Greenwood by Michael Christie
Forced isolation is necessary to slow the spread of infection but it is not an easy time for anyone. I miss seeing my friends and family , and have contact with customers only by phone and non-contact pickup and delivery. We all do need social contact for our emotional well-being, so for now it is by phone and social media - no one should feel alone at this time.
That being said, if you are at home, alone, you can go to all sorts of places simply by reading a book. Reading a really good book is even better. For reasons that had nothing to do with the Corona virus I had a couple of days at home last week and picked up Greenwood by Michael Christie. This book had been recommended to me by an American friend, and recommended to her by her local bookshop. And, it is one of the best books I have read in a good long time. The author is Canadian, lives in British Columbia among the big trees that those of us who like open views find claustrophobic. Greenwood was long listed for the 2019 Giller Prize and was a CBC Books “best Canadian fiction” title of the year.
Greenwood is a great big saga of a novel spanning the years from 1908 to 2038, so could be considered speculative fiction. Most of the story, however, takes place during the years that we know, as the oldest generation of the Greenwood family, Harris and Everett, live through the First World War, and the changes that brings to the world. They also live through the Great Depression, and then more prosperous years as the world becomes more industrialized, and their lumber business creates wealth. Then into the future, with the story of the youngest of the Greenwood decedents.
The novel begins in 2038, in a world changed by the past. There are few trees left, and those that have survived are valued and protected. Jake Greenwood works on an island, off the coast of British Columbia, where she is a Forest Guide. She is a biologist, a tree expert, and she is escorting Pilgrims around the island to spend time among the old growth Douglas fir and Western red cedar forest. In a world where the air is full of dust this is an expensive escape for those who can afford it.
In the first few pages of this novel I might have wondered about reading a book about such a world – but the writing was so powerful and lyrical that I was swept into the story and within a few pages we are in a more comfortable 2008 with Willow Greenwood and her son Liam. Willow is an activist, living in a VW van with her son, travelling to the work sites of forestry operations and sabotaging their equipment. This descendant of lumber barons wants no part of her heritage.
As we move back and forth in time, we follow the lives of Willow’s father and uncle who begin the novel, and we learn, bit by bit, more and more about each of the characters, until the novel concludes in 2038. I was never for a moment anything but lost in this story as it grew with each page.
Greenwood is a book for our time, the story of how both people and trees carry the history of their origins into the future. This is a novel that explores the meaning of family, and the world of today that will one day be history even if life changes drastically as it did for so many during the Great Depression.