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Barkskins

By: Annie Proulx
Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
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Publisher's Summary

From Annie Proulx, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Shipping News and Brokeback Mountain, comes her masterpiece, 10 years in the writing - an epic, dazzling, violent, magnificently dramatic novel about taming the wilderness and destroying the forest, set over three centuries.

In the late 17th century, two illiterate woodsmen, Rene Sel and Charles Duquet, make their way from Northern France to New France to seek a living. Bound to a feudal lord, a seigneur, for three years in exchange for land, they suffer extraordinary hardship, always in awe of the forest they are charged with clearing, sometimes brimming with dreams of its commercial potential.

Rene marries an Indian healer, and they have children, mixing the blood of two cultures. Duquet travels the globe and back, starting a logging company that will prosper for generations.

Proulx tells the stories of the children, grandchildren, and descendants of these two lineages, the Sels and the Duquets, as well as the descendants of their allies and foes, as they travel back to Europe, to China, to New England, always in quest of a livelihood or a fortune or fleeing stunningly brutal conditions - accidents, pestilence, Indian attacks, the revenge of rivals.

In this feat of astonishing imagination, Proulx's inimitable genius is her creation of characters who are so vivid - in their greed, lust, vengefulness, sorrow, compassion, and hope - that we follow them with fierce attention. Annie Proulx is one of the most formidable writers of our time, and Barkskins is the story she has been writing all her life: a magnificent American novel.

©2016 Annie Proulx (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Critic Reviews

Praise for Annie Proulx: "One of the greatest American writers." ( Independent)
"A sublimely good writer." ( Daily Telegraph)
"It is hard to think of any living writer who deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Dickens, with the exception of Proulx." ( New Statesman)
"Proulx's prose is monumental." ( Observer)
"Like a mystic seeing the transfigured universe, she recreates the beauty of ordinary things." ( Independent on Sunday)
"Ms. Proulx writes with all the brutal beauty of one of her Wyoming snowstorms." ( Wall Street Journal)
"Annie Proulx is a true original. She has a shrewd understanding of people, a strong feeling for landscape and a wry sense of humour rather like Mark Twain's." ( Los Angeles Times)
"Artful, eloquent, wondrous." ( Boston Globe)

What listeners say about Barkskins

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

MAsterpiece! Proux's life work complete.

Revelatory and frighteningly relevant to all cultures and societies, this
epic is an artwork beyond imagination.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

a Saga

some good characters, but overall it's the innocent natives verse the nasty invaders of North America

I like her works

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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An amazing saga

This book is poetry. The writing is strong and evocative but it is so long covering hundreds of years. ... Hundreds of characters ... Hundreds of stories. An important over-arching story of man's greed and destruction with small shoots of hope.

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1 person found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Worth every minute of listening...

Annie Proulx never fails to deliver. Barkskins is brilliant read/listen, highly recommended if you enjoy epic stories and Robert Petkoff was a pleasure to the ears.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

a disappointment

This book seems really sprawling and disjointed. Its baffling, it seemed to try to address too many issues…everything from environmental vandalism, sexism, raciscm, colonialism …. to incest? an ambitious project and didn't quite meet the mark. I really didn't feel connected to ..or particularly like ….. any of the characters. A waste of my time really.

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1 person found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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What a journey

How many generations did it cover? Really recommend. Although how the writing of the first generation survived is a little far reaching.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Great

As i read it i wondered if any of it was based on fact interesting story

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    5 out of 5 stars
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brilliant!

top 3 audio books i have ever listened to. the story and narration are second to none. i highly recommend it.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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depressing and dull

The worst audio experience I have ever had. 300 years of suffering, greed and destruction of the natural world, and mercilessly boring. Awful!!!

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    1 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

boring

I did not finish the story did not capture my attention, very slow and dry

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1 person found this helpful

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