I opened this book on holiday in Tofino, knowing I had just two days to read its 512 pages before it was due back at the public library. I thought I would give it 50 pages and if I didn’t like it, I could return it. If I loved it, I could either buy a copy or keep it a few days overdue.
As it happens, neither choice was necessary because I devoured it over the two days.
Written by B.C. author Michael Christie, it’s a sweeping family saga, that begins at the turn of the 20th century and ends in 2038. But the story structure is round, like a tree, so it starts where it ends and the middle is the beginning.
We begin with meeting Jake Greenwood, a tour guide in one of the world’s last remaining forests, which happens to be on an island just off the coast of British Columbia. She’s in deep debt with student loans and just barely surviving in the dystopian world of 2038. But she is ever so much more than that, as the reader learns with each ring of the tree. Like all of us, she is the product of everything, both good and bad, about the generations who came before her.
Readers will take a peak into the life of a present-day carpenter who uses salvaged wood to decorate high-end homes and restaurants. They’ll learn about a life-long hippie save-the-forests protester who gave up a fortune and lived in her Westphalia van for her entire adult life. They’ll learn about a West Coast lumber baron, who made his millions thanks to others – both the trees and his own family. And they’ll learn about a veteran of the First World War, who comes home to a life of PTSD and a life on the run, living on trains during the Great Depression.
They’re all spectacularly linked and readers will delight in finding out exactly how and why.
The theme of family – what it means, how they’re formed, the forces that shape them – is woven throughout the story.
How important is DNA? More important than our parents’ and grandparents’ lived experience and traumas? Do those traumas shape us or make us stronger? Those are questions Christie explores in this deep, but extremely readable novel.
This book was longlisted for the 2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize and was chosen as a CBC Best Canadian Fiction title of the year, both with good reason.
Michael Christie’s first book was The Beggar’s Garden, a selection of short stories, based in Vancouver, which won the City of Vancouver Book Award. His second book was If I Fall, If I Die, also nominated for a number of awards. He’s a former carpenter and homeless shelter worker, who lives in Victoria and on Galiano Island.
Greenwood is a brilliant book, for its story, its structure and the timeless questions it explores.
