I liked this book. The New York Times also liked it a lot. The Washington Post was a bit more cynical, but also on point. “Michael Christie’s second novel, Greenwood, makes it clear that we really want 500-page novels about trees…but even if you’re suffering from what you might call Literary Tree Fatigue, Christie’s novel is worth reading.” Careful, wouldn’t want to sprain your praise muscle.
To be fair, I did think Greenwood would much resemble Richard Powers’ The Overstory, the first third of which I adored for its lyrical tree praise and the last two-thirds of which drove me nuts for its pedantic and swampy character play. Greenwood also pulls a switcheroo, but it’s a much more coherent and enjoyable journey than Overstory. The switch is that the novel starts as a semi-dystopian, speculative, near-future narrative set in a world of ecosystem collapse. That’s what I signed up for, and that’s what I got in the beginning, with Jacinda “Jake” Greenwood, serving as a forest guide to the Greenwood Arboreal Cathedral, a coastal British Columbia refuge where some of the world’s last tall trees can be experienced—though only experienced by the few people who can afford it. Those people are preciously called Pilgrims by Holtcorp, the company that owns the island.
“On the Mainland, the Pilgrims live in opulent, climate-controlled towers that protect them from rib retch—the new strain of tuberculosis endemic to the world’s dust-choked slums, named after the cough that snaps ribs like kindling, especially in children—yet they still arrive at the Cathedral seeking something ineffable that’s missing from their lives. They’ve read that article about the health benefits of shinrin-yoku, the Japanese term for “forest bathing.” They’ve listened to that podcast about how just a few hours spent among trees triples your creativity. So they’re here to be healed, however temporarily, and if Jake weren’t mired in student debt and hadn’t embarked on such a pitifully unmarketable career as botany, she’d gladly be one of them.”
I very much wanted to follow Jake on her journey, especially when her lawyer ex-boyfriend shows up with the news that through a quirk of history and family, she might very well be the owner of this island and its rare and fragile forest, not Holtcorp. Release the hounds!
Unfortunately, for my end-days expectations at least, Greenwood’s dystopia is only the bracket for the beginning and ending of the story. In between is a twisting, gnarled rootball of family narrative. Christie takes us back to 1908, 1934, 1974, and 2008, as we get to know Jake’s father, mother, and other forebears, all of whom are fascinating, complex creatures, and, with the space they’re given, much more interesting than Jake. Of particular note is Everett, a World War I veteran with PTSD, who finds an infant in the woods of eastern Canada, where he poaches sap to make maple syrup. The baby, a girl, might be the daughter of the land owner R.J. Holt, who’s a dick, and instead of handing the baby over to authorities, Everett decides to keep her, and he goes on the run. Holt sends his fixer to find Everett, and the pursuit unfolds over years.
So, yeah, not a dystopian novel. Instead, Greenwood is a book about family, and family as destiny, and whether you can run from that destiny, or whether you want to. There’s lots of beautiful writing about wood and nature, some outlandish twists, one subplot that acts as speed bumps and another as superhighway. Greenwood didn’t win the Pulitzer like The Overstory, but in my view it’s a much more enjoyable read from start to finish—where we rejoin Jake at long last.