Poet Stephen Brockwell hosts the conversation between Giller Prize nominee Michael Christie and Giller Prize winner Johanna Skibsrud on the challenge of imagining a future that doesn’t repeat the mistakes of the past.
Michael Christie’s
Greenwood
is a novel of inheritance, sacrifice, nature, and love that takes its structure from the nested growth rings of a tree and spans generations to tell the story of a family living and dying in the shadows cast by its own secrets. Beginning in 2038, as humanity struggles through the environmental collapse known as the Great Withering, we gradually move backwards in time to the years before the First World War, and to the events whose reverberations we see unfold over generations, as the novel moves forward into the future once more.
Johanna Skibsrud’s
Island
is the story of a revolution on an imaginary island whose socio-economic divide runs deep. Over the course of a day, the lives of two women—one a rebel, one a diplomat—will be forever changed. Part fantasy, part parable, Island explores essential questions of history and responsibility. It asks us to consider our legacies of cultural imperialism and the hidden costs of our wireless world.
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This book is why we read books. Why we need books. Wildly inventive, structurally elegant, deeply felt, and so very wise. Greenwood is Michael Christie’s best work ever, and that’s saying something.
