Reader Score
89%
89% of readers
recommend this book
Critic Reviews
Good
Based on 8 reviews on
Longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize - "A rugged, riveting novel . . . This superb family saga will satisfy fans of Richard Powers's The Overstory."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"There are plenty of visionary moments laced into [Christie's] shape-shifting narrative. . . . Greenwood penetrates to the core of things."--The New York Times Book Review
It's 2038 and Jacinda (Jake) Greenwood is a storyteller and a liar, an overqualified tour guide babysitting ultra-rich vacationers in one of the world's last remaining forests. It's 2008 and Liam Greenwood is a carpenter, sprawled on his back after a workplace fall, calling out from the concrete floor of an empty mansion. It's 1974 and Willow Greenwood is out of jail, free after being locked up for one of her endless series of environmental protests: attempts at atonement for the sins of her father's once vast and violent timber empire. It's 1934 and Everett Greenwood is alone, as usual, in his maple-syrup camp squat, when he hears the cries of an abandoned infant and gets tangled up in the web of a crime, secrets, and betrayal that will cling to his family for decades.
And throughout, there are trees: a steady, silent pulse thrumming beneath Christie's effortless sentences, working as a guiding metaphor for withering, weathering, and survival. A shining, intricate clockwork of a novel, Greenwood is a rain-soaked and sun-dappled story of the bonds and breaking points of money and love, wood, and blood--and the hopeful, impossible task of growing toward the light.
"I loved “Greenwood,” by Michael Christie. Really impressive on the line level. Extremely ambitious structurally. He swung for the fences and made contact for sure."
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Ahead of #CanadaReads on March 27-30, @keegolicious spoke to @CommotionCBC about why she was drawn to Greenwood by Michael Christie, plus how she's preparing for the competition — including how many times she's read each of her competitors' novels. https://t.co/efRwutUBlY
Literary Agency
Much to love in @NK_Adjei’s “By the Book” but we especially like this: “I loved “Greenwood,” by Michael Christie. Really impressive on the line level. Extremely ambitious structurally.He swung for the fences and made contact for sure” https://t.co/O07v1lIEQ8
"Christie skillfully teases out the details in a page-turner of a saga that complements sylvan books such as Sometimes a Great Notion and The Overstory, one that closes with Jake's realization that, tangled lineage and all, a family is less a tree than 'a collection of individuals pooling their resources through intertwined roots.' Beguilingly structured, elegantly written: ecoapocalyptic but with hope that somehow we'll make it."--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"A rugged, riveting novel . . . This superb family saga will satisfy fans of Richard Powers's The Overstory while offering a convincing vision of potential ecological destruction."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)