A fairly spoiler-free review of Barkskins

Barkskins by Annie Proulx

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


In the end, I'm giving this three stars. It is important for people to understand the impact we have had on the biome of Earth. In the very end, the book touches on that. What almost kept me from finishing was the interminable focus on the dry minutiae of the lives of Charles Duquet's progeny and descendents. This is one of those books where I breathed a sigh of relief when I finished, rather than one of satisfaction.

Now 2/3 finished. The characters still don't pull me in. I am horrified at the manner and frequency of many of their deaths, but the delivery of the events feels flat to me, the emotion of the survivors doesn't resonate. Having read other reviews, I notice that many people claim that the forest itself is a main character. If only Proulx had really made that a reality. Richer descriptions of the ecosystem and its struggle against the encroaching disease that was European loggers would have been very powerful.

So I'm about halfway through this, and I have to say it's a bit of a slog. I generally enjoy historical fiction, especially the multigenerational kind. This book just isn't grabbing me, and I'm 325 pages in! Were it not highly recommended by a friend, I'd probably have set it aside by now. While I do like the description of the "New" World and the logging industry which transformed it, The characters don't engage me. I can't put my finger on why, but they don't. The jumps in time feel arbitrary too, as if the author simply writes a little story about one time period and then jumps to the next, with only superficial continuity. Maybe the next 400 pages will change my mind. We shall see.



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