Barkskins

Barkskins
ISBN: 9780008191764
Publication Date: 16 June 2016

In the late seventeenth century two penniless young Frenchmen, Rene 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. Rene 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.

Review by Caroline Baum

At its most powerful fiction can take you into an unfamiliar world, and make you care about the people who live in it. As Proulx did so memorably in The Shipping News . Her latest work is monumental, as imposing and daunting as the giant redwoods of California. I mention those towering trees because it is they, or rather forests, that are her subject here. And if that sounds unexciting, think again.

Think of a magnificent, majestic project ...