Greenwood

One line takeaway

An epic family saga that stretches across four generations, exploring the interconnected relationships between people and the nature around them.

Snapshot

Greenwood by Michael Christie is an epic family saga that follows the Greenwood family across four generations, tracing their connection to forests, wealth, and environmental collapse from the past into a climate-ravaged future. The story shows how inheritance, exploitation, and care for the natural world shape both personal lives and collective survival.

What stands out to me about this book is how different it is from most novels that come out these days. The story has an almost everlasting quality to it, more like old Russian and American literature. It leaves a lingering taste after reading and resonates with me long after I’ve finished it.

Summary and review

This book was a fortunate disappointment.

Many people recommended Greenwood to me as a good dystopian novel. So I immediately wanted to jump on it as I’d been on a streak of reading dystopian and utopian novels at the time.

But about 50 pages in, I realized there’s nothing dystopian about this book. The core essence of the novel revolves around industrial greed, climate catastrophe, familial bonds, and hope.

I kept going anyway because the plot pulled me forward.

I wasn’t disappointed at all at the end of it, though I was expecting something entirely different.

The plot

The plot has a perfect balance. It’s a smart puzzle, but not too complex to overwhelm the reader. Structured like the rings of a tree, the novel traces a family’s journey from the future to the present to the past, and then back again, recounting the story of one family and their continuing connection to the place that brought them all together. Each generation inherits the mistakes made by those who came before them, and every member of the Greenwood family struggles with the legacy left by their parents.

“Time…..is not an arrow. Neither is it a road. It goes in no particular direction. It simply accumulates—in the body, in the world—like wood does. Layer upon layer. Light, then dark. Each one dependent upon the last. Each year impossible without the one preceding it. Each triumph and each disaster written forever in its structure.”

The characters

While the plot is captivating on its own, it’s the characters that really drew me in: an abandoned child who interrupts one’s quiet life in the trees; another who makes a living chopping down those same trees; a bitterness between a father who built an empire felling forests and his daughter who vows to protect them; a son who works in timber to escape his mother’s troubled upbringing; a daughter who fights to preserve the last trees in a world vanishing around her, all distilled into a thrilling page turner.

The writing style

Michael Cristie has perfected his novel by balancing his writing, as well as being articulate enough to paint the characters in enough prose so that the reader can visualize the magnitude and the realness of the characters, but also not overdoing it to prevent the reader from seeing the characters from afar but among them, especially in the early stages of the book when character development takes place.

‘Yet despite Meena’s strong opinions, she couldn’t be more different than Willow: she’s disciplined, rooted, slow-moving, thoughtful, and chemically conservative—a single glass of white wine is the most reckless inebriation she’ll ever submit to’.(page 62)

For the year’s remainder, he’ll laze by the brook, entertaining half-thoughts, watching seed pods and whirlers drift on the slow water. It’s lonely living at times, yet peaceful—and after a long life of toil and struggle, he feels deserving of such leisure. (page 105)

Final thoughts

Although the plot jumps between 2038 and 1908, the novel is carefully structured and elegantly written to hook the reader. The transition from one generation to another doesn’t disturb the flow of the story at all.

There are two reasons that compelled me to complete the book. The first is Everett Greenwood, who connects generations and has a character arc that grabbed me emotionally. The second is the hope that’s planted at the beginning of the novel in 2038.

The events from 1908 to 1934 reinforce the story more than any other timeline. The reader learns the story of a tragic train accident and how it ignited an epic family saga that expands for four generations into the future.

One is subject to much talk nowadays concerning family trees and roots and bloodlines and such, as if a family were an eternal fact, a continuous branching upwards through time immemorial. But the truth is that all family lines, from the highest to the lowest, originate somewhere, on some particular day. Even the grandest trees must’ve once been seeds spun helpless on the wind, and then just meek saplings nosing up from the soil.(page210)

All in all, Christie has created a story of survival and resilience that is rich with fascinating characters whose lives are entwined with those of trees.

Who should read it

Read this if you:

• want a multi-generational story that shows how individual choices influence across centuries, over generations.
• are interested in environmental collapse-based stories, explored through character and narrative, rather than arguments
• are thinking about inheritance—of land, wealth, trauma, and responsibility—and how it shapes our moral choices
• enjoy fiction that stretches through centuries with interesting characters
• enjoy and open to familiarize yourself with climate fiction novels

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