Comment

Apr 15, 2017nrobocop_nwpl rated this title 4.5 out of 5 stars
Overall I felt more impressed by this book than ~swept up~ by it. It was a long read and it was hard to get particularly attached to any of the characters. However, it is one of those books that lingers. By providing such a sweeping perspective its emotional gut-punch isn't in the individual lives of the characters, it is in the life of the forest and it does an amazing job of unpacking the problems of ideology in sustaining a living world. Its treatment of First Nations, particularly the Mi'kmaq peoples, is profoundly affecting. It is one of those rare books that affects your thinking (even if you're already sympathetic to its cause) not because it moralizes, but because it traces the changes in the land and the evolution of attitudes and ideologies over what very quickly starts to feel like a remarkably short period of time.