Michael Christie’s novel, Greenwood (McClelland & Stewart), examines the legacies of five generations of the Greenwood family in their respective contexts (one being the appropriately-named Greenwood Island), as environmental depletion and desecration is being ratcheted to new levels. Christie uses the image of concentric tree rings to show the layering of past actions and memories; he also suggests that the generations in a family are like forests, since, though seemingly isolated from each other, they can bridge space and time, just as trees in a forest can “talk” to one another via microscopic mycelium woven into root systems in the soil. Greenwood is dominated by exposition, not just through textbook explanations of forest ecology, but also through a generous use of character backstory, bluntly incorporated into the text. Unfortunately, Christie’s writing falls a bit short in the details. Early in the novel, Christie takes a poke at colonialism by having a lawyerly fellow mention in passing that, prior to European settlement, Greenwood Island belonged to both the Penelakut Tribe and the Haida Nation. But the Penelakut are a Coast Salish people from the southern Gulf Islands, while the Haida hold their traditional territories hundreds of kilometres away, in Haida Gwaii and southern Alaska. Later, Christie mentions that Greenwood Island is said to have had an older name, Qanekelak, a reference to Heiltsuk mythology. But Christie situates his fictional Greenwood Island near Port Alberni, while the Heiltsuk people’s traditional territories are on BC’s central coast, just north of Vancouver Island. Occasionally, Christie slips into stereotypes, like perpetuating Vancouver’s Chinatown as an opium ghetto. There’s also this absurdity: “With the rags wrapped over the child’s face, Jake can’t accurately discern its gender or ethnicity. Indonesian perhaps, maybe Pakistani. The child’s exposed forehead is the same faint brown as her own.” I know it’s fiction, but seriously: what the heck?
