Ian > Recent Status Updates

I am enjoying this. I’m still in the intro part (each chapter is like a short story centered around a character, and this character’s life is somehow changed by his or her experience of or interaction with nature.

I have an inner snob, sometimes an outer snob (lifelong struggle with this prick). It’s hard for me to open myself to contemporary fiction. But Powers’ style and storytelling= good so far!

The first major section of the book is divided into sub chapters each of which deals with a different character. I suppose these characters will probably encounter one another / interact in the latter sections of the novel. Two characters in, both vignettes end with a note of tragedy in them. I wonder if this will be the same for the other 8 or so.

“Sketching, he wondered what his brain would have to be like to distinguish each of the hundreds of lancer leaves on a given branch and recognize them as easily as he did the faces of his cousins.”
This is according to one critic, “a novel about trees.”
I’m intrigued.