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!

 

 

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.