The Overstory: The million-copy global bestseller and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

by Richard Powers

*THE MILLION-COPY GLOBAL BESTSELLER
*WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION*

A wondrous, exhilarating novel about nine strangers brought together by an unfolding natural catastrophe.

'It changed how I thought about the Earth and our place in it' Barack Obama

An artist inherits a hundred years of photographic portraits, all of the same doomed American chestnut. 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. An Air Force crewmember in the Vietnam War is shot out of the sky, then saved by falling into a banyan.

This is the story of these and five other strangers, each summoned in different ways by the natural world, who are brought together in a last stand to save it from catastrophe.

'It's not possible for Powers to write an uninteresting book' Margaret Atwood

'Really, just one of the best novels, period' Ann Patchett

'Radical and exciting' Jessie Burton

'Breath-taking' Barbara Kingsolver

• ISBN10: 1784708240
• ISBN13: 9781784708245
• Publish Date: 11 April 2019 (first published 16 March 2018)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 3 September 2024
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Vintage
• Format: Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
• Pages: 640
• Language: English

Reviews

[clementine]

There was so much about this book that I loved and wanted to love. I do not shy away from a long, wordy novel, and if it's composed of multiple intersecting narratives, even better. A novel about trees? That's fine with me! I actually really enjoyed the focus on trees, the sense of non-fiction enshrouded in fiction even as that fiction had hints of magical realism. It certainly made me rethink my relationship with nature and left me in awe of what amazing creatures trees are. I liked drawing parallels between the characters, all of whom experiences loss and trauma which caused them to disconnect somewhat from humanity and seek solace in something larger than them. The prose style was strong, the descriptive passages lovely, and the ambitious scope of the book well-realized. There really was a lot to like!

So, here are my problems:

1) Some of the descriptions of female characters were like... yeah, a man wrote this. There is a scene in this book in which a 35-year-old man gets turned on by watching his girlfriend pee. There is such an abundance of amazing female novelists out there that I am growing impatient with this sort of thing. I'm sorry. This is a dealbreaker. Learn how to write a young female character without sexualizing her bizarrely. (Ugh, it was really the character Olivia who was the worst - a manic pixie dream girl who dies tragically while still young and beautiful to further the emotional development of the men.) Anyway, it's 2019, we are not doing this anymore.
2) It is very polemical, and through monologues given by the various environmental activist characters, Powers' own ideas about environmentalism come through strongly. I'm not opposed to the politicization of books (quite the opposite, actually), and I don't disagree with the message - I just think that from a technical standpoint, the finesse was not always there. When a character gives a literal speech containing your opinion, that is an idea that has not been worked seamlessly into the fictional text. While Patricia was initially one of the most interesting characters to me, she ended up mostly being a vehicle for Powers' own thoughts on environmentalism, which was disappointing.
3) There were definitely some passages that dragged. I liked the first part of the book, which read like a series of vignettes, the best. The rest of the book had a lot of strong parts, but it took a while for everything to come together and not all of the meandering felt purposeful, necessary, or enjoyable.
4) There are storylines that never properly converge. Obviously, it is Adam, Olivia, Douglas, Mimi, and Nick who are the central characters pushing the narrative forward; Patricia is peripheral; Neelay, Dorothy, and Ray never join the rest of our environmental activists (except through reading Patricia's book oh and also the very clearly-broadcast revelation that Dorothy and Ray are Olivia's parents). Dorothy and Ray's story felt very separate from the rest of the book, which is a damn shame because it was actually the most emotionally-compelling storyline.
5) Powers doesn't leave much in the way of subtext. He bludgeons us with the same unsubtle messages over and over again.

There was a lot to like here, and I could be generous and round my rating up, but I'm going with my gut here. That said, I often think about imperfect books for a lot longer than I do ones that I initially give higher ratings, which speaks highly of that book's good qualities.

[jamiereadthis]

Sorry, book. I quit after three pages. It might be a new record.

Twenty-four-year-old me would have liked it, so there’s that. I’m sorry the book got stuck with thirty-four-year-old me.