What a vast, all-encompassing book. It's amazing how it spans the entire existence of the USA within the story itself, and really the whole of the earth in concept. I'm very impressed by the sheer ambition of it, not to mention the execution. It wasn't that the story itself necessarily compelled me, as it moved relatively slowly, but perhaps that was the point. I still wanted to keep going with it and immerse myself like walking into a forest. It pointed out and reminded me so much about life, my own and humanity's.,But it also really made you dwell on nature and think about life on earth in general. I'll be honest that there were moments of author-indulgence, going into the details of a certain species of tree, or listing all of the streets of San Francisco, or whatever the case may be, but even though they didn't necessarily further the storyline they did help to build the world.
As the pages dwindled at the end I realized that in building a massive tale like this it would be nearly impossible to properly "wrap" it, similar to Neelay's conundrum about building Mastery so large that he then wasn't able to properly point it anywhere, but I still thought that the ending was acceptable. Bringing it right up to the present-day, and then spinning out the (almost) inevitable future of both humanity and the earth was the only thing that could be done really. Some heartbreak for sure but that's unavoidable. I almost feel as if the author was personally struggling with the environmental impact of mankind and may have even considered the extremist actions described in the book but then played the consequences out. Honestly, the book likely will have a bigger impact than any of those actions could - especially with the notoriety of being a Pulitzer Winner and Man Booker finalist. It surely made me question myself.. like the refrain of "when will it be enough?" "just a little more" made me think and really should make everyone. The smallness of us in the zoomed out picture of earth/time, and the unavoidable truth that we are selling out nature for an extra slice of... of what? And for such a short term gain. It's pretty disgusting so to point our faces in it via a book like this is a thing of beauty.
8/10
March-April 2020
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