If I were smart, I would have taken a photo of this book in the beautiful vistas of Whistler, B.C., where I purchased it. It wouldn’t have been entirely accurate, since Sue Goyette’s Monoculture takes place in Nova Scotia—but the sheer magnificence of the trees would have justified it, I assure you.
Monoculture is a rare occurrence of a book. It’s an inventive project that blurs the line between narrative and poetry. The atmosphere of the text is masterful and the sense of reverence it inspires is unparalleled by anything in my recent memory. It’s a book that reaches into your heart and forces it to pump, a book that breaks your heart like a twig, a book that makes you feel the bittersweet sap of the universe on your tongue.
To be more precise, Monoculture is a work of speculative almost-non-fiction. The book is a compilation of comments left on the website for Nova Scotia’s final surviving forest. Interspersed in the onslaught of comments are a few more standard poems that serve as a kind of chapter break. Admittedly, you have to suspend your disbelief a little bit because nobody online is nearly as poetic or articulate as the people in this comments section.
Goyette’s project is perfectly wrought. Consider how the book is about a vast forest where the visitors routinely get lost. Forests are comprised of all the individual trees; you only see fragments of the forest and not the full picture. Setting up the book as a comment section emulates that same idea: you get an idea of the vastness of the forest, but only get these brief glimpses into human experience.
The structure of the book helps to enhance the atmosphere of the text, which continually shifts. The opening section of the book offers a haunting and ominous kind of tone. There are references to the trees speaking and moving, leaning in to hear you better. I’m paraphrasing, but one of the reviewers says that the trees breathe along with you. It’s almost like the haunted house of Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves, unsettling you as if it were alive.
Incidentally, while I read the first section, I had a thought that the forest is described like a living being. The irony of the phrase should be immediately recognizable: forests are alive. But we forget. Goyette does something truly special where she defamiliarizes trees; yet, in becoming less familiar to us, they become more alive. There’s a moment where Goyette makes this a little more explicit. One of the commenters notes how “it seems the birds are the fire alarms. Or the ‘canaries,’ if you know what I mean” (30). It’s a strange inversal where we co-opted the idea of canaries as a tool and here birds reclaim the shorthand.
The first part of the book balances a sense of dread with a sense of wonder. That manifests itself with respect to peoples’ identities. Consider, for example, the way people carve their initials into trees. One of Goyette’s commenters says, “There’s no way I’m carving anything but maybe an anchor just to show I’d been there and that I’m solid. That tree would snap my initials like chicken bones” (11). The simile here presents the fragility of identity. Trees have the power to destroy you; you’re adrift and just trying to hang on to your solidity in the face of their majesty. Almost in response to this post, another commenter says, “I didn’t appreciate losing my name. None of us did” (11). There’s a loss of identity in the face of the forest, and the visitors could only remember their names by “think[ing] in rhymes. Caravan, strawberry jam, flan. When they all yelled Dan, [he] nearly lost [his] shit” (11). In that sentence, the pronoun “they” is ambiguous. It might be the people visiting the forest together, but to me it is far more likely that it is the trees themselves yelling back.
When the trees yell back, the humans respond by “los[ing] [their] shit.” In fact, there’s a motif in the book where the trees are treated like drugs. People have these phenomenal experiences by touching their tongue to sap or breathing the air. It elevates the experience to a spiritual one. In one scene, a commenter narrates the following:
“There was definitely a colour code but we couldn’t crack it. My friend ate a red leaf to taste its spine. He said its blood is a direct descendent of impermanence which freaked him out. He’d never heard that word before and it was hard to explain it to him without getting too dark about death, you know? He had to eat two yellow leaves and some pine toothpicks to calm down. It was the most intense Saturday afternoon I’ve had in years. Won’t be imbibing in forest for a while, that’s for sure. Shit gets real in there.” (29).
First of all, “my friend ate a red leaf to taste its spine”---what a turn of phrase!! We then see the destabilizing impact of consuming the forest. The lack of an article for “imbibing in forest” extends the drug-like metaphor that many of the narrators find resonant.
Whether drug-metaphor-induced or not, though, the forest routinely prompts deep thinking and existential considerations from its visitors. Some of my favourite moments are the poetic reflections people have following quiet moments that fill and break your heart at the same time. There are a few people that admit to taking things from the forest and their insecurities about it are incredibly touching. For instance, one narrator says, “I stole some leaves and an acorn but felt so bad that I brought them back. Now I’m worried that I left them in the wrong place and they don’t know how to find their way home” (29). That sense of tenderness the forest inspires is what this book aims to cultivate.
I’ll mention just a few more moments here to illustrate the power of this book. A commenter explains his daughter’s experience as follows: “My daughter found this tree with one leaf just hanging on for dear life. She stayed with it for a couple of hours. She said she sang to it. That makes me so proud. Anyway, she’s going to do a project about it and asked me what the name of that moment is when it finally broke away. I still get choked up thinking about it” (34). That dug deep inside me. I have a soft spot for trying to find a word for particular minutiae. I don’t know if Goyette invented this moment, but it feels so genuine, so authentic to a childhood experience and it just crushes me. In another scene, a man sings to a porcupine as it dies in the road. The wife leaves the comment describing it and notes how he rarely opens up at all and to witness this tenderness is such a rare moment. Rarely, commenters respond to one another in the book, but this one is given special attention—someone later comments on it.
The voice of the text is deeply poetic. Of course, you might expect lush imagery for describing the forest. Several passages describe the scenes beautifully: “It was the accessories that got me. The tiny stones and those white flowers, perfectly strewn: a deserted photo shoot. Or a meditation on décor” (36). The way the humans interact with the forest is equally poetic, and the lack of backstory adds to the beauty. For instance, we don’t know the backstory here, but one narrator says, “I had brought a lock of her hair. I don’t know what possessed me but someone had told me that birds like our hair for their nests. It’s still so soft and curls perfectly for a small egg. I left it for them to find, with a pink-flecked rock to guard it” (36). We can only imagine what has prompted this moment, and that brief glimpse is beautiful.
Actually there’s a poem from pages 23-24. It’s a kind of list poem that hints at a series of narratives. Each line begins “The last thing she said was” and what follows is crushing. Some are beautiful, and some are devastating: “The last thing she said was just for a couple of hours, so I can hear myself think” (24), “The last thing she said was that blue looks really good on you” (24), “The last thing she said was I’m so sorry I’m not better at this” (24). I can’t articulate just how powerful it is to read a full poem that begins every line with this. The intimation of narrative is so alluring, so beautifully tender.
Alongside the tenderness, there’s also an impulse towards the political. Partway through, there’s a lot of discussion surrounding the normalization of clearcutting. The lattermost section of the book is most explicitly political, lamenting the loss of the trees at the hands of greedy industrialists. There’s a kind of anger in the book that emerges between moments of quiet reflection and the magnificence of the beauty.
I like the way that people find themselves more connected to nature throughout the book. There are several moments where people take on tree-like qualities. Now that I think of it, there are several sections where trees remind people of photographs of their loved ones and wonder how the trees can capture their essence so well. That in itself is pretty beautiful, but I think the most beautiful example of reverse-personification is as follows: “My voice hibernates in my hands mostly” (135). Simply gorgeous.
As you’ve likely inferred at this point, Monoculture has a grip on me. It’s one of the most stunning books I’ve read this year. There’s a sensation that cannot be put into words. The book is a seed in the core of my heart bursting open. It’s a painful, gorgeous, tender, dreadful, magnificent work that actually makes me emotional to think about. I don’t know how it has had that effect.
That last paragraph might well have been a comment on the last forest in Nova Scotia. Sue Goyette really got it right.
I can’t recommend this enough.
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