The Overstory – A Novel

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Trees are silent sentinels witnessing the passing of generations, as human families are characterised in tree years through parts of the story. In this the pervading power of the natural world is contrasted against the fragile nature of human existence. Our environment has evolved drastically, but we haven’t. We still have many innate animal behaviours that are completely unsuited to the modern world. We are ill adapted to our concrete environments. There’s a reason why we feel a sense of peace and tranquillity when we visit a forest or an open landscape. It’s where we belong.

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.Reefs blanch and wetlands dry. Things are going lost that have not yet been found. Kinds of life vanish a thousand times faster than the baseline extinction rate. Forest larger than most countries turns to farmland. Look at the life around you; now delete half of what you see. As a boy, Neelay Mehta becomes obsessed with computers. While climbing a California live oak, Neelay falls and becomes paralyzed from the waist down. While at Stanford University, he receives inspiration from the campus trees and decides to create an immersive world video game where players conquer, expand, and interact over game content. The second half of the book is about these same characters being drawn together to fight the cause of saving trees. Environmental activism is the center of this part of the book and it’s fight against logging companies who are destroying the American forests.

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. An astonishingly rich book . Rich in ideas and imagination. Rich in drama, wisdom and truly illuminating facts about trees. Caught by the River Patricia Westerford, one of the novel's central characters, was heavily inspired by the life and work of forest ecologist Suzanne Simard. [5] [6] [7] Westerford pens the fictional novel The Secret Forest, whose title mirrors other popular texts such as The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate – Discoveries from a Secret World by German forester Peter Wohlleben, The Secret Life of Trees by British science writer Colin Tudge, and Finding the Mother Tree by Simard herself. [8] Plot [ edit ] After enduring the Stanford prison experiment, Douglas Pavlicek enlists in the U.S. Air Force. Doug's plane is shot down, and he falls out into a banyan tree. He is discharged and becomes a caretaker on a horse ranch. While driving through Oregon, he is disturbed by the sight of clear-cut hillsides. He takes a job planting thousands of Douglas fir seedlings. Jabr, Ferris (December 2, 2020). "The Social Life of Forests". The New York Times . Retrieved February 1, 2021.Next comes TRUNK, which is where storylines cross and the characters find themselves connected by their love for trees, sometimes My First Summer in the Sierra, by John Muir—a naturalist’s portrayal of his hikes in these California mountains, including his poetic and spiritual reactions to his first encounters with the ancient, giant redwoods and sequoias (free audio version at Librivox) It is true that we all need to become better stewards of the environment, and this book gets points for its good intentions and cool factoids about our arboreal friends. But almost anyone who makes it through this book is probably already converted to the environmentalist cause (or at least whatever substrate involves believing "trees = good"), and I wager that anyone who wasn't will be turned off by how silly and mawkish this book is. Read Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate instead.

Some of these trees were around before Jesus was born. We’ve already taken ninety-seven percent of the old ones. Couldn’t we find a way to keep the last three percent?” Markovits, Benjamin (March 23, 2018). "The Overstory by Richard Powers review – the wisdom of trees". TheGuardian.com. a b Jordan, Justine (July 23, 2018). "New voices, but less global: the Man Booker longlist overturns expectations". TheGuardian.com . Retrieved August 9, 2018. 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”: Douglas Pavlicek – an orphan who enlists in the Stanford prison experiment before joining the Air Force. He falls from his plane and is saved by a banyan tree. After being discharged, he wanders across America, realizing as he does so that deforestation is ruining the country. He signs up to plant seedlings, only learning after the planting of his fifty-thousandth seedling that this effort does nothing to help trees and only contributes to their destruction at the hands of logging companies.However, it is impossible to spend what ended up being almost two weeks with this book and not find some glimpses of brilliance. I am left with a strong sense of having traveled through some delightful arboretum where tree giants are whispering just out of ear shot. Much like hiking the Appalachian Trial might feel like days of misery and toil for one or two moments of transcendental bliss so goes the experience of reading The Overstory . A slog then but not without occasional rewards. Meanwhile Neelay starts his own company and becomes fantastically wealthy and successful with his immersive Mastery games, constantly building richer and more complex worlds with his coding. Patricia writes a best-selling book called The Secret Forest, all about how trees communicate. Adam decides to write his dissertation on the psychological profiles of environmental activists, and he begins interviewing people. Dorothy and Ray try to have a child but cannot, and in their dissatisfaction, they dive into reading and other hobbies. Soon Dorothy starts having an affair. Writing The Overstory quite literally changed my life, starting with where and how I live,” the author Richard Powers told the Chicago Review of Books. Before writing the book, Powers had been living and teaching in Palo Alto, between tech-centric Silicon Valley and California’s old-growth forests. An encounter with a giant redwood shook him; in a Guardian profile, he describes it as a kind of “religious conversion” that showed him his place in “a system of meaning that doesn’t begin and end with humans.” Powers then began work on the novel, and his research took him to Tennessee’s Great Smoky Mountains. Months later, he moved there to live deep in the woods, where “walking a trail has become as important to me as writing.” Absolutely blown away by this epic, heartbreaking novel about us and trees EMMA DONOGHUE, author of Room and The Pull of the Stars

The Overstory is divided into four sections, titled "roots", "trunk", "crown", and "seeds", mirroring the life cycle of a tree. I am aware Powers has a degree in Physics as well as literature and that becomes obvious in sentences like these :Update: on reflection, I got a bit excited about having a new Richard Powers book to read and I have definitely, despite what I say below, read better books this year. Consequently, my rating has dropped to 4 stars. There is also the fact that Powers himself has written several books better than this one. Personally, this book was a perfect fit with other books read in recent years, including these that I can recommend: