MICHAEL. CHRISTIE

GREENWOOD.

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

I liked it enough. worried it’ll be one a quickly forget about. love the love of a douglas fir here. & i think the story was melancholy and precious. though gives me the feeling of succumbing to climate destruction. the best parts were the misses and near misses of important information between people and generations.

mara henderson

i haven’t stopped thinking about this book since i finished it. so many pov’s that mesh into one, making you appreciate the storytelling so much more. 

jil ★彡

A magnificent generational saga that charts a family’s rise and fall, its secrets and inherited crimes, from one of Canada’s most acclaimed novelists Longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize • “A rugged, riveting novel . . . This superb family saga will satisfy fans of Richard Powers’s The Overstory.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) “There are plenty of visionary moments laced into [Christie’s] shape-shifting narrative. . . . Greenwood penetrates to the core of things.”—The New York Times Book Review It’s 2038 and Jacinda (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, sprawled on his back after a workplace fall, 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, 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. 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.

A Novel

Rochelle Butcher

“What if a family isn't a tree at all? What if it's more like a forest? A collection of individuals, pooling their resources by intertwined roots, sheltering each other from wind and weather and drought... what are families other than fictions? Stories told about a particular cluster of people for a particular reason. And like all stories, families are not born, they're invented. Pieced together from love and lies and nothing else.”

Greenwood by Michael Christie

This is a masterfully crafted and deeply moving novel. A multi generational saga that introduces us to characters spanning from the 1930’s to a not so far away dystopian future. It has well developed characters, beautiful imagery, and historical context. I found it moving and memorable. 5/5

An exquisite story of the interconnectedness of family, birth and chosen, and the world around us. The story is told like the rings of a tree, and the trees underpin the story. I loved this book.

Cheri McElroy

altlovesbooks

"How intimately a book is related to the tree and its rings, she thinks. The layers of time, preserved for all to examine."

Ogres, onions, and cakes all have layers, so I hear. What you see on the outside (or on the top, I guess, in the case of cakes) isn't necessarily what you get all the way through. This book, too, is built in layers, which makes a satisfying whole when you've cut all the way through, but might leave you wondering where things are headed in the middle. I really enjoyed this book, but I can't really point to why, except that the layers were very satisfying, when taken as one big bite. 

This is a story about a family, told across generations. Starting (and ending) in 2038 with Jake's experience on an island of trees, one of the very few left in existence. Tourists come to gawk at her trees from a world where dust storms choke everything and everyone. A diary is presented to her, purportedly written by her grandmother, and we're off, flying backwards through the years to 1974 and Jake's mother, back to 1934 and Jake's grandmother, and back even further to 1908 and Jake's more distant relations. A story starts unfolding here, taking us slowly back upwards through the years, nurturing this family tree from its roots all the way back to the branch where Jake herself resides. This family of problems, of dysfunction, of capitalism and activism, all comes together to tell the story of Jake, where the book finally ends.

If slow burn multigenerational epics aren't your thing, there isn't a lot here for you. While the story of a future Earth where trees are a novelty and ecotourism is all the rage is mildly interesting, it's not told well here, and I found myself getting bored with Jake's viewpoints in the beginning and at the very end where she bookends the actual story being told. While interested in the story, I also found myself wondering where things were headed in the middle as well, particularly as the story is first building steam and going backwards through the years rather than forwards. The story is a complex one, and it wasn't until the points were driven home several times that I finally understood the role a particular name or family member played in the larger whole. But the writing.... it was phenomenal. Descriptive, lyrical, and beautiful, it really made the entire book for me. Even though this wasn't a full five stars for me (mostly because of the aforementioned Jake's viewpoints), it still lands solidly on my list of favorites for this year.

Jeannette Ordas

This big ol' book took me a long time to read, but after a couple of chapters where I wasn't sure if I was in or I was out, the epic story just sucked me right in until the end. A family story that spans generations and where questions resolve themselves along the way in bits and bites. It's a satisfying tale. The only bits that didn't leave me fully engaged were the "future" bits at the beginning that deal with the earth in a frightening eco-collapse where the world turns to dust and the only trees left are on an island in the PNW where the rich pay money to visit. Regardless, a very good read to round up a bummer year.

Loved. A big, multi-generational saga that reads part historical fiction/part speculative-eco fiction. This book deals with the climate crisis but did not leave me hopeless. 

Sarah Erle

Kaitlin Haddock

greenwood is a multigenerational family saga that takes you on a journey through the greenwood family and how their name affects generations past and present.

SPOILER-FREE REVIEW:

beautiful writing. beautiful character development. beautiful storyline. beautiful connections throughout. i have no words to describe how much i adore and recommend this book.

michael christie has this ability to lure you in with his characters, which are all flawed. never in my life have i read a book where i was enthralled by every little detail, character, and inanimate object. although the pace is slowwww, it literally gets SO GOOD. not once did i want to put this book down and start another one.

this is a story that follows the greenwood family. the good and bad. the successes and mistakes. love and loss. the adventures they partake in and the secrets they keep to themselves. the reader is thrust into past and present as the mystery of the greenwood name unravels. they are flawed individuals finding refuge in the trees — which creates a connection between each of them without their knowledge.

it’s interesting to point out that each decision made has had an effect on future generations. this ultimately haunts them, but also makes them who they are. in the end, greenwood isn’t just about trees or destruction or economic suffering or some random family. it’s about sacrifice, selfishness, generosity, love, resilience, growth, and the unknown. no matter where we come from or who we are, we all have a story we may not fully understand the depth of.

i NEVER cry or laugh or react to books. but damn… this had me laughing, getting mad, and blubbering like a little baby. please give it a chance and buy this or add it to your tbr. it got me out of my reading slump. and that says a lot.

——

(originally reviewed on instagram!)

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 is 2038. As the rest of humanity struggles through the environmental collapse known as the Great Withering, scientist Jake Greenwood is working as an overqualified tour guide on Greenwood Island, a remote oasis of thousand-year-old trees. Jake had thought the island's connection to her family name just a coincidence, until someone from her past reappears with a book that might give her the family history she's long craved. From here, we gradually move backwards in time to the years before the First World War, encountering along the way the men and women who came before Jake: an injured carpenter facing the possibility of his own death, an eco-warrior trying to atone for the sins of her father's rapacious timber empire, a blind tycoon with a secret he will pay a terrible price to protect, and a Depression-era drifter who saves an abandoned infant from certain death, only to find himself the subject of a country-wide manhunt. At the very centre of the book is a tragedy that will bind the fates of two boys together, setting in motion events whose reverberations we see unfold over generations, as the novel moves forward into the future once more. A magnificent novel of inheritance, sacrifice, nature, and love that takes its structure from the nested growth rings of a tree, Greenwood spans generations to tell the story of a family living and dying in the shadows cast by its own secrets. With this breathtaking feat of storytelling, Michael Christie masterfully reveals the tangled knot of lies, omissions, and half-truths that exists at the root of every family's origin story.

Fraser Simons

https://medium.com/@frasersimons/gree...

“Take heart, she seems to say. The world has been on the brink of ending before. The dust has always been waiting to swallow us. People have always struggled and suffered. Your poverty is not shameful. It is not a failure of your character. Life, by its very nature, is precarious. And your struggles are never for nothing.”

In the year 2034 and only a few forests remain on earth. A blight called The Withering has already swept the world, annihilated whole eco-systems, and left families destitute. Conditions that are evocative of, and seem to parallel the experiences of people who lived through the Dust Bowl.

Canada, however, is one of only a handful of places that have some protection and seems to have become the most desirable place in much of the world— but it is only a matter of time before it too succumbs to The Withering.

Jake has amassed a hefty amount of student debt in her education as a dendrologist, and had planned on spending her life researching her passion: trees. But after The Withering the only job she can find is as a tour guide for the superrich on an isolated island in Canada, a job she is massively overqualified for but has no choice but to take.

“A person seldom knows they’re starved for something until they get a taste of it.”

Her life, it seems, has become a performance for the rich in order to survive.

But life takes a turn for Jake when an old flame comes to the island with a wild claim: she may be the descendent of the Canadian industrialist whose company owns this very sanctuary. If true, it would change her life. No more debt. No more tours. She could dedicate her life to combatting The Withering as she’d hoped. As proof of the claim, her ex gives her an old journal.

From there, the narrative begins its dive back in time. Each jump a story linked still further back in the connecting tissue of her family history. The stories begin to collapse into each other, then build-up and stretch into completion; finally returning to conclude Jake’s own story in 2034.

Eclectic people across history are drawn together in astonishing ways. This history begins to form a latticework as the multi-generational family stories are ferreted out and connected. A simple carpenter in Vancouver. A foresting super-magnate. A shell-shocked war hero, now transient with a baby he’d found in the woods, alone, hanging from a tree. The fixer of a wealthy patron. A single woman who starts a soup-kitchen and soon owns and operates her very own farm.

Time is a bridge for all sorts.

“What if a family isn’t a tree at all? What if it’s more like a forest? A collection of individuals, pooling their resources by intertwined roots, sheltering each other from wind and weather and drought… what are families other than fictions? Stories told about a particular cluster of people for a particular reason. And like all stories, families are not born, they’re invented. Pieced together from love and lies and nothing else.”

And this would have been a satisfying story in of itself. But what elevates Greenwood is how thickly intertwined the themes are with each individual story and the meta-narrative that engages in a push-pull exercise of whether or not Jake is a legitimate heir or not.

Multiple stories allow for a more nuanced telling than one story could have.

Generational trauma, ethical consumption, notions of justice, punishment, and penance, all pulse together within a realistic, but hopeful framework that depicts mankind as cyclical and timeless.
Troubles and perseverance, it seems, have always governed mankind. If only we had a more protracted memory.

Jake is waiting to discover what is true — and whether or not she will allow this information to alter her. What path is right? The culmination of all the choices of every character marks this as pivotal.

And yet this is just the vehicle that allows the exploration of how Canadians have allowed for the abundance of natural resources to be pillaged for the equivalent of the American Dream for the far-too-few.

If it’s true that the United States was born of slavery and revolutionary justice…then surely her own country was born of a cruel, grasping indifference to its indigenous peoples and the natural world. We who rip our the Earth’s most irreplaceable resources, sell them cheaply to anyone with a nickel in their pocket, then wake up and do it all over again — that could well serve as the Greenwood motto, and perhaps even for her nation itself.

This prevalent notion Canada has cultivated as ethical and good is welcomingly contradicted — beginning with the story furthest back, as the family immigrated and the very first thing they need to do to prosper is to drive the First Nations people living there off of ‘their’ land.

Contrast that with what is happening today in Canada, where the country is still being auctioned off, and this becomes an incredibly prescient book with so much to say it is staggering to unpack.

“Time…is not an arrow. Neither is it a road. It goes in no particular direction. It simply accumulates — in the body, in the world — like wood does. Layer upon layer. Light, then dark. Each one dependent upon the last. Each year impossible without the one preceding it. Each triumph and each disaster written forever in its structure. His own life, he can admit now, will never be clear, will never be unblemished, will never be reclaimed. Because it is impossible to ungrow what has already grown, to undo what is already done.”

Shannon M Smith

A wonderfully layered story of family tree that follows four generations of Greenwoods across ~100 years. The first third of the book focuses on establishing the most recent three Greenwood characters, going backward in time until the tale of the two original brothers at the center, then concluding with wrapping up the fates of each family member in the third act (they are the rings of a tree.. get it?). The timeline format is just one of many analogies between trees and people, which was poetic and enjoyable, though eventually a bit repetitive. The brothers’ relationship is the strongest bit, if a bit long. I wish we had spent more time with Liam and Jake. A lovely book.

Devin Mainville

I had never heard of this novel before it became my book club's July pick and now it might be one of my favorite books of all time. 

Greenwood traces the Greenwood family from an apocalyptic future in 2038 back to its origins in 1919 and then back forward through time to 2038 again. The generational saga introduces us to various family members along the way and you can’t help but love each of them - even the ones you may not like. 

The story is beautifully written and brilliantly weaves this story together with surprises and revelations that unfold across time. The use of trees as metaphor and common link throughout the generations feels grounded and never forced. In short, this book is a masterpiece and it astounds me that more people don’t talk about it.

Geneviève Rouleau

This book was so, SO GOOD. I don't even know where to start. I have never read a book like this. I swear. I just want to shove this book down everyone's throats. It's so freaking amazing. I have a full page of notes, but I wrote them in such a hurry that they barely make sense, especially since they're in a mix of French and English and oh boyyy 😂 So buckle down and sit tight, because this is going to be a lengthy review 😅

First things first : this book is so intricate, and I love how there are SO many details about trees on a molecular level, about woodwork.. I don't have the knowledge to attest if these details are accurate, but they do make the book feel so authentic!! And just the general aspect of the book.... there are so, so many formating details that just make the experience so much more immersive. 

ABOUT THE POVs : You start off in 2038, in a kind of post-apocalyptic world where trees become infected and they all die. Which results in the world being covered in dust. It feels like a very dystopic world. Then you jump back in time, following the timeline included at the beginning of the book : 2038 is the outermost section of a tree stump, and every time you jump a generation back, it's marked on the tree's rings. You end up going back all of 5 generations. And then you jump forward again, like a mirror image. This creates such a deep, intricate understanding of the world.. of the impact of past generations on their descendants and on the environment. It was also so refreshing to read about Canada being the center of this 'new' world, instead of like.. the USA 😅

THINGS I LOVED THE MOST (to name a few) :
• The amazing character development of Everett. The way he took care of his daughter.. these passages just warmed my heart SO MUCH. It's so unusual to read about the father's emotional journey during the early stages of parenthood (and seriously, I hate how I've rarely seen this in literature)
• The author flawlessly inserted various diverse aspects I look out for in modern books, 'even though' we jump back in time, to times where non-hetero sexuality was taboo
• This book was such a puzzle to piece together, and my Ravenclaw ass LOVED THAT. It also demonstrates that no matter how we try to piece back history, it is actually so much more intricate than our minds can begin to imagine
• The POVs were so full of suspense, especially when you just KNOW the end results because of the descendant's previous POV, but you just have absolutely no idea how it'll come to pass!!

FAVOURITE QUOTES :
"The way she drinks coffee, like it isn't only saving her life but also her mortal soul." Uhm HELLO. HOW RELATABLE IS THIS. 

"[...] the clearer it becomes to him that his mother has lived her life fleeing a brokenness, one passed down to her by the broken people who came before her, and that she's passed some of this same brokenness down to him, like coals pulled from one fire and used to start another." 😭💛

All the FUCKING STARS. 5⭐

Jonathan

Stephan Happe

‘The truth is that all family lines, from the highest to the lowest, originate somewhere, on some particular day. Even the grandest trees must’ve once been seeds spun helpless on the wind, and then just meek saplings nosing up from the soil.’ 2034. On a remote island off the Pacific coast of British Columbia stands the Greenwood Arboreal Cathedral, one of the world’s last forests. Wealthy tourists flock from all corners of the dust-choked globe to see the spectacle and remember what once was. But even as they breathe in the fresh air and pose for photographs amidst the greenery, ranger Jake knows that the forest is dying, though her bosses won’t admit it. 1908. Two passenger locomotives meet head-on. The only survivors are two young boys, who take refuge in a trapper’s cabin in a forest on the edge of town. In fourteen years, one of them, now a recluse, will find an abandoned baby in that same forest — another child of Greenwood — setting off a series of events that will change the course of his life, and the lives of those around him. Structured like the rings of a tree, this remarkable novel moves from the future to the present to the past, and back again, to tell the story of one family and their enduring connection to the place that brought them together.

A novel of a family tree in a dying forest

A magnificent generational saga that charts a family's rise and fall, its secrets and inherited crimes, from one of Canada's most acclaimed novelists Longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize - "A rugged, riveting novel . . . This superb family saga will satisfy fans of Richard Powers's The Overstory."--Publishers Weekly (starred review) "There are plenty of visionary moments laced into [Christie's] shape-shifting narrative. . . . Greenwood penetrates to the core of things."--The New York Times Book Review It's 2038 and Jacinda (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, sprawled on his back after a workplace fall, 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, 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. 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.

Molly Barnes

Trish

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.

GREENWOOD.

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