Saturday, December 5, 2020

40. Barkskins

By Annie Proulx (714 pp) ebook

I am a huge fan of Annie Proulx and this is an amazing book but also very long. I was goofing off reading 20 pages here and there. I had to commit or I would be reading this until next June. She creates one vivid character after the other, some only lasting a few pages. This is a story about two families in the timber working business beginning in the 1600s in what was called New France and goes all the way up until the 2000s. (I just searched online for a map and found one that refers to certain lands west of New France as "unsettled" and "unclaimed." Stay adorable colonizers!) It's super interesting and well-researched and shows how harsh that time was but also the story demonstrates just how devastating the greed for natural resources has been to the environment and to indigenous people particularly the Mi'kmaq. The book was really good and I enjoyed it but it was also a bummer after awhile watching these terrible people scheming to amass more for themselves at any cost. Still big recommend from me.

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