The Overstory: A Novel

by Richard Powers

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 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."

• ISBN10: 039363552X
• ISBN13: 9780393635522
• Publish Date: 16 March 2018
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: WW Norton & Co
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 512
• 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.