jwalkerskout's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death of parent, Rape, Incest, Alcoholism, Cancer, Classism, Sexual content, Violence, Colonisation, and Death
joakley's review against another edition
4.0
On the front cover there is a quote from the San Francisco Chronicle praising Barkskins as “perhaps the greatest environmental novel ever written.” Now. That’s a big sentence. First of all it is extremely high praise. The claim of greatest ANYTHING ever made is a lot to back up, and while I haven’t read every environmental novel ever written, I can confirm that this book is great. Secondly, this claim puts Barkskins in a certain framework as an “environmental novel.” When I read that categorization, I was admittedly slightly nervous. Before reading Barkskins, I would have said that an environmental novel can basically be understood as a tree-hugger novel. I was nervous to read this long book and have the only takeaway be something as reducible and simple as “Save the Trees.” But what makes Barkskins so great is that it takes its environmentalist aspects so seriously. It takes that topic and reveals its true complexity, not with the intention of shaming the reader, but with the intention of developing an intellectual account of the story between people and nature. Environmentalism never has been just about tree-hugging, and for me to be nervous about that shows how ignorant I can be lol oops. As Barkskins shows us, environmentalism is about humanity’s strange connection to nature, the overwhelming power and longevity of the Earth, and figuring out our own identity in the context of the natural world, both as individuals and parts of a community. As this novel unfolds Annie Proulx explores all of these questions and more, and at every turn simultaneously opens up the complexity of these issues and leaves them open to uncertainty.
Barkskins is about two families, not two characters, so you can only truly know them when you step back and see the whole picture. Rene Sel and Charles Duquet are the heads of both of these families, and they come to the New World in 1693 on the same boat to work the field of a wealthy landowner. In both of them we get fairly simple, face-value descriptions. Sel is a man who does not forge his own path, he is someone who gets told what to do, and just goes with the flow. Duquet is a schemer, he is driven by the idea of accruing land and wealth and he will lie, cheat, and deceive his way there. These two men really aren’t all that important; Barkskins is an exploration of what those characteristics look like when they are drawn out over hundreds of years, across generations. Some of the descendants are eerily similar to these figureheads, and some of them deviate greatly, but the reader is not concerned only with those individuals, we get to dig into the story of the greater trajectory of the Sel and Duke (Charles Duquet Americanizes his name to Duke) lineages and the relationship those families have to the wilderness of the New World
This generational format is a gratifying experience as a reader, but it takes patience. Beatrix is a descendant of Rene Sel, and like the rest of that family, she is half French and half Mi’kmaq – Native American. Also like many of her family members, she struggles to establish her own identity as she is torn between the two cultures. And when she tries to explain this feeling, someone points out to her that “you could not hope to grasp the meanings except by living the entire life.” Beatrix was never fully living in the woods and learning the culture of her American side, and she never lived in France or got a proper education or reaped the benefits of European society. This struggle for identity and the quest to establish a name for oneself maps onto the slow, generational pace of the novel. To truly understand each family you must live through each of their lives fully. Much of the fun of reading is working through complex characterizations of the figures in the novel. In Barkskins this feeling is multiplied tenfold, as you get to do that for each individual, and then again as you piece each individual together to form your concept of the entire family. This puzzle work is a unique reading adventure that I can’t say I have experienced before.
Proulx holds all these familial threads together at the same time that she writes a complex account of humanity’s relation to nature. The message is not just that we are chopping trees down blindly and depleting our resources. It is that we are intimately tied to nature, and when we prioritize capital and modern notions of economic progress, we are undermining that relationship. The tone is somewhat condemning but never oversteps or feels preachy. Proulx deals the story with a blunt delivery, and the narrative always feels sincere and true. While the tone may condemn modernization and capitalism, it also shows that all types of people are caught in this web. Even the Sels, who we would expect to be more in accord with the woods, feel disconnected from it. While families like the Dukes fund mass termination of entire woodlands, the workhands like the Sels are the ones doing the physical labor of cutting the trees so they can make some money of their own. And even when we are one with nature, we are in grave danger. To live in the wild is to accept the fact that outside forces may kill you at any moment, and this is expressed again and again by the men and women who are taken down by errant trees, wildfires, natural predators, and countless other dangers in the woods. Men live and die in single paragraphs in Barkskins. We can attempt to tame the wild, and while this may lead to profit, it also distorts both Sels and Duquets in dark, mysterious ways. This is all to say that at every turn humanity is inextricably mixed up with the Earth, and most of the ways in which we decide to deal with this lead to turmoil.
There are no easy conclusions in Barkskins. None of the content that Proulx dives into is simple or one-sided. The matter-of-fact manner in which she delivers this complex tale is meant to show that regardless of how we take it, this is the way it is. Something about our relationship with nature has been poisoned, and something about how nature views us has changed irrevocably. As a reader, the journey into this dilemma feels like a satisfying investigation, but the conclusion is one that we can expect, and it is rather depressing. As Charley Duke notes, “humankind is evolving into a terrible new species and I am sorry that I am one of them.” Both Sel and Duke fit into this equation, and as the novel reaches its conclusion in 2013, the descendants of these essentially cursed characters begin to put that together as well. It is all so complicated, like trying to patch up a broken relationship but split into a million little pieces. The imperative is to recognize how important it is to at least try to improve our relationship with nature, it’s just that “I can’t find the words to say how important.”
Disclaimer: I covered about 1/100th of the interesting content in this novel in the above review.
Barkskins is about two families, not two characters, so you can only truly know them when you step back and see the whole picture. Rene Sel and Charles Duquet are the heads of both of these families, and they come to the New World in 1693 on the same boat to work the field of a wealthy landowner. In both of them we get fairly simple, face-value descriptions. Sel is a man who does not forge his own path, he is someone who gets told what to do, and just goes with the flow. Duquet is a schemer, he is driven by the idea of accruing land and wealth and he will lie, cheat, and deceive his way there. These two men really aren’t all that important; Barkskins is an exploration of what those characteristics look like when they are drawn out over hundreds of years, across generations. Some of the descendants are eerily similar to these figureheads, and some of them deviate greatly, but the reader is not concerned only with those individuals, we get to dig into the story of the greater trajectory of the Sel and Duke (Charles Duquet Americanizes his name to Duke) lineages and the relationship those families have to the wilderness of the New World
This generational format is a gratifying experience as a reader, but it takes patience. Beatrix is a descendant of Rene Sel, and like the rest of that family, she is half French and half Mi’kmaq – Native American. Also like many of her family members, she struggles to establish her own identity as she is torn between the two cultures. And when she tries to explain this feeling, someone points out to her that “you could not hope to grasp the meanings except by living the entire life.” Beatrix was never fully living in the woods and learning the culture of her American side, and she never lived in France or got a proper education or reaped the benefits of European society. This struggle for identity and the quest to establish a name for oneself maps onto the slow, generational pace of the novel. To truly understand each family you must live through each of their lives fully. Much of the fun of reading is working through complex characterizations of the figures in the novel. In Barkskins this feeling is multiplied tenfold, as you get to do that for each individual, and then again as you piece each individual together to form your concept of the entire family. This puzzle work is a unique reading adventure that I can’t say I have experienced before.
Proulx holds all these familial threads together at the same time that she writes a complex account of humanity’s relation to nature. The message is not just that we are chopping trees down blindly and depleting our resources. It is that we are intimately tied to nature, and when we prioritize capital and modern notions of economic progress, we are undermining that relationship. The tone is somewhat condemning but never oversteps or feels preachy. Proulx deals the story with a blunt delivery, and the narrative always feels sincere and true. While the tone may condemn modernization and capitalism, it also shows that all types of people are caught in this web. Even the Sels, who we would expect to be more in accord with the woods, feel disconnected from it. While families like the Dukes fund mass termination of entire woodlands, the workhands like the Sels are the ones doing the physical labor of cutting the trees so they can make some money of their own. And even when we are one with nature, we are in grave danger. To live in the wild is to accept the fact that outside forces may kill you at any moment, and this is expressed again and again by the men and women who are taken down by errant trees, wildfires, natural predators, and countless other dangers in the woods. Men live and die in single paragraphs in Barkskins. We can attempt to tame the wild, and while this may lead to profit, it also distorts both Sels and Duquets in dark, mysterious ways. This is all to say that at every turn humanity is inextricably mixed up with the Earth, and most of the ways in which we decide to deal with this lead to turmoil.
There are no easy conclusions in Barkskins. None of the content that Proulx dives into is simple or one-sided. The matter-of-fact manner in which she delivers this complex tale is meant to show that regardless of how we take it, this is the way it is. Something about our relationship with nature has been poisoned, and something about how nature views us has changed irrevocably. As a reader, the journey into this dilemma feels like a satisfying investigation, but the conclusion is one that we can expect, and it is rather depressing. As Charley Duke notes, “humankind is evolving into a terrible new species and I am sorry that I am one of them.” Both Sel and Duke fit into this equation, and as the novel reaches its conclusion in 2013, the descendants of these essentially cursed characters begin to put that together as well. It is all so complicated, like trying to patch up a broken relationship but split into a million little pieces. The imperative is to recognize how important it is to at least try to improve our relationship with nature, it’s just that “I can’t find the words to say how important.”
Disclaimer: I covered about 1/100th of the interesting content in this novel in the above review.
ktxx22's review against another edition
4.0
I am not the reader for this book. I went back and forth all day about DNF’ing this and I’ve decided to do so at the 60% point. This book is grand and excellent across the board, but it lacks an overall trajectory of a grand story. Historically I’m not a big fan of historical fiction or slice of life books and this is that exactly. Because of that I’m DNFing it, however if you are looking for something that spans a large period of time and lots of new world literature check this book out. Her writing is divine, and I’m still rating it 4/5 even though I didn’t finish it!
hannahbrench's review against another edition
4.0
If you love the satisfaction of finishing a 700 page read, this will do the trick.
Essentially Vanity Fair, but about the gradual destruction of North America via colonialism and capitalist greed instead of 19th century British society. A good story, but definitely takes commitment as a reader- the “piles of minutiae” referenced in an earlier review do take some getting through.
Essentially Vanity Fair, but about the gradual destruction of North America via colonialism and capitalist greed instead of 19th century British society. A good story, but definitely takes commitment as a reader- the “piles of minutiae” referenced in an earlier review do take some getting through.
lizziebeth57's review against another edition
4.0
Really liked this book but it is very very long and felt like I had to make a big commitment to get started.
juliana_aldous's review against another edition
5.0
My father's family worked in the logging industry so this North American story of immigrants, natives and logging feels close. I absolutely loved this book. I'll never look at the American landscape and the environment we're creating the same way again.
stitchykitch's review against another edition
4.0
If I could, I would give this book two separate ratings: 5 stars for a masterful piece of writing, and 4 stars for my reading experience.
There is no disputing the fact that Annie Proulx is a brilliant author. Barkskins is woven together in a beautiful, seamless way. The novel follows two families through the age of colonization up through present-day. Proulx manages to switch from story-line to story-line without jarring the reader. While the families are important to the story, the forest really plays the leading role.
My experience reading this book earned 4 stars. I took this book home back in June when it first came out, and savored every word of the first two stories. I didn’t finish at that point, and was excited when my book group chose to read it for December and January. This time, I committed to 100 pages a night to make sure that I would be able to finish. I reread the beginning stories so I could experience the novel as a whole, and once again, loved the descriptive prose. For the fast half of the book, I actually scribbled major events into a notebook, and then loosened up a little for the latter half.
Overall, it made me think a lot about early colonists and their desire to conquer the forest. It was reading Barkskins that led me to really think about how colonists justified taking land from the Native American people. There were many times reading that I was in shock at the colonists violence toward the Mi’qmak people. I am really glad that I will get a chance to discuss this book with other readers, because I think there are a lot of conversations that are waiting to happen.
There is no disputing the fact that Annie Proulx is a brilliant author. Barkskins is woven together in a beautiful, seamless way. The novel follows two families through the age of colonization up through present-day. Proulx manages to switch from story-line to story-line without jarring the reader. While the families are important to the story, the forest really plays the leading role.
My experience reading this book earned 4 stars. I took this book home back in June when it first came out, and savored every word of the first two stories. I didn’t finish at that point, and was excited when my book group chose to read it for December and January. This time, I committed to 100 pages a night to make sure that I would be able to finish. I reread the beginning stories so I could experience the novel as a whole, and once again, loved the descriptive prose. For the fast half of the book, I actually scribbled major events into a notebook, and then loosened up a little for the latter half.
Overall, it made me think a lot about early colonists and their desire to conquer the forest. It was reading Barkskins that led me to really think about how colonists justified taking land from the Native American people. There were many times reading that I was in shock at the colonists violence toward the Mi’qmak people. I am really glad that I will get a chance to discuss this book with other readers, because I think there are a lot of conversations that are waiting to happen.
bookishwendy's review against another edition
4.0
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 [b:Mason & Dixon|413|Mason & Dixon|Thomas Pynchon|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386925333l/413._SY75_.jpg|1935] (I know, I know)--but after Pynchon, this equally hefty book-monster read like a breeze. I also happened to read Barkskins concurrently with [b:Homegoing|27071490|Homegoing|Yaa Gyasi|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1448108591l/27071490._SY75_.jpg|47113792], 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.
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.
docpacey's review against another edition
2.0
The best Annie Proulx has lively characters, quirky individuals who jump off of the page and enliven her prodigious storytelling skills with memorable lines and unforgettable scenes.
A hundred or so pages into Barkskins and i have found nothing of this Annie Proulx. I was so ready for this book. i love her work, and had just finished [b:Fathers and Crows|45679|Fathers and Crows|William T. Vollmann|https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1388293921s/45679.jpg|382631], which covers the time period just before Barkskins begins. I hate to compare writers, but 700 pages of Vollman flew by quicker than a hundred pages of this book, and that's saying something.
A hundred or so pages into Barkskins and i have found nothing of this Annie Proulx. I was so ready for this book. i love her work, and had just finished [b:Fathers and Crows|45679|Fathers and Crows|William T. Vollmann|https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1388293921s/45679.jpg|382631], which covers the time period just before Barkskins begins. I hate to compare writers, but 700 pages of Vollman flew by quicker than a hundred pages of this book, and that's saying something.