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The Overstory

Richard Powers

4.12 · Rating details · 84,239 ratings · 11,726 reviews

The Overstory is a sweeping, impassioned work 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, Richard Powers’s twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Nor ...more

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Paperback, 502 pages

Published April 2nd 2019 by W.W. Norton & Company (first published April 3rd 2018)

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May 05, 2019 Lisa rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: pulitzer, so-good-it-hurts, favorites, persuasive

To hope, which finds roots in the most infertile of soils! Cheers, my friends on our shared planet!

I sit in silence, holding the paperback copy of The Overstory in my hands, thinking of trees.

Wondering which trees grew to become the books on my shelves. Wondering which ones became the cherry tree desk my grandfather made for me. Wondering how old the oak trees were that turned into the logs that made it into my wooden house, to turn into beloved bookshelves. I wonder at the kind of trees that To hope, which finds roots in the most infertile of soils! Cheers, my friends on our shared planet!

I sit in silence, holding the paperback copy of The Overstory in my hands, thinking of trees.

Wondering which trees grew to become the books on my shelves. Wondering which ones became the cherry tree desk my grandfather made for me. Wondering how old the oak trees were that turned into the logs that made it into my wooden house, to turn into beloved bookshelves. I wonder at the kind of trees that frame my paintings. That give my brushes shape. I even have jewellery made of wood. And Swedish butter knives. And art.

My fence is made of wood, and my garden holds an oak tree, an acorn, three apple trees, plum trees, three cherry trees (plus a baby cherry trying to make it), AND my garden holds a three-year-old chestnut experiment.

My daughter and I collected chestnuts one autumn and put some of them into a corner of our garden. The following year, we saw a few single sticks with a leaf each coming out of the soil.

Then we had five or six leaves on each of the three tiny chestnut trees - growing in slow motion (human time perception). This year, I have already checked that they are still alive, and I can see there will be more leaves. Will they survive?

I don't know, but I took a picture, imagining while I did so that I was Nick, owner of a family's collected photographic memory of a chestnut tree planted where they usually do not grow. And I felt it made such perfect sense - my tiny gardening project connected to my vast reading life, growing side by side as long as I am around to think and feel.

"What do stories do?" This is what one character asks at a crossroads. "They kill us a bit and make us change."

And that is precisely what happened to me while I read The Overstory. Filled with the pain of the world's development in recent decades, I had grown ready for this book. I would not have had patience ten years ago to follow from roots over trunk to canopy and seeds the stories of people who see what others choose to ignore: that humanity is using up the resources of its own habitat at a speed that nature can't cope with, and that we are unlikely to stop the trend because stopping it means destroying our most cherished religion: the belief in growth and ownership. "We're cashing in a billion years of planetary savings bonds and blowing it on assorted bling".

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.

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.

Read it. Pulitzer redeemed for as long as it takes a tree to grow! ...more

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Jul 28, 2018 Hannah Greendale rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: literary-fiction, adult, fiction, contemporary, historical-fiction, booker-prize-nominee

Richard Powers’ structural approach to The Overstory breaks with traditional plotting. The result is two books in one, each designed to appeal to a different type of reader. The flaw in this approach is that the book either reads like a literary triumph that starts slow then builds to something satiating, or it reads like a bait-and-switch with a breathtaking start followed by a wearisome and long-winded trek to the conclusion.

Part 1 (called “Roots”) reads like a magnificent short story collect Richard Powers’ structural approach to The Overstory breaks with traditional plotting. The result is two books in one, each designed to appeal to a different type of reader. The flaw in this approach is that the book either reads like a literary triumph that starts slow then builds to something satiating, or it reads like a bait-and-switch with a breathtaking start followed by a wearisome and long-winded trek to the conclusion.

Part 1 (called “Roots”) reads like a magnificent short story collection. The backstory and exposition that would normally be woven throughout a book is delivered in several rousing anecdotes. Nine protagonists are introduced, their stories ranging from sweeping multi-generational sagas to brief glimpses into their private lives. These characters remain separate in “Roots,” yet their stories are united by meaningful interaction with trees. Each of their stories arrives at an arresting climax before Powers hits the pause button.

“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.

Parts 2 through 4 (called “Trunk,” “Crown,” and “Seed,” respectively) sees these nine characters being inextricably drawn together. Their lives entangle, their shared interests and unique experiences with trees drive their actions. This portion of the book is arguably slower, with fewer revelations about the characters and more attention dedicated to exploring themes. Powers pulls back the curtain to introduce trees as a tenth character and forces us to examine our role in, and relationship to, nature.

All ten characters share similar beliefs, fight for the same causes, face the same external conflict (while wrestling with minimal or no internal conflict), and everyone gets along. It’s a startling contrast to the first part of the book; a harrowing and captivating intro that promises heartbreak and drama, followed by a stagnant alternative book in which the captivating backstories have very little bearing on the overall narrative.

At times, Powers’ writing is as beautiful and wondrous as nature, and his messages about activism and resistance are poignant but, ultimately, his execution is uneven and the final product is a book bloated with redundant characters.

The bends in the alders speak of long-ago disasters. Spikes of pale chinquapin flowers shake down their pollen; soon they will turn into spiny fruits. Poplars repeat the wind's gossip. Persimmons and walnuts set out their bribes and rowans their blood-red clusters. Ancient oaks wave prophecies of future weather. The several hundred kinds of hawthorn laugh at the single name their forced to share.

...more

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Jun 20, 2019 Roxane rated it liked it

This book has an interesting structure and it is well-written. I get what Powers is going for conceptually. The character sketches, which read like short stories are wonderful. But then the book gets... less engaging, shall we say. I stopped reading it because I just could not read one more passage of florid description about trees or visions or highways. I couldn't do it. But if you love trees, this is a good book for you. I get why it won the Pulitzer. ...more

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Jan 22, 2018 Neil rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2018-booker, 2018, 2018-top-books, 5-stars

Further Update. I can't help it: Powers' writing does something to me. I've now finished a re-read of this book and I am going back to 5 stars. It's a book that really rewards a second reading. It is much darker than I remember from first read (suicide, disillusionment, betrayal on top of the destruction of the natural world) and also much more emotional. The latter of those two surprised me because I thought that knowing the story would reduce the emotional impact, but the reverse happened.

I lo ...more

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Oct 25, 2018 Paula rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Environmental enthusiasts

Recommended to Paula by: Booker

Shelves: published-2018, booker-prize-nominee, e-book, contemporary, science, pulitzer-prize, literary-fiction, environment-nature, read-in-2018

Shortlisted for the Man Booker in 2018, The Overstory is a brilliant and passionate book about humans and their relationship to trees and the natural environment.

The first half of the book is exceptional. Written like short stories, 9 characters are introduced separately with their tree story. Each story has an event that has happened to change the life of the character by the tree or trees that shaped them. The stories are phenomenal.

The second half of the book is about these same characters be ...more

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Mar 14, 2020 Always Pouting rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I'm actually not quite sure how I felt about this one but also spoilers are going to follow before anyone gets angry at me.

The book starts out by telling what are seemingly separate stories about a variety of characters, so at first I thought it was just going to be a collection of short stories. That felt sort of confusing though because we met about 9 or 10 characters in like the first 100-150 pages and the book itself is 500 pages; I just thought to myself is this a collection of 50 short st I'm actually not quite sure how I felt about this one but also spoilers are going to follow before anyone gets angry at me.

The book starts out by telling what are seemingly separate stories about a variety of characters, so at first I thought it was just going to be a collection of short stories. That felt sort of confusing though because we met about 9 or 10 characters in like the first 100-150 pages and the book itself is 500 pages; I just thought to myself is this a collection of 50 short stories. Eventually though the stories seem to converge together.

When the stories come together though there are still a few characters who don't directly interact, or when they do it's in a very brief way. There's also a lot of ambiguity through out the book on a few things. For one thing it's implied that Olivia is Ray and Dorothy's daughter but they are supposedly childless. Eventually it's also implied that the chestnut tree in their backyard is their daughter so perhaps Olivia is a human avatar for the tree itself. There was also this implication that Patricia commits suicide when she's speaking at the conference but there's never any kind of confirmation of the fact. There's also a convergence of three characters at that point in the story with Neelay and Mimi both attending the conference. It made that whole plot point sort of confusing because both seem to anticipate that Patricia is about to commit suicide.

I think the book alternates between being clear and easy to follow and then lapsing into ambiguity and it can make it hard to tell what is happening at times. I think the descriptive language just makes it even harder sometimes to follow along. I think it also covers a lot of themes that made it feel like the book itself was all over the place. I felt like we could have done without Neelay's storyline for sure at the very least even if I understand what Power's was trying to do with it.

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.

Overall I enjoyed the book, especially the writing and the novelty of the structure and storyline. I liked the way there was repetition on certain themes and we saw a reoccurrence of sentences/passages through out. I did think it could've been stronger if it was edited down to take out Neelay's part of the story though because that felt like the weakest part of the storyline to me personally. ...more

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Jan 03, 2020 Justin Tate rated it liked it

The Overstory is part short stories, part tree porn, part rant, and part ramble. It adds up to an impressive literary achievement that will linger with me for a long time, even while the reading experience is generally tedious. At times the characters are intriguing, at least once does plot play a role, and there’s even a fleeting moment of tension. In other words, if you only enjoy edge-of-your-seat thrillers--this isn’t your book. If you’re obsessed with trees, it might be.

I’m by all means a bonafide tree hugger. Literally and figuratively. As seen above, this is me hugging a giant sequoia at Sequoia National Park. When characters in this book stage a protest by sitting high in California Redwoods to prevent them from being cut down, it’s easy to picture the scene. My heart breaks at the mere thought of chopping down these landmarks. Still, the book is hard to get into. I don’t think I ever picked it up with joy or a desire to find out what happens next.

That’s not entirely true. During the first 150 pages, which is basically a standalone collection of short stories, Powers introduces characters who are all significantly impacted by trees. The trees linger in the background, seemingly insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but suddenly they are the whole world. Though there’s no hook or inciting incident in these pages, it works. The theme that trees are integral to human life repeats throughout, but never so well as these slice of life chapters.

Sequoia National Park

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.

The Overstory succeeds, however, by staying on message. Whether or not the plot points (if you can call them that) make any narrative sense, one thing is consistent--a love for trees, a warning to those who disregard them, and a tutorial on how to recognize their significance. These aspects in particular are worthy of admiration. If you can write a book that significantly alters a person’s worldview, it’s an incredible book. I don’t care how boring it is. And even me, tree-hugging me, cannot look at trees in the same way. I’ve always recognized their beauty, their subtle--and overt--impact on my life, but I don’t know that I’ve ever heard their voice. Now, perhaps, I can. ...more

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Apr 15, 2019 Paromjit rated it really liked it

Shelves: literary-fiction, netgalley

This has won the Pulitzer Prize!!

Richard Powers writes with ambition, passion and reverence on the world of trees, their ancient
intelligence and their central place in the fragile ecosystem. This is a dense and epic work of environmental fiction, a picture of the state of our planet and how humanity has contributed to its degradation. Whilst the over riding central character of this are trees, he interweaves the stories of the lives of 9 disparate individuals, within a four part structure of Ro ...more

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Oct 04, 2018 Rachel rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: booker-2018, its-not-you-its-me, literary-fiction, 2018

The Overstory is undeniably brilliant, but it's also hard work, and I'm not convinced the payoff was worth the effort. I wanted to be able to say that I was so struck by Powers' genius that I was able to forgive the periods of abject tedium that characterized my reading experience, but that would be a lie. This is undoubtedly a fantastic book, but I don't think I was the right reader for it.

Here I have to echo a sentiment that I expressed in my review of Lab Girl by Hope Jahren: there are only s The Overstory is undeniably brilliant, but it's also hard work, and I'm not convinced the payoff was worth the effort. I wanted to be able to say that I was so struck by Powers' genius that I was able to forgive the periods of abject tedium that characterized my reading experience, but that would be a lie. This is undoubtedly a fantastic book, but I don't think I was the right reader for it.

Here I have to echo a sentiment that I expressed in my review of Lab Girl by Hope Jahren: there are only so many loving descriptions of trees a person can take after a while. What I'm interested in when I read is conflict and human interest and interpersonal dynamics, and when none of that is at the forefront of a book, I'm inevitably going to struggle with it.

While Richard Powers did create a host of distinct characters in The Overstory - the first section of the novel is eight different short stories, one following each of the main characters through defining moments in their early lives - it soon becomes apparent that their stories aren't the ones that Powers is interested in telling. I had more than a few moments when I had to wonder why Powers chose to write this as a novel at all, when it would have arguably served its purpose just as well as a treatise on environmental activism.

Powers is a hell of a writer though, I'll give him that. I can't bear to go lower than 3 stars in my final rating because I can't deny the admiration I feel toward Powers' craft. On a sentence-by-sentence level, I lost track of the amount of times I paused and reread a particularly striking passage, and the amount of detail that Powers is able to pack into every page is incredibly impressive. And on a larger level, the thematic complexity that Powers is able to achieve with his anthropomorphic symbolism and thorough examination of disparate disciplines and philosophies is undeniable. When words like 'epic' and 'masterpiece' are being thrown around in conversation with this novel, it's not difficult to understand why.

But at the same time, I'm just not convinced that it was all necessary. I don't believe that this book is able to justify its length of 500 (very long) pages. It's punishingly dense and bloated; I found certain characters to be extraneous and a lot of the detail to be superfluous. But it's also punctuated by moments of such beauty that make it a worthwhile read, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if this wins the Man Booker, but on a personal level, I can't say this was my favorite reading experience I've ever had. ...more

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Aug 15, 2018 Trudie rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-harder-2018, science, pulitzer, booker-18

Another hour. Deserts of infinite boredom punctuated by peaks of freakish intensity

Powers doing my review writing for me.

My reading experience of The Overstory often felt like a forced march of The Appalachian Trail while being read poetry. In all likelihood that might appeal to some people, however I prefer a less arduous journey. I tried to escape this book once, flinging it aside at around page 60 but several positive reviews from trusty readers and the growing likelihood that this will ma ...more

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Apr 03, 2018 Ron Charles rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: environmental-fiction

Richard Powers’s “The Overstory” soars up through the canopy of American literature and remakes the landscape of environmental fiction.

Long celebrated for his compelling, cerebral books, Powers demonstrates a remarkable ability to tell dramatic, emotionally involving stories while delving into subjects many readers would otherwise find arcane. He’s written about genetics, pharmaceuticals, artificial intelligence, music and photography. In 2006, his novel about neurology, “The Echo Maker,” won a ...more

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Jan 01, 2019 Beata rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Having bought this book months ago, I started wondering if I spent my money well. Although I enjoy making my own mind regarding my reading choices, I couldn’t escape coming across many reviews, both positive and negative, as a result, I was a little apprehensive … When I began reading, I thought it’d take me many weeks to get through this novel, however, it turned out to be a compulsive reading for me. Different characters, different stories, one theme: trees. I love forests, parks and try hard ...more

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Nov 08, 2018 Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽ rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: literary-stuff, historical-fiction, fantasy, made-me-think, yay-for-presents

2019 Pulitzer Prize winner for Fiction! This dense, literary book will make you think.

… when you cut down a tree, what you make from it should be at least as miraculous as what you cut down.

Final review, first posted on Fantasy Literature:

The Overstory is a powerful, literary novel, shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize. It sings, in part, a paean to the wonders of trees and the multitude of wonders that old-growth forests and a variety of trees brings to our world. It also mourns a traged ...more

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Jan 02, 2020 Michael Finocchiaro rated it it was amazing

Shelves: novels, american-21st-c, coming-up-next, fiction, pulitzer-winning-fiction, ecological-fiction, pulitzer-fiction

Richard Power's The Overstory is a masterpiece that won the 2019 Pulitzer for Fiction. It is monumental piece of environmental fiction whose ubersubject (the "overstory" if you will) is trees and how humans have misunderstood them, fought over them, destroyed them, and even died for them.

The book's initial section, "Roots", contains introductions the nine protagonists of the primary narrative which constitutes the largest section called "Trunk." Each character is fully fleshed out and while the Richard Power's The Overstory is a masterpiece that won the 2019 Pulitzer for Fiction. It is monumental piece of environmental fiction whose ubersubject (the "overstory" if you will) is trees and how humans have misunderstood them, fought over them, destroyed them, and even died for them.

The book's initial section, "Roots", contains introductions the nine protagonists of the primary narrative which constitutes the largest section called "Trunk." Each character is fully fleshed out and while they seem all completely unrelated, Powers succeeds in winding all their stories together, like so many subterranean roots and fungi, into a coherent narrative. Adam, Olivia, Nick, Douglas and Mimi are all tightly bound into an activist movement on the west coast and their stories add the drama to the story as sort of the tallest, most visible redwood forest that they are struggling to protect. Around them, the other characters have peripheral views into the primary action playing out on TV as Neely writes a successful Civilization/Minecraft game which he evolves towards a more ecological underpinning, the professor Patricia who - like the very real Peter Wollheben and The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate – Discoveries from a Secret World - writes about the very real and tangible ways that trees communicate, and the dysfunctional couple of Ray and Dorothy who let their mutual love of nature lapse and see their relationship collapse.

Having read Wollheben before Powers, I started to raise my own consciousness about trees. I was also lucky to have caught the Trees exposition here in Paris at the Foundation Cartier (https://www.fondationcartier.com/en/e...). Also, I have an aunt in Kentucky whose ash trees are succumbing to the emerald ash borer like most of the other ash trees in America. The plagues that have periodically wiped out species of trees affect the life of Nick and Adam. In the latter case, "The fungus gutted Detroit while the kids were still small. Then Chicago, soon thereafter. The country's most popular street tree, vases that turned boulevards into great tunnels, was leaving this world. (p. 55) One of the unstated issues that the book tries to demonstrate is that had the forests not been cleared so completely, the natural defenses of trees may have been able to combat these waves of destruction.

The writing is mostly in the present tense which helps pull the reader into the story and makes time almost disappear while reading it. Almost as if the reader is trying to channel time as trees experience it. There are also nice literary allusions, my favorite was this one: "Civilized yards are all alike. Every wild yard is wild in its own way. (p. 384). I'll let the erudite commenters reveal which masterpiece Powers was quoting there.

As an aside, I wanted to briefly talk compare The Overstory and The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate – Discoveries from a Secret World with a book which I have vocally criticized: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. In the latter, the author bemoans the wanton destruction caused by the agricultural revolution, but to my mind proposes no alternative and just leaves the reader with empty, vsacuous soundbites. In the former two books, we are given a vast insight into how trees communicate and how they are intimately related to human beings. Yes, our ignorance of their speech (as alien to us as would be expected because our life spans and perception of time is on the same magnitude as that of flies to humans) has caused irreparable damage to the ecosystem. And there is an obvious domino effect: global warming and climate change. But, in the two books about trees, even if a militant outlook is shown to be a dead-end, it is demonstrated that being custodians of nature, we can help forests come back and preserve our biodiversity. It is not all of humankind that is to blame, as Harari would have us believe, but rather, rapacious grift driving large corporations which reap a direct, short-term financial benefit from wholesale environmental destruction. If the law was enforced rather than trampled upon, the jobs could be converted to conservation-related jobs and the forests could be preserved. I found that this positive message was stronger than any of the superficial aphorisms in Harari's book.

In conclusion, the book is truly beautiful and well-written. I believe its core message was something like this: "It feels good, like a root must feel when it finds, after centuries, another root to pleach to underground. There are a hundred thousand species of love, separately invented, each more ingenious than the last, and every one of them keeps making things. (p. 144) ...more

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Jun 13, 2019 Diane Barnes rated it it was amazing

Shelves: noble-bitches-book-club, favorites

This is quite possibly the most amazing thing I've ever read. It's brilliant, passionate, terrifying and painful. It's too long, it's difficult to read, there are too many characters to follow....and yet, those characters are all of us, at some point in our lives. Let's just say this is The War and Peace of nature.
The novel begins with the story of a chestnut tree in Iowa. It escaped the east coast chestnut blight by virtue of having been brought west in the pocket of a Swedish emigrant. If you ...more

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Aug 09, 2018 Jenny (Reading Envy) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: booker-winners-and-listed, own, reviewcopy, read2018

This amazing book connects specific trees to people or families and then the stories come together and morph into being about the environment, how trees relate to each other, and this underlying theme of personal and natural histories that always play out. Decisions have long-reaching consequences, etc. The first section had me in tears about Chestnut trees. All I wanted to do when I reached the end was go back to the beginning.

I started this as a review copy but bought my own hardcover before ...more

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Jul 24, 2018 Hugh rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: modern-classics, modern-lit, read-2018, booker-shortlist

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2018
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2019

This is the most ambitious and complex book on the Booker longlist, and two thirds of the way through it, I was pretty sure it was heading for five stars and being one of the best books I have read this year. Sadly, I found the last part rather disappointing, and I know from previous experience that Powers is capable of better. Perhaps a convincing resolution is too much to ask when the subject matter is so div Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2018
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2019

This is the most ambitious and complex book on the Booker longlist, and two thirds of the way through it, I was pretty sure it was heading for five stars and being one of the best books I have read this year. Sadly, I found the last part rather disappointing, and I know from previous experience that Powers is capable of better. Perhaps a convincing resolution is too much to ask when the subject matter is so diverse and extraordinary.

The book is all about trees, and in many ways the trees are more important than the diverse cast of human characters, all of whom become involved with protecting, nurturing or learning from trees in many different ways.

Throughout the book there are many examples of extraordinary trees, their importance to supporting other forms of life and the mechanisms by which they grow, communicate, cooperate and react to threats. Powers cannot resist the occasional foray into his long-established interest in human behavioural psychology.

If all of this sounds dry and unreadable, that would convey entirely the wrong impression - Powers is a masterful storyteller and everything is clearly explained in terms that are easy to relate to.

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.

The second section brings many of the human cast together in 80s California, where they join campaigners attempting to protect some of the last remaining redwood trees - this is a mixture of fact and exaggeration - in general the tree science is fact, but the human activity is fictional or adapted. At the end of this section, the failure of these protests leads them to start an arson campaign, (view spoiler). For me this was the most powerful part of the book.

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.

The details are, as ever with Powers, fascinating and impressive, but inevitably the science is a little simplified to meet the demands of the story and some of the conjecture is decidedly fanciful. This is a fascinating and thought provoking book. ...more

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Jun 07, 2018 Spencer Orey rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, birds

Brilliant, slow, and meditative. It made me evaluate my ideas about sustainability, wood, and trees and how I can be a better person in the world. None of the characters really stuck with me, but the presentation of different species of trees (and individual trees situated in places and times) in their grand majesty over time was extraordinary.

My hardback copy was printed on recycled paper, which was a good detail!

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Aug 18, 2018 Cheri rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: literary-fiction, arc, 2018, environment-nature, publish-w-w-norton-company

4.5 Stars

“We lived on a street where the tall elm shade
Was as green as the grass and as cool as a blade
That you held in your teeth as we lay on our backs
Staring up at the blue and the blue stared back

“I used to believe we were just like those trees
We'd grown just as tall and as proud as we pleased
With our feet on the ground and our arms in the breeze
Under a sheltering sky”
-- Only a Dream, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Songwriters: Mary Chapin Carpenter

”First there was nothing. Then there was everyt ...more

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Sep 20, 2018 lark benobi rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2018, male-identified-authors, norton

When I began reading this magnificent book I declared "this is going to be one of my favorite books of 2018." Then something happened. I wanted to know more about chestnut trees and the Hoel legacy, damnit. I was entranced by the chestnut-manna scene that begins the novel, and the lone tree that survives on the Hoel farm, and every perfect thing that happened between the words "Now is the time of chestnuts" and "the bluest of Midwestern skies."

Then, ok, what followed was "interesting." Now and t ...more

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Sep 30, 2018 Michael rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: ecology, iowa, california, new-york-city, biology, fiction, nature, oregon, global-warming

A wonderful tour of how human lives can intersect and become engaged with that of trees. The complex narrative of nine separate characters who grow alone, have different kind of formative influences from events involving trees, and then converge in mind or action by the middle of the book on the political fight in the 80s over the logging of the last old-growth forest plots in the Pacific Northwest. In the process we get to experience a satisfying interplay and integration between tree-hugger sp ...more

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Jan 03, 2020 PattyMacDotComma rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction-adult, aa-ce, shortstories-essays, aa, science-med-env, kindle, award-win-listed, philosophy-ethics, politics-culture-social

4.5★
“A colossal, rising, reaching, stretching space elevator of a billion independent parts, shuttling the air into the sky and storing the sky deep underground, sorting possibility from out of nothing: the most perfect piece of self-writing code that his eyes could hope to see.”

A tree, viewed by a computer coder lying flat on his back on the ground, having fallen out of one. Self-writing code, perhaps self-sustaining, or like a perpetual motion machine? He’s a gamer, an inventor, one of many un ...more

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Aug 25, 2018 Dianne rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: pulitzers, booker-2018, best-of-2018

2019 Pulitzer Prize winner for Fiction!

A very erudite and weighty saga that took me over a week to read. It’s excellent, but at the same time, I really wanted it to be over so I could move on to another book. This is a novel where full attention must be paid.

Still, the truth is I learned a ton about the world of trees and will never look at them quite the same way again. The research and passion Powers poured into this novel is staggering. My husband and I just purchased a wooded lot to build a ...more

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May 10, 2018 Shelley Ettinger rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Well. A long rant has been percolating in my head while I read this overpraised novel by a writer I try over and over and whose work over and over fails to wow me, which is putting it kindly. Lately I've read a number of the 'what to do about great men/geniuses who are also sexual assaulters' think pieces that have been proliferating and what throws me each time is that the artists cited are in reality not a single one of them great, let alone a genius. See for instance Roman Polanski, Woody All Well. A long rant has been percolating in my head while I read this overpraised novel by a writer I try over and over and whose work over and over fails to wow me, which is putting it kindly. Lately I've read a number of the 'what to do about great men/geniuses who are also sexual assaulters' think pieces that have been proliferating and what throws me each time is that the artists cited are in reality not a single one of them great, let alone a genius. See for instance Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, David Foster Wallace and so on, none of whose work deserves anything close to the adulation it gets. And no I'm not associating Powers with those accused of misogynist behavior (though who knows, such a revelation about any given man cannot be a surprise at this point). I am however associating him with the long list of white men assigned greatness status when they nowhere near deserve it. What a low bar they have to leap.

There's some good writing here, yes. The theme is of course important, yes, and there's important information shared here, yes. That's about all this novel has going for it. As with every single other of his books I've read, and despite the overabundant effort in this one at conjuring up some, somehow there's no real passion here. As with other of his books, this one never made me feel anything, neither about the urgent matters he's addressing about which I do yes feel a great deal but his writing didn't tap in to even my already existing feelings, nor, most definitely, about the characters who for all his very visible efforts never achieve any depth or dimension. As I've always found with a Powers book, despite or maybe because of everything he desperately throws at it ("cophrophagic" instead of plain old "shit eating" grin kind of epitomizes the problem, as do all the would-be lyrical but actually wearisome lists of natural wonders), in this one he once again misses the mark. The mark being the powerful, stirring, devastating novel this one wants to be but is not.

Along with the general failure there's a specific offense, one that I suppose shouldn't surprise me but still does every time an author commits it, which these boy geniuses yep keep on doing. That is this book's overweening androcentrism. It's a man's man's man's man's world in Powersland, and this is true even though some of the central characters are women, a neat trick. I could go on and on about this but will just mention a few aspects of this insult. One, the most egregious, is the use of the words "man" and "mankind" throughout to refer to human beings. Jesus H. Christ. In the year 2018. Two, following this, every specific tree that plays a part in a scene is referred to as "he." Really!? This even after we've already been told that most trees are male or female. Yet Powers can't manage to adhere to fact when portraying them. Three, in Powers world, it seems, only fathers matter. Just about every story line starts with a depiction of the character's relationship with her/his father, and this father remains a keynote throughout the characters' ensuing lives; mothers are barely mentioned and when they are, it's ridiculously stereotypically (with a nice pinch of cultural racism thrown in, in the case of the Indian mother who gets a handful of lines bobbling her head and nagging her son to get married). Apparently, in Powers' view, only fathers matter. Daddy issues much, sir?

There's more. Like the absence of a single Black or Latinx character in what sets itself up to be a sweeping saga of recent U.S. history. Powers throws a line or a paragraph here and there to a Native person though these characters don't get any actual names or agency of any kind. And like the book's ultimate failure to provide any true vision, any forward thrust that doesn't devolve into dewy mysticism as the closing pages do, any real ideas or analysis about an actual way forward for humans and trees in this book about humans and trees. Which is not surprising, and which also explains the rapturous reviews this book has undeservedly received. When the literary establishment heaps praise on what they label a political novel, the very literary establishment that always vociferously denies there can ever even be such a thing as a political novel that achieves true art, the establishment that will never praise a really political novel that is truly radical and issues a real artistic-ideological challenge to bourgeois consciousness, well then you know the book in question has nothing new or exciting to recommend it.

That book, new and revolutionary, will come. The one that doesn't merely whine about what class society has wrought but tells a winning, gripping story of a real battle, a revolutionary class-struggle battle on a much grander scale than the little scenes depicted here, to save the trees and all the rest of us. I'll be waiting. ...more

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Jul 01, 2018 Meike rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2018-mbp, 2018-read, usa

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2019
Richard Powers goes eco-fiction: In "The Overstory", the real protagonists are trees - living, breathing, communicating, ever-evolving, hard-working, intelligent trees. Okay, there are also people, but the quest they are on is to understand what the trees already know. Powers knits a whole web of protagonists, and the rootage of the book is a compilation of short stories, introducing the human characters: Nicholas Hoel (who grew up on a farm), Mimi M ...more

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Jun 24, 2020 Katie rated it really liked it

Shelves: set-in-the-us, 2019

Climate change is probably the most pressing issue of our times and yet very few novels deal with it. Thankfully, here's a book that does.
The Overstory begins brilliantly. One by one we are introduced to ten characters with no relationship to each other. They are all compelling, terrifically drawn characters and they each have a childhood tree story. Powers is really good at writing about childhood and family life. At this point it's looking like a no-brainer five stars.
In part two we see the c Climate change is probably the most pressing issue of our times and yet very few novels deal with it. Thankfully, here's a book that does.
The Overstory begins brilliantly. One by one we are introduced to ten characters with no relationship to each other. They are all compelling, terrifically drawn characters and they each have a childhood tree story. Powers is really good at writing about childhood and family life. At this point it's looking like a no-brainer five stars.
In part two we see the characters as young adults, developing a social conscience and embarking on careers. Chance encounters bring them to a consciousness of the rape of the natural world's resources. Gradually they begin to meet, compelled, in varying measures of commitment, to play some active part in a protest against the destruction of trees, sometimes a single beloved tree, other times entire forests. The environmental activism of the characters was gripping reading.
But then the book began sagging and flagging. His relentlessly grandiose writing style began to exhaust me. In fact at times his lengthy pageants to the beauty of nature read to me like the environmental equivalent of pyschobabble. There's also too much research. There's a fabulous plot running through this story but it begins to get buried under all the pretentious and alienating sermonising. All the passionate indignation I felt about man's mercantile relationship with trees began to be replaced by irritation. At one point, Powers argues, "The best argument in the world won't change a person's mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story." I wish he'd held to that tenet throughout the novel. It would have made a brilliant 350 page book.

The Overstory highlights the absurdity of the world we live in where a person can be branded a terrorist for burning down the HQ of a company that desecrates eco-systems for financial gain and receive a double life jail sentence while the individuals responsible for the banking crash or the CEOs of corporations responsible for polluting water systems get nothing more than a slap on the wrist. Unfortunately though the Overstory is also overwritten. ...more

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Nov 12, 2018 Matthew Quann rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: pulitzers, man-booker-2018-shortlist, big-books-500-pages-plus, literary-fiction

Whoa! Congrats to Richard Powers for his 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction win. It's a very cool selection!

In the opening chapter of Richard Powers' The Overstory, the author spans the four or five generations of men who photographed a single Chestnut, over a century, in a mere twenty pages.

Despite that these men could have risen and fallen over the course of a couple pages, each of their stories felt like they could have stretched off into their own novel. This is my first novel by Powers and I ...more

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Jul 22, 2018 Peter Boyle rated it really liked it

Shelves: booker-nominee, best-reads-2018

I reckon everyone has a tree story. Here's mine. When I was a boy, our family planted a wood of sitka spruce and lodgepole pine on a stretch of wasteland that surrounded our farm. The government provided a grant to pay for this, and the annual subsidies that the forest generated helped put my brother and me through college. The saplings were knee-high when we sowed them and now they stretch a couple of storeys high. I live in the city these days, but when I drive back every month and see those s I reckon everyone has a tree story. Here's mine. When I was a boy, our family planted a wood of sitka spruce and lodgepole pine on a stretch of wasteland that surrounded our farm. The government provided a grant to pay for this, and the annual subsidies that the forest generated helped put my brother and me through college. The saplings were knee-high when we sowed them and now they stretch a couple of storeys high. I live in the city these days, but when I drive back every month and see those stately conifers tower over my little Corolla, I know I'm home.

The characters in this novel all have tree stories too. Their lives are all shaped by them in some way. Nick is an artist from the Midwest, who carries on his family's tradition of photographing the majestic chestnut in the back yard. There's Neelay, a young Indian-American who falls from an oak as a boy, fracturing his spine and setting him on course to become a world-renowned game designer. Douglas is a war veteran whose life was literally saved by a banyan tree. And then there's Olivia, who hears voices after a near-death experience, telling her to fight for the woodlands that are being decimated by greedy logging companies.

And that's where "Trunk", the central section of the book, takes place. After introducing us to nine major characters, most of them become involved in the struggle to protect America's forests. In a recent interview with the Guardian, (thanks to Canadian Reader for reminding me!), Richard Powers said that he was inspired by a documentary about environmental activists in California, who battled to save its giant sequoias.

Many of the activists in this tale are influenced by a biologist called Patricia Westerford. She becomes at first ridiculed, and eventually revered for her groundbreaking theories on how trees communicate, and nobody loves them as much as she does. Lots of the book's best lines come from her story. The forest is a paradise that never ceases to amaze her: "She works all day in the woods, her back crawling with chiggers, her scalp with ticks, her mouth filled with leaf duff, her eyes with pollen, cobwebs like scarves around her face, bracelets of poison ivy, her knees gouged by cinders, her nose lined with spores, the backs of her thighs bitten Braille by wasps, and her heart as happy as the day is generous." Even when Patricia, who has enjoyed quite a solitary existence, falls in love late in life, she can't help making a reference to trees when describing her happiness: "She takes his shaking hand in the dark. It feels good, like a root must feel, when it finds, after centuries, another root to pleach to underground. There are a hundred thousand species of love, separately invented, each more ingenious than the last, and every one of them keeps making things."

It's quite a long book, and I did feel that the Trunk part of the story could have been tightened up a bit. But it really is a joy to read: the lives of the nine major characters intersect in surprising and satisfying ways. Most of all, the author's affection for everything arboreal shines through and his passion is intoxicating. In the days since I started reading it, I've found myself noticing the limes and maples that line my walk to work, and I've begun to appreciate the ways in which trees have touched my life. It is a story that can change a person's outlook on the world, and not many novels can truly claim that. ...more

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Jul 21, 2018 Betsy Robinson rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Immediately after inhaling the first two pages of this book, I screamed, "Thank you!" To whom, I'm not sure. Then throughout the book, I re-erupted with it, sometimes to Richard Powers, sometimes to whatever force allowed me to understand what came through Powers, through the page, through the people he was writing through, and through the ancient tree memory that pervaded this orgasmic and sweeping novel about all of Nature’s life.

This book, the writing, the subject of trees and Life with a cap Immediately after inhaling the first two pages of this book, I screamed, "Thank you!" To whom, I'm not sure. Then throughout the book, I re-erupted with it, sometimes to Richard Powers, sometimes to whatever force allowed me to understand what came through Powers, through the page, through the people he was writing through, and through the ancient tree memory that pervaded this orgasmic and sweeping novel about all of Nature’s life.

This book, the writing, the subject of trees and Life with a capital "L" throbs. It's so beautiful and exciting that sometimes it hurts and you have to put the book down and digest. From the opening words, Richard Powers casts a spell, and for me it felt like thick and expansive energy—an altered state. Love. Love of and for trees as the complicated communal beings that they are, and when you feel that, it changes everything—from your relationship to the book you're holding that once was a tree, to your connection to Life, to the incontrovertible knowing that there is nothing that is not alive and remembering and praying, and even if we humans destroy ourselves, Life will always go on.

This is not our world with trees in it. It’s a world of trees, where humans have just arrived. [. . .] Trees know when we’re close by. The chemistry of their roots and the perfumes their leaves pump out change when we’re near. . . . When you feel good after a walk in the woods, it may be that certain species are bribing you. So many wonder drugs have come from trees, and we haven’t yet scratched the surface of the offerings. Trees have long been trying to reach us. But they speak on frequencies too low for people to hear. (424)

This book asks what keeps us humans from seeing the obvious—our smallness, our place in the context of all that is—and responding to it. And why do some people see it even though everybody around them does not?

My plants are happy I read this book.

Here is Sierra Club’s enlightening interview with Richard Powers about this book.
...more

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Oct 24, 2020 Andy Marr rated it really liked it

I feel a little guilty giving this four stars. Based on its message and the quality of its writing, it certainly deserves the full five. But, good lord, it was long; a 350-page novel stretched out into 502 small-typed pages. It's not that words were wasted, as such - there was repitition, but this was obviously intentional and cleverly used. I just don't think that all of its six inter-connecting stories were really necessary. This was particularly true of Neelay, whose own story connected only ...more

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About Richard Powers

Richard Powers

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Richard Powers is the author of twelve novels, most recently The Overstory. He is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and the National Book Award, and he has been a Pulitzer Prize and four-time National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. He lives in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains.

Librarian note: There is more than one author with this name in the Goodreads database.