Finalist for the Kirkus Prize for Best Novel
\nA New York Times <\/i>Notable Book
\nA Washington Post<\/i> Best Book of the Year<\/b><\/p>\n
From the Pulitzer Prize-\u00ad\u00adwinning author of The Shipping News<\/i> and \u201cBrokeback Mountain,\u201d comes the New York Times<\/i> bestselling epic about the demise of the world\u2019s forests: \u201cBarkskins<\/i> is grand entertainment in the tradition of Dickens and Tolstoy\u2026the crowning achievement of Annie Proulx\u2019s distinguished career, but also perhaps the greatest environmental novel ever written\u201d (San Francisco Chronicle<\/i>).<\/p>\n
In the late seventeenth century two young Frenchmen, Ren\u00e9 Sel and Charles Duquet, arrive in New France. Bound to a feudal lord for three years in exchange for land, they become wood-cutters\u2014barkskins. Ren\u00e9 suffers extraordinary hardship, oppressed by the forest he is charged with clearing. He is forced to marry a native woman and their descendants live trapped between two cultures. But Duquet runs away, becomes a fur trader, then sets up a timber business. Annie Proulx tells the stories of the descendants of Sel and Duquet over three hundred years\u2014their travels across North America, to Europe, China, and New Zealand\u2014the revenge of rivals, accidents, pestilence, Indian attacks, and cultural annihilation. Over and over, they seize what they can of a presumed infinite resource, leaving the modern-day characters face to face with possible ecological collapse.<\/p>\n
\u201cA stunning, bracing, full-tilt ride through three hundred years of US and Canadian history\u2026with the type of full-immersion plot that keeps you curled in your chair, reluctant to stop reading\u201d (Elle<\/i>), Barkskins<\/i> showcases Proulx\u2019s inimitable genius of creating characters who are so vivid that we follow them with fierce attention. \u201cThis is Proulx at the height of her powers as an irreplaceable American voice\u201d (Entertainment Weekly<\/i>, Grade A), and Barkskins<\/i> \u201cis an awesome monument of a book\u201d (The Washington Post<\/i>)\u2014\u201cthe masterpiece she was meant to write\u201d (The Boston Globe<\/i>). As Anthony Doerr says, \u201cThis magnificent novel possesses the dark humor of The Shipping News<\/i> and the social awareness of \u2018Brokeback Mountain.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Finalist for the Kirkus Prize for Best Novel A New York Times Notable Book A Washington Post Best Book of the Year From the Pulitzer…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":14366,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","book_status":[],"book_genre":[],"class_list":["post-14365","book","type-book","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myriad.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/book\/14365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/myriad.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/book"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/myriad.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/book"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myriad.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14365"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myriad.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myriad.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"book_status","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myriad.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/book_status?post=14365"},{"taxonomy":"book_genre","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myriad.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/book_genre?post=14365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}