Now a television mini-series airing on National Geographic May 2020! A Washington Post Best Book of the Year & a New York Times Notable Book From the Pulitzer Prize-ÂÂwinning author of The Shipping News and “Brokeback Mountain,” comes the New York Times bestselling epic about the demise of the world’s forests: “Barkskins is grand entertainment in the tradition of Dickens and Tolstoy…the … entertainment in the tradition of Dickens and Tolstoy…the crowning achievement of Annie Proulx’s distinguished career, but also perhaps the greatest environmental novel ever written” (San Francisco Chronicle).
In the late seventeenth century two young Frenchmen, René Sel and Charles Duquet, arrive in New France. Bound to a feudal lord for three years in exchange for land, they become wood-cutters–barkskins. René suffers extraordinary hardship, oppressed by the forest he is charged with clearing. He is forced to marry a native woman and their descendants live trapped between two cultures. But Duquet runs away, becomes a fur trader, then sets up a timber business. Annie Proulx tells the stories of the descendants of Sel and Duquet over three hundred years–their travels across North America, to Europe, China, and New Zealand–the revenge of rivals, accidents, pestilence, Indian attacks, and cultural annihilation. Over and over, they seize what they can of a presumed infinite resource, leaving the modern-day characters face to face with possible ecological collapse.
“A stunning, bracing, full-tilt ride through three hundred years of US and Canadian history…with the type of full-immersion plot that keeps you curled in your chair, reluctant to stop reading” (Elle), Barkskins showcases Proulx’s inimitable genius of creating characters who are so vivid that we follow them with fierce attention. “This is Proulx at the height of her powers as an irreplaceable American voice” (Entertainment Weekly, Grade A), and Barkskins “is an awesome monument of a book” (The Washington Post)–“the masterpiece she was meant to write” (The Boston Globe). As Anthony Doerr says, “This magnificent novel possesses the dark humor of The Shipping News and the social awareness of ‘Brokeback Mountain.’”
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This a long book but well worth the time to read. Very interesting characters, with a plot covering several generations. I was never bored
Barkskins by Annie Proulx: An epic (and ongoing) story of extraction
Barkskins tells the intertwined and intergenerational stories of the natives and immigrants of the North American territory once known as New France.
Because this novel takes place over more than 300 years, there are quite a few stories to tell; I found myself frequently consulting the two lengthy family trees in the appendix to keep track of the many characters that come and go.
But the primary (and most tragic) character of this novel is one with no dialogue at all.
As Annie Proulx noted in a recent interview with The New Yorker:
For me, the chief character in the long story was the forest, the great now-lost forest(s) of the world. The characters, as interesting as they were to develop, were there to carry the story of how we have cut and destroyed the wooden world. There was the real tragedy, and there was no way to make it seriocomic. But rather than calling it an environmental novel I think of it more in the sense of a writerly nod to human interplay with climate change, what some in the humanities and arts are beginning to think of as a cultural response to the environmental changes we have inherited in the so-called Anthropocene.
For early European settlers, the trees were a gold rush with no end. The patriarch of one family tree, Charles Duquet, devotes his life to harvesting as much of this gold as he can. And in a pivotal scene he sheds light on the rage that fueled his rise from poverty to timber baron:
Inside Duquet something like a tightly close pinecone licked by fire opened abruptly and he exploded with insensate and uncontrolled fury, a life’s pent-up rage. “No one helped me!” he shrieked. “I did everything myself! I endured! I contended with powerful men. I suffered in the wilderness. I accepted the risk I might die! No one helped me!”
Ultimately, there would be too many Duquets arriving in search of unlimited trees and land; natives suffered this violent and slow-moving disaster firsthand. As a Mi’kmaw elder observed:
“We are sharing our land with the Wenuj and they take more and more. You see how their beasts destroy our food, how their boats and nets take our fish. They bring plants that vanquish our plants. Most do not mean to hurt us, but they are many and we are few. I believe they will become as a great wave sweeping over us.”
Proulx, like Cormac Mcarthy, has a dark sense of humor that expresses itself through the bizarre and unpredictable ways many of the characters meet their demise. I sometimes felt like I was watching Game of Thrones in the sense that just as I become attached to a character he or she would be quickly expired.
In a work of this scale, it’s not surprising that some characters and scenes feel rush or underdeveloped. Proulx was forced to cut a good 150 pages out of the book, which could be a reason why some chapters feel this way. I would have gladly read another 200 pages.
I’m in awe of how Proulx balanced documentary like detail with a plot that takes readers not only across time but halfway around the world. It’s easy to attach “epic” to any novel that weighs in at more than 700 pages, but when I say this novel is epic, I’m talking about what Proulx set out to accomplish, and ultimately did accomplish. Where Sometimes a Great Notion is a testament to the forests along the coast range of Oregon, Barkskins is a testament to all forests.
Despite the overarching sadness of seeing so much beauty and innocence wiped away, there is hope. And it is the young who offer it up. Like the son of a compromised logger, Charley, who asks one day:
“Father, how do you feel about this logging enterprise? Better and better?”
“I give it my support, as we start replanting a year after they get out the cut. It is a balanced process.”
“I can’t image what you think will replace two-thousand-yer-old redwoods–Scotch pine seedlings? And what of the diversity of the soil? Erosion? All those qualities you once cared about? Are you cutting old-growth fir and cedar and planting pine? You mentioned Oregon and Washington.”
Living near the redwoods, where only 5% of these majestic trees remain from a forest that once stretched a thousand miles along the Pacific coast, we came all too close to losing it all.
Proulx dedicates this novel to “barkskins of all kinds” which includes not only those who fell trees for profit, but those who study them and those (we meet near the end of the novel) who devote their lives to protecting the trees we have left.
With each chapter, each passing generation, this book gains a presence that you don’t fully appreciate until you are near the end. At least I didn’t. As I approached the end, chronologically the present, I felt the weight of all that was lost. But I also felt a growing sense of optimism for what people are doing today to save what is still here and to regrow what is lost.
NOTE: This review first appeared on https://www.EcoLitBooks.com
Laura Hohnhold reviews Barkskins by Annie Proulx: “For readers, like this one, who consider Proulx one of America’s finest living writers, the 14 years since her last novel (and eight years since her last short-story collection) have been frustratingly long.”
http://www.elle.com/culture/books/news/a36974/barkskins-annie-proulx/
This is a brilliantly written historical novel that reveals so much about how we, as North Americans, voraciously consumed what seemed to be the infinite forests. The characters are compelling and although this is a long book it holds our interest.
This is an epic story about the loggia industry in North America. It follows both indigenous people and new settlers as they take down the seemingly endless forests on the new continent. It is interesting and easy to read but bit off a bit of a too big subject to really satisfy. We would barely get to know a character before they were killed off and an new saga would begin in a new generation. It seemed like there wasn’t a clear enough focus on what the story was really about. It is an enlightening slice of history though and explains why so many trees got cut in such a relatively short time
A mother of a read but worth pushing through.
I was so excited to read this book. The first half was decent. Interesting characters with depth. Then it was almost as if the author was in a hurry to cram in ideas and the characters became shallow and one dimensional. Ended up being an ecological statement disguised as a novel.
Well written historic novel.
This book is a masterpiece. So much history, irresistibly intertwined with a family saga. I love learning and being entertained at the same time. The writing is beautiful and evocative. The early forests of North America that seemed limitless and forbidding are a harbinger of the future. This book is one that will stay with me.
A great read! We get the idea that environmental abuse began in the not so distant present.
Very historical novel.
I just finished this 700+ page masterpiece that spans three centuries. It is so topical today regarding whose lives matter (indigenous lives) and what we have been doing to our world for centuries if not millennia. She is a masterful writer
This book was very interesting, especially at this point in history, in that it showed the inevitable coming to America by white settlers and how much they felt entitled to the land and everything the land provided. As a professional forester, it made me cringe to “see” through her writing, the history of my profession. Very nice historical novel. Btw, the tv series is totally baffling, does not follow the book at all.
One of the best books I’ve read in years.
The plot moves quickly through history, following descendants of immigrants. It misses on a great opportunity to expand on one main character. It covers too much without delving into the lives of most characters. It could have been a three or four book series if it had been expanded to include more details and character depth.
So good to learn the background history of our forest regions.
I decided to read the book after watching the 10 part show on natgeo. The TV show deviates a great deal from the book and adds characters such as Mathilde and Gomes. However, the interweaving of the Duquete and Sels story line kept me reading and enjoying the mainly white entrepenuerial Dukes(Duquete )and the Micmac Indian Sels and there difficulties of working and navigating the white man world as laborers. It gives a pretty stark story of the lumber industry and the settlers what it did to the virgin mainly untouched forests of North America.
Excellent read about the history of logging and the native peoples it impacted. Sad to know it’s all a part of our history.
A huge story, made personal with characters we can understand through their life histories. Definitely reflects prodigious research ad well as rich imagination! I listened as well as read this book and enjoyed the narrators voice and characterizations. Well done all.
Interesting tale of two families through 3 centuries, but overly long at over 700 pages.