the sins of her father's once vast and rapacious timber empire. It's 1934 and Everett Greenwood is a Depression-era drifter who saves an abandoned infant, only to find himself tangled up in the web of a crime, secrets, and betrayal that will cling to his family for decades. And throughout, there are trees: a steady, silent pulse thrumming beneath Christie's effortless sentences, working as a guiding metaphor for withering, weathering, and survival. Transporting, beautifully written, and brilliantly structured like the nested growth rings of a tree, Greenwood reveals the knot of lies, omissions, and half-truths that exists at the root of every family's origin story. It is a magnificent novel of greed, sacrifice, love, and the ties that bind--and the hopeful, impossible task of growing toward the light.

Roman

I Greenwood

Olive, an orphan reindeer who lives at the North Pole, enjoys helping get the presents ready for Christmas Eve but dreams of joining the team of deer pulling Santa's sleigh on the Big Trip.

Olive, the Orphan Reindeer

Een bosrijk eiland, ontsnapt aan de verwoestende houtkap, speelt een belangrijke rol in het leven van de ouders en de grootouders van een vrouw die 2038 gids is op dat eiland.

« Le temps ne va pas dans une direction donnée. Il s'accumule, c'est tout – dans le corps, dans le monde –, comme le bois. Couche après couche. Claire, puis sombre. Chacune reposant sur la précédente, impossible sans celle d'avant. Chaque triomphe, chaque désastre inscrit pour toujours dans sa structure. » D’un futur proche aux années 1930, Michael Christie bâtit, à la manière d’un architecte, la généalogie d’une famille au destin assombri par les secrets et intimement lié à celui des forêts. 20382038. Les vagues épidémiques du Grand Dépérissement ont décimé tous les arbres et transformé la planète en désert de poussière. L’un des derniers refuges est une île boisée au large de la Colombie-Britannique, qui accueille des touristes fortunés venus admirer l’ultime forêt primaire. Jacinda y travaille comme de guide, sans véritable espoir d’un avenir meilleur. Jusqu’au jour où un ami lui apprend qu’elle serait la descendante de Harris Greenwood, un magnat du bois à la réputation sulfureuse. Commence alors un récit foisonnant et protéiforme dont les ramifications insoupçonnées font écho aux événements, aux drames et aux bouleversements qui ont façonné notre monde. Que nous restera-t-il lorsque le dernier arbre aura été abattu ? Fresque familiale, roman social et écologique, ce livre aussi impressionnant qu’original fait de son auteur l’un des écrivains canadiens les plus talentueux de sa génération.

Lorsque le dernier arbre

Longlisted for the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize Critically lauded, The Beggar’s Garden is a brilliantly surefooted, strikingly original collection of nine linked short stories that will delight as well as disturb. The stories follow a diverse group of curiously interrelated characters, from bank manager to crackhead to retired Samaritan to web designer to car thief, as they drift through each other’s lives in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. These engrossing stories, free of moral judgment, are about people who are searching in the jagged margins of life—for homes, drugs, love, forgiveness—and collectively they offer a generous and vivid portrait of humanity, not just in Vancouver but in any modern urban centre. The Beggar’s Garden is a powerful and affecting debut. Its individual stories have been anthologized in The Journey Prize Stories and have been nominated for major awards, including a National Magazine Award for fiction. The collection has been longlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award.

Beggar's Garden

From the critically acclaimed short-story collection The Beggar’s Garden, “The Extra” features a young, mentally disabled man and his best friend, Rick, who find work as extras on a film set. This story was nominated for a Journey Prize. The Beggar’s Garden follows a diverse group of characters, from a bank manager to a drug addict to a retired Samaritan, a web designer, and a car thief, as they drift through each other’s lives in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Michael Christie’s darkly funny debut collection won the Vancouver Book Award; it was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and was a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. HarperCollins brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperCollins short-stories collection to build your digital library.

Short Story

The Extra

From the critically-acclaimed The Beggar’s Garden, “Emergency Contact” is the darkly comic tale of an emotionally isolated woman searching for human contact and love. The Beggar’s Garden follows a diverse group of characters, from a bank manager to a drug addict to a retired Samaritan, a web designer, and a car thief, as they drift through each other’s lives in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Michael Christie’s debut collection, it won the Vancouver Book Award, was longlisted for the Giller Prize, and was a finalist for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. HarperCollins brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperCollins short-stories collection to build your digital library.

Michael Christie

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