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"Many of the oaks had fallen or were close to death. The old wood was dying on its feet."

"From the old wood came an ancient melancholy...They, too, were waiting: obstinately, stoically waiting, and giving off a potency of silence. Perhaps they were only waiting for the end; to be cut down, cleared away, the end of the forest, for them the end of all things" - Lady Chatterley's Lover,pg.68

Eerie the way thimgs echo

Quite astonishingly written, especially so for a Guardian journalist, who tend to have the emotional imagination of fleas (though Monbiot, along with Owen Jones, have always been leagues beyond what that newspaper can provide). But too much bloviating travelouges and autobio crap. I dont care for nature writing, i find it too wishy washy, and the forays into a kind of spiritual quasi mysticism is eye rolling.

The writing is consistently excellent. But christ its boring. Theres no plot at all and an awful lot of waffling. Immediately apparent: the way the romance is becoming a microcosmic exemplar of the wider destruction of Edwardian norms; the terror of Bolshevism, sci fi visions of a dystopian future straight out of Zamyatin and Huxley, the ruins of the interwar economy. Laced with class and gender taboos.

Just shoot me. Honestly, dors this waffle ever end?

I think ive found the cure for insomnia - give someone any novel published before 1900. Christ almighty this tedious, mind numbingly boring stuff. Unending constant waffling, endless, constant tedious fixation on details at the expense of narrative. Its the literary equivalent of the runs - it just streams out without form or pause. Fuck me

Whats immediately apparent reading this is how similar the structure of finance is to the mafia, to the point that, if this was fiction, youd accuse it off plagarising Goodfellas. We have the ingrained ultra masculine bonding, the excessive dinners and drinks, the way you earn your status through a big trade and establishing clout, the way getting "fucked" is an equivalen for getting whacked.

I'm *amazed* this novel came out in 1979. The descriptions of working a sucession of insecure temp jobs through an agency, existing on the edge of precarity. I mean, this could have been written fucking yesterday! Its also astonishingly modern in its dialouge, its feel, its character interactions. My only gripe is I cant quite believe a 20th century black woman would adjust as quickly as she has to her situation tbh.

The prolonged section describe the child slave/sex trade are just awful.

It feels to me to be a narrative devoid if a story at the moment. Its endless backstory just lumped on endlessly. Atwood was clearly borm to write, theres no doubting the elegant swiftness and beauty of her prose. But i find myself disengaged from the overall thing; the post apocalyptic aspects seem almost banal compared to some other attempts.

I do think the book peaked somewhat when the civil war ended. That long stretch of chapters is simply fantastic; astonishingly written, engaging, powerful, and brutally honest and true at the costs of revolution even to the truest believers. Still marvelling at the passages of singular beauty, the dense, interwoven character narratives woven like fine silk, the gorgeous scene setting. But perhaps a tad repetitive now