Greenwood
Greenwood by Michael Christie, published by McClelland & Stewart in 2019, is a first edition novel comprising 490 pages. This multigenerational family story explores the unexpected legacies of a remote island off the coast of British Columbia, linking the fates of five individuals over a century. Set against the backdrop of environmental devastation, the narrative unfolds through the lives of characters from different eras, revealing their connections to a once-mighty timber empire and the natural world.
Readers will find a richly woven tale that spans from 1934 to 2038, featuring characters such as Jacinda Greenwood, a tour guide in a dwindling forest, and Liam Greenwood, a carpenter confronting his mortality. The story delves into themes of family life, environmental activism, and the complexities of human relationships, all while using trees as a metaphor for survival and growth. Christie’s narrative structure mirrors the growth rings of a tree, presenting a layered exploration of greed, sacrifice, and the ties that bind families together.
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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.
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