From the Bookshelf of The Roundtable…

Barkskins

Annie Proulx

Start date: March 15, 2023

Finish date: April 30, 2023

Discussion: Side Reads - Fiction

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Side Reads - Fiction

* Suggest a Fiction Side Read
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What Members Thought

Jan 08, 2017 Lark Benobi rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2017, favorites-21st-century

I need to start with my complaints. 713 pages was not enough to tell this story. I ended up keeping my laptop nearby with "Google Books" an open tab, so I could search for characters' names throughout the book and could pull out their individual stories as they wove through the novel. None of these characters came fully alive for me as individuals to care about, because their time strutting across the stage of this book was too brief for me to form a vivid connection, and then I was asked to car ...more

38 likes · Like · see review

Nov 21, 2018 Petra rated it really liked it

I'm a sucker for a family saga and this one is sweeping. I enjoyed every page and character. They were real. The trees, too, were characters in this novel. They lived & breathed as much as any human person. They mattered.
If there's a negative to this book, it's that the generations passed by quickly. The characters aged quickly; we missed a lot of their lives. They were so real; it would have been nice to get to know them deeper. I have to laugh as this would easily double the length of this bo ...more

28 likes · Like · see review

Sep 30, 2021 Nadine in California rated it it was amazing

This sat on my shelf for years - I thought it was important, but not a book to love. Wrong! For one thing, it's a propulsive read, divided into 10 novella-sized sections with fairly short chapters that have lots of page breaks; I never felt like I was reading a 'tome' and I always couldn't wait to get to the next section. Covering 400 years and about 10 generations (of humans, many more generations of trees), characters come and go, but I felt engaged with all of them, although Beatrix, Posey an ...more

15 likes · Like · see review

Jun 14, 2016 Gill rated it liked it

Shelves: unfinished

I got a quarter of the way through this, and then decided to leave it unfinished. It wasn't terrible, but I was finding it dull. I found the writing style a bit wooden, and up to yet, haven't found characters that I am interested in. I think probably the best part for me is about the trees rather than the characters.

I read The Shipping News and Accordion Crimes when they were published and liked them, so I'm a bit disappointed that I wasn't more taken with this book.

To compare it to other 'famil ...more

5 likes · Like · see review

Sep 22, 2020 Wendy rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2020, audiobooks, historical-fiction, doorstops

I picked this one up on audio, on a whim--apparently I hadn't yet had my fill of "dudes stumbling around in the North American woods" after finishing Mason & Dixon (I know, I know)--but after Pynchon, this equally hefty book-monster read like a breeze. I also happened to read Barkskins concurrently with Homegoing, a book which coincidentally also follows two different yet intertwined families over multiple centuries. What made Barkskins stand out to me were the rich layers of historical detail a I picked this one up on audio, on a whim--apparently I hadn't yet had my fill of "dudes stumbling around in the North American woods" after finishing Mason & Dixon (I know, I know)--but after Pynchon, this equally hefty book-monster read like a breeze. I also happened to read Barkskins concurrently with Homegoing, a book which coincidentally also follows two different yet intertwined families over multiple centuries. What made Barkskins stand out to me were the rich layers of historical detail and sensory descriptions, and also the moments of unexpected humor. A certain infamous wig, which literally *pops up* again for a reprise when least expected, felt like Pynchon had gotten his hands briefly on Proulx's keyboard. Reader, I laughed.

Not that this book isn't rife with horrific and highly dramatic deaths of all kinds, to include the long and painful demise of the North American forest. While loggers were surveying ancient untouched pine forests, and causing deforestation mudslides, and crushing their own limbs, and setting deadly fires, I kept thinking back to the poetic opening chapter with the indentured French logger René Sel experiencing the virgin Canadian forest for the first time...and I'm struck with profound sadness over all of nature that has been lost to us forever.

There were plenty of memorable characters especially in the first 3/4 of the book, as the viewpoint switched back and forth between the descendents of two French loggers, one who founds a logging company, and the other who marries a local Miꞌkmaw woman, and whose children return to her people. However, I found the generations featured in the last bit set after the 1950s somewhat less memorable. Also, this is the point where the book gets up on its soapbox. Having suffered through 300 years of "showing" already, the telling at this point struck me as too on the nose.

This book gave me a hell of a hangover. I might actually have had my fill of the "dudes stumbling about in the woods" genre. For now. ...more

1 like · Like · see review