Greenwood

Greenwood

By Michael Christie

 

It’s 1974 and Willow Greenwood is living in her Westfalia, travelling to various logging camps with her son, Liam, in tow.  Willow’s intent is to sabotage logging operations and generally interfere with the industry that is destroying B.C.’s vast and beautiful forests.  In fact, she has devoted her life to this endeavour.

Unexpectedly, Willow is the daughter of Harris Greenwood, a rich lumber magnate who lives in a mansion in Shaughnessy.  As we delve into Willow’s history, Michael Christie takes us on an elaborate journey across Canada and right through the 20^th century.

Willow’s roots (pun intended) go back to a maple farm in New Brunswick where, in 1934, she is found as a newborn who’s been left to die in a tree.  Everett Greenwood, a drifter (and Harris’s brother), temporarily adopts her and sets out to find her a good home.  He and Willow jump on freight trains and find food wherever they can.  But as they journey through the forests of Quebec (where Willow is almost adopted by a grieving young couple) and the dust bowl of Saskatchewan (where Everett finds temporary work) towards B.C., Everett becomes progressively more attached to Willow and does not want to give her up.

Everett’s story is utterly compelling.  Throughout his journey, we meet a series of other characters, each with stories of their own.  Michael Christie takes readers back to 1908, when Everett and Harris were boys, then fast forwards all the way to 2038 when Jake Greenwood, Willow’s granddaughter, is a forest guide on Greenwood Island, one of the last stands of old growth forest left in the world.

I absolutely loved this epic family tale!  Although not always entirely believable (how do you jump onto a moving train with a baby strapped to you anyway?) I could not put this book down.  Michael Christie has a way of weaving an elaborate and intricate tale that combines multiple layers, threads, characters and time periods. 

He also delves into the fascinating science of trees and likens the inner workings of the forest to that of a family.  Jake Greenwood knows “[t]hat even the impenetrable mysteries of time and family and death can be solved, if only they are viewed through the green-tinted lens of this one gloriously complex organism.”

Highly recommended!

 

 

Anxious People

   

By Fredrik Backman  

Is it possible for a book to be at once heart-wrenching yet heart-warming, improbable yet realistic, farcical yet deeply, utterly human? If so, Fredrik Backman’s Anxious People has done just that. Anxious People follows a group of people who, while attending an apartment open house, find themselves held hostage by an unlikely bank robber.  Don't worry, they make it out – and this is not a spoiler, as this is where the story begins. 

Though what happens within the apartment walls is the plot’s focal point, the book is not about being held captive: at least, not literally. Instead, this is a story about each person that finds themselves there on that day, and indeed, the secrets keeping them trapped within themselves. We meet a couple considering the apartment as their next project – just another distraction from a marriage that is falling apart. We meet a second couple looking for the perfect home in which to raise their first child, though neither seems ready for either home ownership or parenthood. We meet an elderly woman who claims to be viewing the apartment for her daughter, though the truth appears to be far more solemn, and a bank director seeking the perfect place to die. Finally, we meet the bank robber, who epitomizes being in the wrong place at wrong time – not only in the apartment, but, ultimately, beyond. 

This book is spell-binding, perhaps because there is something within each character that is so relatable. Though I found myself laughing aloud throughout (there are certainly points of sheer ridiculousness), this is a story about loss: of that which we let go of willingly, and that which we cannot control. This is a story about aspects of life that we allow to define us, as letting them go may mean redefining who we are. Above all, though, this is a story of hope. Backman expresses, yes, how we sometimes find ourselves facing someone who reflects to us what we most fear about ourselves. Anxious People suggests that sometimes our biggest fear is staring us right in the face and all we need to do is look up. But when we do look up, and we see someone who understands, that can be exactly what we need to begin moving forward. If you are looking for both a hearty belly laugh and a mirror of your own humanness, Anxious People could be your stellar next read. 

                                

Songs for the End of the World

Songs for the End of the World

By Saleema Nawaz

If I had to guess, I’d say that most people are a bit tired of hearing about the pandemic and dearly wish they could be thinking about other things.  Yet there is something cathartic about reading a novel about a pandemic during a pandemic.  Frankly, I couldn’t put this book down.

The story begins with Elliott, a New York City police officer who learns that he unwittingly attended a restaurant the night it became ground zero for the spread of a new pandemic in the U.S.  Elliott contacts public health and enters into a 21-day quarantine inside his small apartment.  He orders a treadmill to keep fit.  Groceries are delivered.  Elliott spends three weeks watching from his window as the bustling streets of New York become less and less populated, and a new coronavirus dubbed “Aramis” spreads across the globe.

Meanwhile, Owen, a novelist who has written a book about a pandemic, becomes a sought-after expert on the crisis.  He is one of the first to refuse in-person interviews and appears only through Skype, knowing that the worst thing you can do in a pandemic is be around people.

Then there is Edith, a hostess at the restaurant where the pandemic exploded.  When a doctor at public health releases her photo to the media as a “person of interest”, she quickly becomes known as Aramis Girl, reviled around the world as a vessel of disease.

There are many other characters as well, each of whom must decide how they will deal with a slowly unfolding disaster.

Author Saleema Nawaz researched and wrote Songs for the End of the World between 2013 and 2019.  Yet the story is absolutely eerie in its similarities to our current state of affairs.  But let’s face it – a pandemic has long been predicted by health authorities.  It just so happens that the publication of this book coincided with a real pandemic.

This book had moments that brought me to tears, like the heart-wrenching drama of a teenage boy who must watch his mother dying in the hospital.  But it also has moments of hope, like the scene in New York City where “[e]veryone was carrying on, living their lives with a persistence that was at once extraordinary and completely typical.” (p.410)  The characters in Nawaz’s novel have the strength to carry on, which is perhaps the best we can hope for.