New York Times Bestseller A monumental novel about trees and people by one of our most “prodigiously talented” (The New York Times Book Review) novelists. An Air Force loadmaster in the Vietnam War is shot out of the sky, then saved by falling into a banyan. An artist inherits a hundred years of photographic portraits, all of the same doomed American chestnut. A hard-partying undergraduate in … A hard-partying undergraduate in the late 1980s electrocutes herself, dies, and is sent back into life by creatures of air and light. A hearing- and speech-impaired scientist discovers that trees are communicating with one another. These four, and five other strangers–each summoned in different ways by trees–are brought together in a last and violent stand to save the continent’s few remaining acres of virgin forest.
In his twelfth novel, National Book Award winner Richard Powers delivers a sweeping, impassioned novel of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of–and paean to–the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, The Overstory unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond, exploring the essential conflict on this planet: the one taking place between humans and nonhumans. There is a world alongside ours–vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.
The Overstory is a book for all readers who despair of humanity’s self-imposed separation from the rest of creation and who hope for the transformative, regenerating possibility of a homecoming. If the trees of this earth could speak, what would they tell us? “Listen. There’s something you need to hear.”
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This is not an easy read but it is a rewarding novel for anyone who is willing to think deeply about our environment. The second half of the book brings together most of the characters from the first half, whose separate stories converge in significant and meaningful ways. It’s a novel that educates about the life of trees in such a way that I, for one, will never take them for granted again nor see the destruction of forests as reversible.
Richard Powers is one of our most interesting novelists, and The Overstory is another fine addition to his oeuvre. You will never look at trees in the same way after reading The Overstory. The rich veins of information about psychology, sociology, and the lives and communication systems of trees add depth and meaning to the novel’s memorable characters and swashbuckling plot.
They say fiction cultivates empathy in readers. Usually it’s empathy for people. In The Overstory it’s empathy for trees. The book is a sprawling, rich story of human lives woven together by trees. It describes the natural world with a deep reverence and curiosity. There are parts that felt forced to me, but on the whole I found it lovely.
Powers does what I thought impossible–he’s written an engrossing, absorbing novel that doubles as a call to action.
This is a beautiful book, full of wonderful characters with memorable stories, and some breath-taking moments. The writing is poetic, compelling, and the story is one that should resonate with everyone in that it is about how we are destroying the trees, and thus the environment, on our planet. That makes it sound dry and boring, but it is the opposite: rich and full of insights into the human character.
This Pulitzer-prize winning novel is part epic and part fable, though it begins with what I’d characterize as a series of short stories about different families in which a tree has some significance. It’s about trees, yes; but it’s also about how humans have mistakenly come to see ourselves as the central figures in our narrative. Trees have lives and ways of communicating among each other that we are only beginning to understand … because we’re not looking and listening properly. So much has already been written about this book that I’m not going to try to explain it. But it’s a bighearted, ambitious book, very well-written, and it shifted the way I look at the world. I’d recommend to anyone.
An epic novel spanning decades about the role of trees in individual lives as well as the world at large. With dense prose and evocative characters, you’ll become immersed in the life of trees and will never look at them the same again. It’s not a fast read, so settle in. It will linger with you long after you finish the last page.
The Overstory by Richard Powers was on my TBR bookshelf and when I saw it was the November choice for the Now Read This online book club, sponsored by the PBS Newshour and the New York Times Book Review, I decided to participate.
In The Overstory, Powers gives readers nine characters whose stories entwine over the course of the novel. Each has an experience that alters their awareness, motivates them to resist the status quo, and for some, culminating in acts of eco-terrorism.
Trees, forests, ecosystems, nature–these are the stunning stars of the novel, that which gives meaning to our assorted human characters and spurs their community. They are described in gorgeous, vivid language.
It is a testament that this novel made me reconsider my personal choices. I have read nonfiction books about climate change, rising waters, the impact of animal farming, the ways we need to alter how we live. But this novel had me second-guessing my choices.
We are installing new carpeting and porcelain tile to repace vinyl tile and an awful maroon carpet. What environmental damage am I causing because I want a prettier home?
“We have a Midas problem. There’s no endgame, just a stagnant pyramiding scheme. Endless, pointless prosperity,” says the creator of an alternate reality online computer game. But he was talking to me and you.
I look at the paper towels and the paper napkins on my countertop and shudder. What about the very book I read, made of paper? Yes! It is recycled paper, saving 657 trees with the first printing! AND 614,962 gallons of water, 206,700pounds of greenhouse gas emissions, 62,925 pounds of solid waste. We CAN DO BETTER!
“The best arguments in the world won’t change a person’s mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story,” one of the characters states.
The Overstory is that kind of story. It can change your mind
The Overstory: An arboreal love story (and lament)
In The Overstory, Richard Powers has crafted an epic novel that stretches hundreds of years, culminating in a series of life-and-death environmental battles. But even more so, this is a novel about rediscovering the largest and oldest living creatures on our planet.
So many of the characters are alien to the trees they share the planet with until various events open their eyes. And they look. They smell. They see and feel the loss. And they act up.
The book could be used to teach a course on trees. And it should be used for just that purpose. I have books about trees — mostly identification. But identifying a tree is only step one. How does a tree relate to the creatures around it? How does it respond to insect attacks? How does it care for its siblings? And other species of trees? For example, the Douglas Fir, which we live among here in Southern Oregon, are called “giving trees” because the dying trees will send out nutrients to the Ponderosa Pines. Powers does an outstanding job of providing insights into beings we have only just begun to understand.
But there are oversights in the novel in regards to activism. While the novel addresses environmental activism in Oregon and elsewhere, the players are too often seen eating meat without any awareness of the irony of defending one living entity while eating another. I know that many of those activists who have served actual time behind bars for similar crimes are vegan. They don’t differentiate between protecting trees and protecting non-human animals. And it must be noted that millions upon millions of acres of forests have been cleared for the sole purpose of raising cows and sheep for human consumption.
In many ways I feel that this novel begins where Barkskins by Annie Proulx ends. And I highly recommend reading them in chronological order. And I’m not just talking about time but about awareness — our collective awareness that the planet is not some all-you-can-eat buffet, that the planet is, like us, finite and fragile. If you are not a “tree hugger” before reading these two books, you will be afterwards.
And I think what I like most about this book are the voices he gives those who have no (human) voice. Such as: All the ways you imagine us–bewitched mangroves up on stilts, a nutmeg’s inverted spade, gnarled baja elephant trunks, the straight-up missile of a sal–are always amputations. Your kind never sees us whole. You miss the half of it, and more. There’s always as much belowground as above.
Like the trees Powers writes so beautifully about, this book towers above us and nurtures us. And, I certainly do hope, it motivates us to do more. And quickly.
NOTE: This review was first posted in https://www.EcoLitBooks.com
This is a great book. The perpetual nature of its thought provoking theme is profound. It should be required reading for all senior high school kids.
This is a must read for everyone alive today. I sometimes searing insight into how humans are abusing other living things in the name of profit, this will change the way you look at trees forever
Definitely one of the most insightful looks at our relationship with trees and how we have created the climate change catastrophe we face. Insightful and thought provoking as well as sad.
A haunting, breath taking, terrifying, soothing, epic tree story. My favorite quote: “The best and easiest way to get a forest to return to any cleared land is to do nothing–nothing at all, and do it for less time than you might think.” What remains with me well after reading is the sense of each character’s legacy beyond human constraints. Their children are the trees and they are therefore part of a much longer time frame that puts our measly problems in perspective. In the same sense, each character becomes a snag with the long view and sacrifice that dead trees make for the forest. Highly recommend to anyone who wants to think about the larger lessons from Nature.
Beautiful.
Lyrical, passionate, and profound even if it’s a bit heavy-handed. A bit Aldo Leopold, a bit Monkey Wrench Gang, and a bit Cloud Atlas. One of the most important and vital novels for our time.
It won the Pulitzer. I wanted to know why. And, now I do.
My husband and I read this novel together and discussed it book club style. The writing is incredible–lyrical, detailed, moving. I highlighted quite a few insights. The structure of the novel was unique and perfectly fit the overall story and theme. The characters–and there are many!–became engaging and real to me after awhile, and it was interesting to see how many of them intersected. The novel is masterful in its unity of design.
I may be in the minority, but I couldn’t finish this book, and its apparent “greatness” escaped me. The first section contains short stories providing the background for one or two people and their link, sometimes pretty weak, to a tree. I read about half of these dark stories. I didn’t care about the characters, and there was little warmth in their stories. Wanting to know the role these unrelated stories/characters were going to play in this lengthy book, I jumped ahead and sampled portions of the next section. Granted, I didn’t read each word on each page, but I didn’t find much to entice me to continue plodding through the rest of the first section and beyond.
I’m guilty of tossing around the word “epic” as in: that sandwich was epic, that ride was epic, that sunset was epic. Admit it; you’ve done it too. I rarely use that word to describe a book, perhaps only 2 or 3 times. BUT. This week I finally finished a book I will describe as epic—big, profound, haunting, powerful, breathtaking, monumental, expertly written. Yes, I’m gushing over the book “The Overstory” by Richard Powers.
This is a book about trees. Wait, you say! Trees? Here me out because I wasn’t sure I would like it either. I’m into animals, but botany? Not so much. The book is divided into four parts: Roots, Trunk, Crown, and Seeds. It follows the lives of nine people, who at first seem unconnected. Their stories weave together in the way that the trees of a forest do. They and we are all interconnected. When you finish this book, you will believe that trees “talk” to each other, that they cooperate and compete and make predictions. At the center of the book is a chestnut tree, in a place where it shouldn’t be.
This is an eco-novel about saving old-growth forests, about what it might take to do that, and the sacrifices made by an unusual few who “get it.” But this isn’t a book full of dusty facts and sermons about saving the planet. As one of the characters says repeatedly, “The best arguments in the world won’t change a person’s mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story.” That is what I tried to do in my Skye Van Bloem Trilogy, but my writing cannot rise to the level of Mr. Power’s novel. I stand in admiration and thankfulness for what he has done.
It took me so long to read this book—about a month—because I read and reread passages and was astonished. Yes, there is much information about climate change and biodiversity loss—the two topics I care most passionately about, but it is presented in a way that can’t be unseen or unread. It will stay with you and hopefully drive you to activism.
This book is full of profound truths: I rarely use that expression. I promise you will never look at a tree in quite the same way again or at the natural world in the same way. As one of the characters asks, “What is the single best thing a person can do for tomorrow’s world?”
The Overstory is a work of enlightenment as well as of warning, a saga for our times, based on science and historical events of the fairly recent past. The writing is straightforward, superb, and surprising There were times I had to catch my breath. This highly noted book is, in spite of its edge of grimness, a work of beauty and wisdome, one all of us should be able to say we have read.
A thought provoking braided saga of families tied together around the theme of trees. Brilliant.