Greenwood

I absolutely loved reading this book; could not recommend it enough!

I stumbled upon this book at a small souvenir store in Jasper National Park in Alberta, Canada. What caught my attention at first was how beautiful the book is. The cover is beautiful, and the side of the book shows the cross-section of a tree (hard to describe, but it was just beautiful). I didn't end up buying the book at first, but I realized that this specific edition is the Canadian version, and I wouldn't be able to find it back in the US. So the next day, I went back to the store and bought it.

The story itself is chefs kiss. It's follows four generations of the Greenwood family and the format of the book is incredible. At the beginning of the book, you'll see a picture of the cross-section of the tree where each ring corresponds to a year. The book is told in the “same format”, we start with the outer ring (the year 2038), then move to the iner rings (2008, 1974, 1934, and 1908), then back out to the other side of the outer rings. It sounds cheesy and strange, but the way Michael Christie executes this is just perfect. At the beginning of the book, you hear bits and pieces about Jake Greenwood's family, and as you go back in years you start to discover more about Jake's family tree and how everything is tagled together (like the roots of a tree in a forest). The characters in each generation of the family are well-developed and complex, and at a certain point I just couldn't put this book down.

I also love how this book touches on the environmental damage that humans cause. As the book begins, you hear about an environmental catastrophe known as the “Great Withering,” and you hear about how humans around the world have trouble breathing due to the air pollution. All the characters in this book have a strong relationship to nature too, albeit in very different ways.

All in all... this book is simply fantastic. 10/10 would recommend.