But there is a cost to all this plurality and intellectual energy. Most of the stories are driven by ideas, which means that most of the characters are driven by ideas, too. Patricia gives up her life for the study of trees, Olivia dedicates herself to the eco-cause, Neelay to his virtual game, and so the ordinary diversity that tends to shape plot on a human scale doesn’t get much of a look-in: marriages, kids, jobs, moving house, fighting with friends. These feature but only abruptly, like the rapid shifts in a time-lapse photograph of plant growth. All the big things happen suddenly. Characters die, from gas poisoning or suicide or strokes; marriages collapse; people get arrested. In a book about the wisdom of trees, the stories that shape human life tend, by way of contrast perhaps, to be overdramatic. The best arguments in the world won’t change a person’s mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story." Moving through history and across landscapes, this tree-filled novel unfurls our potential to destroy or restore the natural world.

For readers already of the view that humans are doing profound damage to the ecology of our world, The Overstory will give you additional arguments and inspiration. For those more skeptical, it may cause you to reexamine some of your views. The Overstory isn’t an easy read, but it’s a powerful and persuasive work of art. So: there’s plenty to appreciate if you’re predisposed to liking books and disliking the idea of environmental apocalypse. Roots” will likely appeal to fans of 4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster or The Sport of Kings by C. E. Morgan. The remaining three-fourths of the book, however, are something else entirely. The first section introduces each of the main characters in separate chapters. The first chapter sets the tone - an Iowa settler plants chestnuts on his farm. One survives, and this tree is photographed monthly by several generations of the family - it also survives the blight which wiped out most of the chestnut trees in the eastern States. We then move to a Chinese family attempting to grow mulberries to harvest silk. By the time this section finishes we are almost a third of the way through the book.

Beyond the Book

You will careen through this book. The prose is driven. You don’t really get to draw breath … The writing is steel-edged, laser-sharp when Richard Powers wants it to be. When he sets out to nail meaning, it’s done. There are sentences you return to and wonder at. Irish Times

Trees, Gabriel. Talk about trees. They are among the greatest of My servants on that Me-forsaken planet. I want people to notice that. Animism, Tree-consciousness, and the Religion of Life: Reflections on Richard Powers' The Overstory". Center for Humans & Nature. February 26, 2019 . Retrieved December 1, 2021. The third section moves them on twenty years, where the past either haunts or catches up with the protestors, and the other characters are developed. The short final section is more speculative and less convincing. I also felt that many of the humans were a little too caricatured, but perhaps that was necessary to make the book work. I couldn't help seeing this book as something of a companion piece to Annie Proulx's Barkskins. Both centre on humanity's voracious and wanton destruction of aboriginal forest land, both are epic novels and both are mostly set in the United States. They diverge there - Powers is fascinated by the details of tree science and the importance of forests to the world's ecosystem and biodiversity, Proulx is more interested in the older history and the effect of deforestation on native Americans. For me, Barkskins was the more complete book. A novel about the natural world - trees specifically - and our power as human beings to destroy it or redeem it. It reminds me that we are all connected and that there is still time to make things right TAYARI JONES, author of An American MarriageAn astonishingly rich book . Rich in ideas and imagination. Rich in drama, wisdom and truly illuminating facts about trees. Caught by the River What Richard Powers wants his readers to realise is what this means for humanity. He wants us to realise how important trees are for the world. And he chooses to do this not with a text book but with a story. Announcing the 2019 PEN America Literary Awards Finalists". PEN America. January 15, 2019 . Retrieved March 13, 2019. Nicholas Hoel – “an artist of Norwegian and Irish descent who comes from a long line of farmers and whose great-great-great-grandfather planted a chestnut tree that survived blight for decades and enthralled the Hoel family for generations.” While at college studying Actuarial Science, Olivia Vandergriff is accidentally electrocuted and her heart stops.

It is true that we all need to become better stewards of the environment, and this book gets points for its good intentions and cool factoids about our arboreal friends. But almost anyone who makes it through this book is probably already converted to the environmentalist cause (or at least whatever substrate involves believing "trees = good"), and I wager that anyone who wasn't will be turned off by how silly and mawkish this book is. Read Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate instead. There are additional minor criticisms. The book is long and could have done with an edit, and Powers’s ecological message, heartfelt though it is, might strike some readers as on the nose in places; his obvious identification with “Plant-Patty” means that, as one character muses, the “burning down the library, art museum, pharmacy and hall of records, all at once” cannot be seen as anything other than a crime against nature, but it is unlikely that anyone would think otherwise. Patricia Westerford grows up as a deaf child obsessed with plants. She is extremely close with her father Bill, who takes her along on his work trips visiting farms in Ohio. He teaches her all about trees. When Patricia is fourteen, Bill dies in a car crash. Patricia studies botany in college, and then goes to forestry school. While working on her research there, she discovers that trees can communicate with each other through the gases they release. She publishes an article about this that at first becomes popular, but then is brutally condemned by a few prominent scientists. Patricia loses her job and becomes depressed, almost committing suicide by eating poisoned mushrooms. Do Trees Talk to Each Other?, by Richard Grant; Smithsonian Magazine, March 2018--review of Peter Wohlleben’s “The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate” This book is amazing, like a Tree Of Life! It grew out of the need to verbalise the imminent threat to our species and its unique ability to LOVE nature in all its forms.It can change the way you think about trees slightly, and it certainly did for me. Jessie Burton, author of 'The Muse' Operatic … a novel devoted to "reviving that dead metaphor at the heart of the word bewilderment". Wall Street Journal