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    Barkskins: Longlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction 2017
    Unavailable
    Barkskins: Longlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction 2017
    Unavailable
    Barkskins: Longlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction 2017
    Ebook847 pages18 hours

    Barkskins: Longlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction 2017

    By Annie Proulx

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2017

    NOW A MAJOR TELEVISION SERIES

    From Annie Proulx, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Shipping News and Brokeback Mountain, comes her masterwork: an epic, dazzling, violent, magnificently dramatic novel about the taking down of the world’s forests.

    In the late seventeenth century two penniless young Frenchmen, René Sel and Charles Duquet, arrive in New France. Bound to a feudal lord, a “seigneur,” for three years in exchange for land, they become wood-cutters – barkskins. René suffers extraordinary hardship, oppressed by the forest he is charged with clearing. He is forced to marry a Mi’kmaw woman and their descendants live trapped between two inimical cultures. But Duquet, crafty and ruthless, runs away from the seigneur, becomes a fur trader, then sets up a timber business. Proulx tells the stories of the descendants of Sel and Duquet over three hundred years – their travels across North America, to Europe, China, and New Zealand, under stunningly brutal conditions; the revenge of rivals; accidents; pestilence; Indian attacks; and cultural annihilation. Over and over again, they seize what they can of a presumed infinite resource, leaving the modern-day characters face to face with possible ecological collapse.

    Proulx’s inimitable genius is her creation of characters who are so vivid – in their greed, lust, vengefulness, or their simple compassion and hope – that we follow them with fierce attention. Annie Proulx is one of the most formidable and compelling American writers, and Barkskins is her greatest novel, a magnificent marriage of history and imagination.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins UK
    Release dateJun 14, 2016
    ISBN9780007290147
    Unavailable
    Barkskins: Longlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction 2017
    Author

    Annie Proulx

    Annie Proulx is the author of nine books, including the novel The Shipping News, Barkskins and the story collection Close Range. Her many honors include a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, and a PEN/Faulkner award. Her story ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ which originally appeared in The New Yorker, was made into an Academy Award-winning film. She lives in New Hampshire.

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    Reviews for Barkskins

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    • 5/5
      North American history, family sagas and dramas, research that must have taken years, and a message/warning about ourselves and our world. All written by a master wordsmith: what's not to love?
      This was certainly a reading time commitment, but even though it's over 700 pages, I don't know where cuts could have been made. The characters, places and times were meticulously described, yet were still interesting. There was one character who reminded me of Dagny Taggert, and gave me horrible flashbacks to reading Atlas Shrugged, but that is the only problem I had with the book.
      All in all, this was worth every minute of reading, and it will stick with me for a very long time.
    • 4/5
      I've loved Annie Proulx's writing since I read The Shipping News when it came out in the 90's, so what I'm about to say comes from a heavy heart: I did not like Barkskins. It's not that I don't recognize it as more of her admirably great writing, nor can I even comprehend the magnitude of the task she undertook to create a story that spanned over 300 years, two families, and (I lost count) maybe a hundred distinct characters. Wow. I mean... just: wow.But sadly, none of that made me like the book. I get the theme. Trees=good. Tree cutting down=bad. I'm 100% on board with that. And the other theme? White men did well in the booming years of the new country while natives did not. I think that was the other theme, anyway. Yes, I completely agree. Atrocities abounded amongst the natives and white men were the culprits. Again, 100% onboard. But what was the point?Spanning all of those centuries, bouncing back and forth between the two bloodlines, every chapter (practically) focusing on different characters... I barely got interested in one set before having to move onto another. And nothing really tied the whole thing together, ever. Except for the trees.Did I miss something? I felt to me like a collection of short stories all linked by a couple threads, some stories longer than others, for sure, but that's about it. The rise and fall of one character rarely had anything to do with anybody else in the novel.Again, massive effort and what a phenomenal amount of work it must have been. For that alone (and the fact that her writing is sublime) I'll give it a positive rating. But sadly, for me at least, it wasn't worth the effort to read. If I could go back and give myself some advice, it would be to skip this one.
    • 4/5
      Loved this book when I started it, but less so as it went along. Beautifully written, as you would expect from Annie Proulx and brilliant in concept, but too long in my opinion. Or maybe there were too many characters. In any event, I didn't connect emotionally as much as with her previous work.
    • 5/5
      What an extraordinary book. It encompasses the history of the major North American forests from the 17th century to the present day, and combines this with two loosely connected family stories. This ought to be too complex and ambitious to work, but for me it got more compulsive the more I read.At the start of the book we meet two poor Frenchmen, Rene Sel and Charles Duquet, who are contracted to work for a settler from a French aristocratic family in a forest in New France. Duquet runs away while Sel remains loyal, and is persuaded to marry a Mi'kmaw Indian woman who has been contracted as a cook. Duquet is an ambitious wheeler dealer who starts a business empire which concentrates on logging, while Sel's family lead a marginal existence with the vestiges of the Mi'kmaw. Both families are followed all the way to the present day, and Proulx exposes the way in which the forestry industry destroyed most of America's primeval forests and most of the Indian tribes' homelands and sources of food. The book is full of memorable characters (Lavinia, the heiress to the Duquet empire in particular), but as in Proulx's earlier novel Accordion Crimes, most of their lives come to premature ends.For such a long book, this is surprisingly enjoyable, in fact it is among the best new American novels I have read in the last few years.
    • 5/5
      Epic.
      Harsh.
      Fascinating.
      And full of trees.
    • 5/5
      I listened to this book and perhaps that was not the best choice. I presume the printed version would have included a family tree which would have been helpful. This is a multi-generational family saga about the descendents of two indentured French servants who come to the New World in 1693. Their many children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren etc. have stories to tell but some times I forgot who was a child of whom or which generation a certain person belonged to. A family tree would have helped a lot.Charles Duquet and Rene Sel came to New France from Paris as indentured servants. They went to work for a man who was clearing land for a farm and so learned the craft of logging. Their stories diverged almost immediately. Charles Duquet ran away and got work in the fur trade eventually amassing quite a fortune. Rene Sel stayed with the master and eventually married his Micmac country wife, starting a family of mixed Indian and European heritage. The Sels stayed true to their aboriginal roots and barely eked out an existence. Charles Duquet started up a timber business in Maine after marrying a rich Dutch heiress and Anglicizing his name to Duke. His children grow the Duke and Sons family business by clear-cutting New England forests and expanding to other states. The daughter of one of the sons marries a Sel descendent, thus bringing the two families back together. The Sels are never acknowledged as descendants of Charles Duquet although their claim to his estate is as valid (or possibly more valid) than the children with the Duke name. As years of timber cutting take their toll on the environment some of the descendants on both sides start to have second thoughts about the practice. Is it too late to undo the damage done?This book may be a little too preachy for some but Proulx obviously feels strongly about the damage to the environment. Her condemnation of the timber industry is wrapped up in a fascinating 300 year history of the New World and peopled with some very interesting characters. I would recommend this book but probably you should read it, not listen to it.
    • 3/5
      At times, I felt I was plodding through this very thorough story of a First Nations family and a French family who came to North America. Through marriage their lives intertwined Through the story Proulx’s love for nature and Canada shine through. The novel deserves the accolades it has received, if for no other reason the detail about the lumber industry and the treatment of native peoples. Beginning in the 1600’s the multigenerational story ends in 2013. I love a big thick novel, and although this book held my interest, I didn’t find it as compelling as Michener’s Hawaii, perhaps because Proux is so adept at putting so much detail into a story.
    • 3/5
      I felt this book was far too long. While I typically enjoy a multi generational story, this just dragged on for too long. It seemed like the author realized it was going on for far too long and then all of a sudden after introducing several new characters (ver briefly) she wrapped it up. And I don't exactly know what happened at the end. I re-read it a few times and just don't get it.
    • 5/5
      Many names to follow over nearly three centuries, but worth it. Several strong personalities in the two families are front and center. The reader on the CD was phenomenal. He did Dutch, English, French, and German accents that added a lot to the book.
    • 4/5
      Barkskins is one of those sprawling sagas (the print version is 756 pages!) that perhaps sprawls a bit too much for its own good. Or at least for my taste and convenience. I borrowed the kindle version from my library, and just when I got engaged with the story of the Duquets and the Sels, it had to be returned; I couldn't renew it because another reader was waiting for it. So I put another hold on it and had to wait two weeks before plunging back in, and by that time, I had begun to forget who was who. (The book follows the descendants of these two families over 300 years and down several branches.) So if you plan to read this book, just be aware that it is one HUGE door-stopper, so unless you're a speed reader, you'd be better off getting your own copy or waiting until interest dies down before downloading it from your local library.The story begins with two young men, Charles Duquet and René Sel, indentured to a Quebec timber company as cutters. In return for three years of labor, they are promised land of their own--a promise that the crafty Charles realizes will never be made good on. He runs away and eventually strikes it rich, first as an international fur trader and then as owner of a vast timber business. René sticks it out but fares less well: he is forced to wed a much older Mi'kmaw woman and dies a violent death.The story follows Charles, his descendants, and the Sel descendants over time and continents. Charles travels to Holland, where he finds a wife, and to China, where he purveys furs and secures new varieties of wood to bring back for sale on the North American continent. His wealth relies on the unbridled flattening of the land, clearing whole forests without conscience, believing that forests of Quebec and Maine are so vast that they will never be extinguished. (So yes, one theme of the book is ecological--and it gets more heavy-handed as the story moves into the 20th century.) His descendants expand the business into New Zealand and begin to consider the South American rain forest, by this time one of the last true forests remaining on earth. The Sels, on the other hand, suffer from a lack of identity: part white and part Mi'kmaw, they find they don't fit well into either community. The young drift back to the Mi'kmaw (who are becoming fewer in number as they are starved, infected, or outright murdered by whites taking over their land) and into relative poverty. Along the way, the two families intertwine, both in events and in blood, and add a third line, the German Breitsprechers.With so many characters and over so many years, I found it difficult at times to remember who everyone was and how they were connected. One positive aspect is the strong female characters: Mary, René's Mi'kmaw wife, a noted healer; Beatrix, one of the first to unite the two families by marriage; Lavinia, who takes over the lumber business with a ruthlessness worthy of Charles Duquet himself; and Sapranisia Sel, a PhD conservationist determined to save the healing Mi'kmaw plants and to reforest the land before it is too late.As stated above, the novel's main theme, in addition to the fates of two families, is the effect of the rapacious stripping of the North American forests, first in the northwest, then westward into Michigan and beyond. While it is an issue that concerns me, it becomes overly didactic in the last sections of the book as several young Sels and one particular Breitsprecher become dedicated conservationists. There are a lot of technical/scientific details that I found dull and digressive, and it seemed rather a shame that an intriguing family saga evolved into a bully pulpit for forest conservation.
    • 2/5
      Overly and unnecessarily long, depressing, and disjointed book. Of the dozens of underdeveloped characters, the one that I was most interested in died on page 58, leaving me to slog through 655 more pages. By that time, I couldn't keep track of who was related to whom and I didn't really care. The end was so strange that I wondered if Proulx wrote it first and then built a story around it.

      I will save you hours of frustration by telling you that the entire book was about bad people and deforestation. Do yourself a favor and read The Lorax instead. Just as moving and meaningful. Nice pictures too.
    • 4/5
      “...the newcomers did not care to understand the strange new country beyond taking whatever turned a profit. They knew only what they knew. The forest was there for them.”Annie Proulx had not released a novel, since The Shipping News. That was 14 years ago! Well, she delivers quite a chunkster here: A 700 page, multigenerational family saga, that focuses on two Frenchman and their descendants, spanning three hundred years. It mostly deals with the timber trade and begins in the deep wilderness of Canada and radiates from there and it even touches down in New Zealand and China.This book takes some patience, but the author's passion and knowledge of the subject, keeps the reader turning pages. There is also a strong environmental theme, running throughout, as we witness the plunder of our forests and other natural resources. This epic novel may not have hit the highs it intended but it is still a good and worthy read.
    • 4/5
      I'm a little late in getting to this book was determined as I loved The Shipping News. This one not as much. It's a family saga spanning about 300 years that began with 2 men emigrating from France to Canada as tree hewers. The men went their separate ways, one marrying a native Indian and the other becoming a well-to-do land baron himself. Their stories are told in alternating sections until at the end there is a connection in the present day. I kept reading because I was interested in the characters but also the history of the logging business and ruination of virgin land in Canada, the US and other countries was fascinating. Proulx's research appeared to be quite in-depth and also gave a focus to reforestation and climate change, etc.
    • 3/5
      A Cold Skimming Over a Terrible History

      The implied narrator of Annie Proulx's Barkskins speaks like a cold god who takes a terrible joy in abruptly killing off her children. On the one hand, this might be intentional, a way for Proulx to express her cold anger for the destruction of nature and the world if trees by rapacious and greedy hunans. On the othervhand, it seems a weakness in the telling. If the forest is the real protagonist, we never come to feel we care about it or experience it in a way that we can empathize. It is very hard to care for any of the characters since the implied narrator doesn't seem to. Often in Michener, the geography of a place seemed more alive than the people. And that worked. Yet in Michener we often still cared about the human actors, too. That alchemy does not happen in Barkskins, and I am left felling as empty as a barren field of stumps.
    • 4/5
      One of those great big sprawling family epics that are a delight to dig into and lose oneself in for a while. A fine read.
    • 3/5
      I found this book full of sanctimonious drivel, where the white man and Indians wise sages. Gets tiring after 600 pages especially when the writing is tepid.
    • 5/5
      Absolutely a great book. Love this author and loved this work of historical fiction. A family saga but also a history of the forest industry. Another book with a warning of how we don’t listen to our own detriment. This book covers a time period of 1693 to the present time and is global but primarily looks at the Canadian/American forests.
    • 3/5
      Overall, I enjoyed this book, but not as much as I've enjoyed others by Annie Proulx (The Shipping News; Brokeback Mountain). The book is well written and really provides a sense of life in early North America, but I think Ms. Proulx tried to do too much in one novel. The character development often suffered...and to a lesser extent, so did the plot. Like many others LTers, I think this would have worked better as a trilogy....I'm thinking of Ken Follet's Century Trilogy as a comparison. One of the things that did come through very well (in addition to the environmental message) was the difficulty many Aboriginal people have in straddling two cultures. Some of Ms. Proulx's metis characters embraced their heritage; others tried to ignore it. All encountered challenges.The ending of the book was a disappointment...the character written about in the last chapter was a minor one and seemed like a bad choice to cap off 700+ pages. I would have preferred the story to end with Jeanne and Felix...possibly the end of a dynasty, possibly a new hope.
    • 5/5
      I'm not going to spend anytime trying to summarize any of the complexities of this novel. Figuring it out for yourself is a large part of why this novel is so good! If you've read any of Proulx's other works you will easily recognize her style in her marvelous passing descriptions, the twisting connections between characters, and the gruesome ends she tends to favor. If you haven't read any of her other works... this is a fantastic start to a Proulx binge.
    • 3/5
      Sprawling novel of two indentured servants of a Frenchman in "New France" in the 16th century and the generations of descendants spawned from these two men up until nearly present-day [2013], taking us all over the world. Main theme of the book is forests and logging, how the forests are denuded through greed, then finally forest management and replanting take hold. The two families lives are entwined -- one becomes owners of a lumber and logging company, the other, simple loggers--some of Indian descent.There was too much small detail through the lives of these people, but I appreciated the author's later emphasis on preserving our natural resource. I wish the author had placed the family trees--complicated as they were in the FRONT of the book.
    • 3/5
      Despite forewarning of heavy going,I found this an easy,entertaining read. Not so full of angst as her short stories and very like James Michener/ConradRichter. The ending is a bit sappy. She should lose the current generation . I expect most of us baby boomers feel like that. BAD AMERICANS for ravaging your natural resources and you are still at it.!
    • 1/5
      One of the very few books I didn't bother to finish.
    • 5/5
      Barkskins by Annie Proulx begins with the story of two broke Frenchmen , Rene Sel and Charles Duquet who come to Canada in the late 1600's as indentured servants, working for three years to earn their piece of land. Proulx then proceeds to track these two families for hundreds of years, while at the same time providing the reader with a rich background on the logging industry and the fall of the native Mi'kmaw tribe. This is an ambitious project and takes some dedication for the reader to track out the expanse of characters. Family trees for each of the characters help to some degree, but I would almost recommend to others to not worry so much about connecting them all, just let the story flow. Certain characters will stand out as the tale unfolds. In structure, this reminded me of a Michener novel where the characters are used to provide context for the historical events and to provide insight into the evolution of an area. Highly recommend to a dedicated reader. I admire the author's writing and learned quite a bit reading this wonderful novel.
    • 5/5
      In her sprawling novel Barkskins, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Proulx tells the story of the destruction of the great forests of North America and beyond, from the late 17th century to the present. The novel follows the descendants of two Frenchmen, Charles Duquet and René Sel, who immigrate to Canada to become woodcutters (barkskins) in the 1690’s. Duquet founds a timber company with ties around the world, while Sel marries a Mi’kmaw woman, whose descendants are torn between European and Indian values and life ways. In unforeseen ways, these 2 families intertwine over the years, and both entwine with the fate of the forests, from the eastern seaboard of North America to the kauri forests of New Zealand, and the Amazon jungles. Proulx writes beautifully of the mystery of nature, as in this passage: “The moon was a slice of white radish, the shadows of incomparable blackness. The shapes of trees fell sharply on the snow, of blackness so profound they seemed gashes into the underworld” (23). With a sense of voraciousness, the newcomers hew away at this woodland world, believing it to be limitless; and believing in the civilizing good of clearing the land for farms and settlements. Trees are hacked, sliced, ground, burned and floated, and the clearing moves ever on to new regions and new species. Only much later do some begin to talk about reseeding and replacing what has been lost.Just as the trees are cut, so the human characters are cut down by an amazing array of accidents, illnesses, and catastrophes. And faster than the trees, they regenerate and give birth to the next generation. While it can be challenging to keep up with the many generations and relatives in the two families, a number of characters stand out: Charles Duquet himself (who changes his name to Duke), an ambitious and not very likeable man who is successful nevertheless. His descendant Lavinia Duke, a pioneering woman in the lumber industry, who meets her soul mate in Dieter Breitsprecher, an early proponent of reseeding and replanting. Outger Duke, a scientific enthusiast who abandons his half-Indian daughter, Beatrix, to return to Europe. Beatrix, wanting to understand her Native American roots, weds one of the Mi’kmaw Sels, and while at first they seem happy, neither finds in the other the wholeness they are looking for. A counterpoint of greed and generosity, dissatisfaction and hope runs through the novel, as many characters seem broken by their own histories and their struggles with nature. The novel ends with a new generation hoping to turn the tide of global warming. Sapatisia Sel, a descendant of both families, is aware of the coming dangers that we all face. “’A great crisis is just ahead,’ said one scientist”--in reference to the melting of the Greenland ice. “Sapatisia Sel thought he meant that they had been looking at human extinction. She wanted to cry out, ‘The forests, the trees, they can change everything!’ but her voice froze in her throat” (712).
    • 3/5
      Beautifully written, great characters.Saga over many years of two main families and their descendents.It is such a pleasure to open the pages of a novel as well written as this. There are other, fun, novels to read but when I find one like this it is a rarity and I am thrilled.If you've read Ken Follett novels and liked them, you will probably like this book too.
    • 4/5
      An epic, Micheneresque multi-generational tale of two families and the great boreal forests of North America. The ending felt forced and abrupt, but after 700 pages I'm sure it was difficult to figure out how to stop. The interview that came along with the Indiespensable version noted that she had to cut more than 200 pages from her final draft, and unfortunately that probably contributed to the so-so finish.
    • 5/5
      I had vowed never again to read Proulx because she's so depressing. The trick to reading her is never to expect anything good to happen to anyone, so if someone actually manages to scrape a small particle of joy from life you won't be disappointed when it's snatched away. This time Mother Earth even has to suffer, since the book is about generations of a logging family. It's 700 pages long but worth the investment.
    • 5/5
      Long and sweeping, Barkskins begins in New France, when 2 French indentured servants—Charles Duquet and Rene Sel—arrive at their place of employment. It's 1693, they are deep in the woods, both illiterate, and there is no oversight to their treatment. Duquet runs and disappears. Sel stays, unafraid of hard physical labor, and is forced to marry his contract-holder's Miqmaq servant.And the next 700 pages trace their descendants' lives and fortunes, ups and downs, in Canada and the US and around the world.Excellent.
    • 4/5
      Proulx has such a welcoming writing style. Her characters come immediately to life. This novel is a sad story of loss: loss of the forest, loss of identity but not loss of some hope. I was struck at how quickly death comes to both the trees and the characters.
    • 5/5
      This long saga of two families and of the forest they conquer is historical fiction at its best. In the 1600's, two indentured servants arrive in New France to work clearing the woods. Charles Duquet escapes from the harsh master. Rene Sel remains. This fascinating and well-researched novel, follows the two families: the Sels, and the Dukes (Charles found it advantageous to Americanize the family name). Their paths couldn't be more different yet are always intertwined. Rene Sel marries a native woman and his offspring must straddle the white man's world and that of the Indian. Charles does whatever it takes to find wealth. Charles' ambition takes him around the world, but it is lumber that provides the way to riches. He marries a French wife but also adopts three orphan sons in order to have descendents. The story alternates between the descendents of the Dukes as they rise to great wealth, and the Sels as they labor in the dangerous forests of North America. "Barkskins" is history, it is family drama, and it is a story of man's affect on the environment which in turn affects the living conditions of man. A beautifully written book reminiscent of James Michener. Highly recommended for anyone loving historical fiction.