Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

If ever there was a literary work that should stand as the Bible for a particular cause--in this case two causes--Barkskins would be it. The causes it champions are the treatment of Native peoples by the white Europeans who conquered the Eastern parts of North America, and the horrific way these settlers "raped" the country by devastating the forests that grew here. Both of these actions from the end of the 17th century to the present time did more to change the nation we never knew into the nation we now inhabit. Neither of these actions have ever been really dissected for the damage they did. Barkskins is that dissection. Annie Proulx is a terrific writer. She can make unfamiliar situations such as logging, sheepherding, fishing and working on farms as familiar as what the bulk of our society actually knows now. We have no idea how hard our ancestors worked to simply survive--and how dangerous that work actually was, even under the best circumstances. We aren't, for the most part, well-versed in what it takes to cut a single tree to the ground, let alone what it took to clear millions of acres of them. How even after cutting, there were still the roots left in the ground to dig out, and what it did to the environment--the permanent changes it wrought--when the trees were gone. Food sources disappeared. Ecology changed drastically. And entire populations of people who lived in the forests and depended on the bio-systems they produced also disappeared from view. Yes, a lot of them resurfaced later--in-bred into white culture, or assimilated into other societies. But these were not the ones they had been born into, and they were not the ones that kept them alive and healthy. It was so much more than the Europeans bringing alcohol and smallpox and syphilis to the Native peoples--so very, very much more. Annie Proulx details what the "more" entailed, and how it happened. And when I say "details" I mean exactly that. Proulx details everything. From the first logging accident in the first chapters, to the last stinking paper mill rising on the banks of a Maine river, she tells the reader in excruciating detail what happened and what its consequences were then and have become now. And it is for this reason that despite the importance of this knowledge--and despite how much this matters to us now in the era of climate change and ecological disasters--it will not be heeded. This book is beautifully written and beautifully researched. It is meticulously plotted It is fascinating--but it will be all those things ONLY to a very small group of people. There are two reasons for this: one is that the book is huge. Many people who are more casual readers will not pick it up and start it, because it is about logging (it is, but it's so much more as well!) and because it's a thousand pages about logging. The second reason is that few people these days have the attention span needed to embrace such a story, which spans more than 300 years of history. The story begins in the 1690's and ends in 2014! Three hundred years of things to know is a lot of things that a lot of people just won't want to slog through. No matter how much this really isn't a "slog", but an absorbing, incredible story. That's a real shame, because even those people who should be interested probably will not pick this novel up and read it. They'll be missing a lot of information, and a lot of fuel for conversation. And an enriching experience unlike any that most novels impart. I did love it, but it took me a couple weeks of hard reading to get through it. I recommend it to anyone who is interested in history, Native people, ecology and biology, and family stories. But I'm going to warn you ahead of time--this isn't an easy read. Too bad--because it's a great read, easy or not. And the issues it uncovers are greatly important. If enough people took the time and effort and read through this book, our lives might just change for the better. I recommend it highly for those reasons. And for the reason that Annie Proulx is a great writer who should not be so marginalized.