The Overstory – A Novel

Product Information

Moving through history and across landscapes, this tree-filled novel unfurls our potential to destroy or restore the natural world.

All of us I think are reeling from the planetary ecological crisis brought on by the interconnected issues of deforestation, loss of biodiversity, and global warming. This book provides emotional relief by making these issues part of the personal stories of characters whose aspirations and motivations are easy to identify with. Some get attuned to trees through their parents of family traditions; others through accidents or surprises. In each case, their lives eventually become transformed by concern for trees. As Ovid began “Metamorphoses”: While we don’t have an official number, we do know that the source material is only one novel. The Overstory could have only one season, maybe two or even three, but likely no more than that. Similarly, Starz’s American Gods is based on one novel of the same name by Neil Gaiman and they produced three seasons based on it. Nature's Internet: How Trees Talk to Each Other in a Healthy Forest, by Suzanne Simard. Youtube video of TED Talk, July 2016 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. Nonetheless, when set against Powers’s greater achievements, these are but woodworm compared with the majestic redwood of a novel that he has constructed. It is fitting that it ends with a message of hope. As with Larkin, a belief that humanity is capable of redeeming itself and beginning “afresh, afresh, afresh”.What you need is a story. Of course, this is an in-joke, too, because The Overstory is full of all these things: drama, development, colliding hopes and fears, tangled plots and lots of characters. An astonishingly rich book . Rich in ideas and imagination. Rich in drama, wisdom and truly illuminating facts about trees. Caught by the River Most Americans do not understand the perils of climate change—or of deforestation, clear-cutting, habitat loss. But those who perpetuate the disinformation campaigns, including the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, the House and Senate majority leaders, and the president of the United States, likely do. It is easier, politically, to claim scientific murkiness than to tell the truth: They value their self-interest over the condition of the world their grandchildren will grow up in. Whether this self-interest is venal or foolish is irrelevant. It’s human nature. And that raises a more difficult question: not whether we should take action, but how to come to terms with the fact that our species has proved itself incapable of doing so. What to do if we see this happening, and if we don't want to see the world change from diversity to monoculture, from natural life to surviving in an adverse and hostile habitat? I am as guilty of what the psychologist character in the book calls the bystander effect as anyone else. I know we must change our ways to make our planet a sustainable home, but I am unable to break the patterns I was raised and taught to take for granted. Reducing meat intake and plane rides is not enough. We must learn to think beyond commercial benefit and growth of assets if we want to have a future that can remember us.

Powers’s novels can be categorized as part of “the grand realist tradition”; Nathaniel Rich, writing in the June 2018 issue of The Atlantic, noted the author’s penchant for critical documentation of contemporary society, exploring “our most complex social questions with originality, nuance, and an innate skepticism about dogma.” Powers himself, however, views his work as allegorical, and, indeed, The Overstory in particular has a mythic scope. The trees at its heart are godlike in scale, “ as old as Jesus or Caesar”; over hundreds of years, they engage in social behaviors, communicating with one another through a vast network of roots. Human characters treat them as revered ancestors; after all, they share significant amounts of DNA with us. Fantastic as they might sound, all these qualities of trees are real. With The Overstory, Powers has not created a fable so much as translated reality into a compelling system of belief. Absolutely blown away by this epic, heartbreaking novel about us and trees EMMA DONOGHUE, author of Room and The Pull of the Stars Ray Brinkman – a conventional intellectual property lawyer and Dorothy's husband, who later in life, following a stroke, falls in love with nature. But people have no idea what time is. They think it’s a line, spinning out from three seconds behind them, then vanishing just as fast into the three seconds of fog just ahead. They can’t see that time is one spreading ring wrapped around another, outward and outward until the thinnest skin of Now depends for its being on the enormous mass of everything that has already died."

BookBrowse Review

As the book progresses, it becomes clear the author--or publisher--wanted this to be a novel and not a collection of short stories. There’s a refrain about hearing the voice of trees, which I don’t disagree with but comes across hokey, and one of the characters gets jail time. It’s all a bit forced to be honest. 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. The Overstory has the mix of science and fiction that I so love; it widens my understanding and respect for the creatures who share this planet KAREN JOY FOWLER A rare specimen: a Great American Eco-Novel... It will change the way you look at trees Financial Times

A] majestic redwood of a novel... Combines the multi-narrative approach of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas with a paean to the grandeur and wonder of trees... It is fitting that it ends with a message of hope ObserverWhat 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. There are many other character’s stories that eventually become somewhat intertwined, but at the root of all of these stories is this reverence for trees, so much so in some of these stories that they act as one of the characters. Jabr, Ferris (December 2, 2020). "The Social Life of Forests". The New York Times . Retrieved February 1, 2021. When I was in fifth grade, I won a county poetry contest for a poem I wrote, prosaically titled "Trees." The poem had a taut, A-A-B-B rhyming pattern, mined precocious adjectives from a thesaurus, and concluded with the cringeworthy line, "People and trees: incredible connection."

Stunning... It's been one of those rare books that has had a profound effect on me, and which has changed my perspective on life Paul Ready, Yorkshire Post A lot of the tree information I am already familiar with, as are many prospective readers, but there’s always more to learn. Autumn makes me think of leaves, which makes me think of trees, which makes me think of The Overstory, the best novel ever written about trees, and really, just one of the best novels, period. Ann Patchett So: there’s plenty to appreciate if you’re predisposed to liking books and disliking the idea of environmental apocalypse.

Media Reviews

I did really enjoy the writing and the structure of the story. I thought it was really cool how things unfolded and came together. It felt very in line with the idea of branching that was brought up again and again through out the book. Sometimes the book felt really obvious though and I feel like it could have been stronger if it alluded to things sometimes instead of spelling it out every time. I think it might also be a little hard to read passage upon passage describing trees endlessly.