Forest Green
By Kate Pullinger
Penguin Random House
Have you ever wondered about the back story of a homeless person you’ve seen on the streets? Who were they as a child? What brought them to this? Why doesn’t their family help them out?
Wonder no further, for author Kate Pullinger has written a beautiful, compassionate story about just such a person. And, even better, the story is set in British Columbia with its forestry industry as the backdrop.
The book begins with 1995, when Arthur Lunn is in rough shape, living on the streets of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. He’s passed out and smells like piss when an ambulance picks him up on a snowy night.
But Arthur’s story begins in 1934 in Penticton, where he is a boy of seven, intrigued by a “jungle” of homeless, jobless hobos who have taken up camp nearby during the Great Depression. His curiosity gets him into a spot of trouble and he experiences a trauma that will haunt him the rest of his days.
Pullinger’s writing of the seven-year-old boy is masterful, for perceptive readers will note that Arthur, who is clearly a fun-loving, rambunctious youngers, also has a streak of anxiety that predates the trauma. That trait will also be with him forever.
I don’t want to give away too much, but suffice it to say that the story continues throughout Arthur’s life, with stints in the Second World War and the B.C. logging industry, ending in modern times. It’s sparingly written, in a way that makes it easy to read, but also profound. I gobbled it up in one day on the Labour Day long weekend.
The author grew up in British Columbia, but now lives in Bath, England, where she is a professor of creative writing. Her unforgettable 2014 novel Landing Gear was about a stowaway who literally falls out of an airplane’s landing gear onto a woman in a grocery store parking lot. Another of her 10 novels, The Mistress of Nothing, won the 2009 Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction.
Forest Green reminds me a little bit of the novel Greenwood by Michael Christie, which I loved and reviewed here earlier this year. Both are Canadian, with a focus on British Columbia and the forest industry, and both include a look at men’s lives in the Great Depression.
The accuracy and depth of the characters – including the family dynamics – made me think that there must be some truth to the story, and, indeed, Pullinger says in the book’s acknowledgements that the story is loosely based on her family’s history. Anyone with a family will recognize the thoughts, emotions and actions imagined here in this riveting and all-too-human story.
To make sure you never miss one of Tracy’s book reviews, subscribe below.
Opmerkingen