Barkskins

My community book club decided to read Barkskins, Annie Proulx's latest novel, based on the recommendations of readers that several members respected. And given the choice of many selections to vote on, this book was chosen. At the time of the vote, I didn't vote for Barkskins simply because I found another Proulx novel, The Shipping News, one of the most tedious books I'd ever read. In fact, I think that The Shipping News was the first book I ever deliberately dropped. Just couldn't get through the first 100 pages. The group had spoken, however, and I was going to read what the group picked. If I hated it 100 pages in, I'd drop it and go to the meeting explaining why I hated it. (I didn't hate it - and more about that in another few sentences.)

In June, I'd sent out an email to the book club asking if anyone had a copy of the book we were reading for July (Commonwealth) that I could borrow. I waited too long to request it from the library and I was something like #134. One of the emails I received in return was from a woman who didn't have a copy of Commonwealth but did have a recommendation for me. Barkskins is our September title. She let me know that it was a really long book, took her a long time to read, so I might want to request that ASAP. Thanks to her advice, it's over a month prior to our September meeting and I've finished the book.

If I had to give this book a thumb's up, a thumb's down or a sideways thumb, no doubt this would be a sideways thumb. It was an epic saga, spanning over 300 years. That, for me, is a plus. The big idea of the plot was about deforestation, something I'm interested in. Another plus. Often I'd find myself needing to discuss parts of the book with my husband, the non-reader. Yesterday he responded with, "You're still reading that book?" Um yes. It was slow reading.

I was surprised that I didn't find it tedious the way I'd found The Shipping News. Once I realized that the main character of the novel was the forest, I realized I didn't have to figure out and/or pay attention to the exact characters whose small storylines were being told at any given moment. It just didn't matter. I felt like the only differentiation I needed to make was whether the story was about the "European" branch of the family or the Native American branch of the family. Towards the end, even that didn't really matter.

The premise of the book is that two French men come to the New World as indentured servants. One is hardworking and tows the line and eventually his line merges with the Native Americans that live in the area where he has settled. His primary job at first is chopping down trees. Tree after tree after tree. Through the years, his family mostly supports themselves by chopping down trees or making axes. The hard, manual labor end of the timber industry. The other fellow becomes dissatisfied with his lot in life as soon as he realizes what life as an indentured servant is going to be like. He runs away, Americanizes his name and uses what he's learned about chopping down trees to try to become a wealthy man. He succeeds in building a major timber business that spans the centuries.

It was fascinating to read the thoughts that different groups had at different times during the history of our nation regarding the chopping down of trees and the denuding of the forests. It was also interesting to have my thoughts about the differences between what Europeans and Native Americans believed with regard to property ownership confirmed. Because this is a novel, near the end, each family had someone in the current generation feel like he or she had to make up for the disregard prior generations of his or her family had towards the land.

As much as I thought the novel really dragged on in parts, it wrapped up way too quickly. Way too quickly. And I didn't get the resolution that I sort of expected, that I really hoped I'd get. But that's okay. Five and a half weeks was more than enough time to devote to a novel that I didn't love.

Maybe this shows what a lightweight reader I truly am but the thing I liked least about Barkskins was the lofty language that Proulx uses. When I first complained to a friend about this, she commented on the fact that Proulx used language appropriate to the time period. I expected as the book fast-forwarded to the present, the language wouldn't cause such a deceleration in my reading speed. That turned out not to be the case. Did people ever speak using the language that Proulx uses? And does she use super big words that most people won't understand when she's speaking with her friends?

I gave this book 3-stars on goodreads. I'm thinking that if others in my book club feel the way I do, a discussion of the book could lift it up to 4-stars. Barkskins is really the type of book that needs to be discussed as evidenced by the fact that I kept wanting to discuss this with my non-reader husband.

If you want a book with a message, a book that will remind you why it's important to protect the earth, Barkskins might be the book for you. If you have a book club to discuss it with, that much better!