The Overstory – A Novel

Product Information

Most Americans do not understand the perils of climate change—or of deforestation, clear-cutting, habitat loss. But those who perpetuate the disinformation campaigns, including the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, the House and Senate majority leaders, and the president of the United States, likely do. It is easier, politically, to claim scientific murkiness than to tell the truth: They value their self-interest over the condition of the world their grandchildren will grow up in. Whether this self-interest is venal or foolish is irrelevant. It’s human nature. And that raises a more difficult question: not whether we should take action, but how to come to terms with the fact that our species has proved itself incapable of doing so.

Hundreds of miles away from the native range of chestnuts, further still from Prospect Hill, but he has hope for the future, for their future. 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. Patricia Westerford learns about trees from her father. She studies botany and forestry in college. While completing research, she discovers trees communicate with each other through chemicals. Her findings are denounced by a few prominent scientists. She loses her job and retreats into solitary life, nearly killing herself. Later, she meets two scientists who tell her that her research has been redeemed in the scientific community. She joins them at their research station and begins investigating trees once more. Adam Appich – an inquisitive boy who is fascinated with insects and later becomes interested in human psychology and how humans can only understand things that are put into narratives. His father planted a tree before the birth of each of his children; as a child, Adam conflated the characteristics of each tree with his siblings.

Reader Reviews

There are additional minor criticisms. The book is long and could have done with an edit, and Powers’s ecological message, heartfelt though it is, might strike some readers as on the nose in places; his obvious identification with “Plant-Patty” means that, as one character muses, the “burning down the library, art museum, pharmacy and hall of records, all at once” cannot be seen as anything other than a crime against nature, but it is unlikely that anyone would think otherwise. You will careen through this book. The prose is driven. You don’t really get to draw breath … The writing is steel-edged, laser-sharp when Richard Powers wants it to be. When he sets out to nail meaning, it’s done. There are sentences you return to and wonder at. Irish Times Alert to the large ideas and generous to the small ones; in an age of cramped autofictions and self-scrutinising miniatures, it blossoms. Daily Telegraph 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”:

My other major concern with this book was the understandable but ultimately unhelpful craze to anthropomorphise scientific research. Wohlleben's book has garnered much attention but it is far from accepted doctrine to talk of complex tree networks as if they have intention and consciousness. Powers leans heavily upon this, trees "bleed" sap, they have plans to travel north, they communicate intention with each other, they would talk to us if only we were listening. Certainly there is scientific evidence to support communication and symbiotic relationships and much else interesting besides. But it seems to me a fallacy to try to view these findings through a lens of human behaviour. Is that not an egregious form of egotism on our part? 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.It’s also a book about an assortment of characters, mostly pairs, and their interactions with, or passion for, trees and forests (and sometimes each other). Dennis tells Patricia that the loggers say"Lets go let a little light in that swamp." Forests ... - MarieA Content notes: some, very limited adult content (language, violence, sexual situations). This isn’t a book for younger readers in any case. 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. Jabr, Ferris (December 2, 2020). "The Social Life of Forests". The New York Times . Retrieved February 1, 2021.

A sweeping novel that skilfully intertwines many different stories of trees and people to create a paean to the hidden power and vital importance of the natural world Country & Town House The planet’s lungs will be ripped out. And the law will let this happen, because harm was never imminent enough. Imminent, at the speed of people, is too late. The law must judge imminent at the speed of trees." The Diversity of Life, by Edward O. Wilson—masterful synthesis of biodiversity and species interdependency in ecosystems and scope of the current threat, with a focus on forests and jungles 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. The need for change is fuelled by a strong undercurrent of scientific progress and academic discovery, but that can only achieve so much. It is the act of storytelling itself that becomes the best tool for change:

Yet it would not work as a narrative if the main characters were not richly detailed. There is always a risk with a book of this sort that at least one of the strands can feel redundant – dead wood, if you will – and, unfortunately, there are some longueurs from time to time, not least in the shape of Neelay, a paraplegic who is master of all he surveys in his virtual world (named, appropriately enough, Mastery) but who fails to realise that far greater riches can be obtained from the wonders around him. Here, Powers becomes didactic; he seems to write with distaste for Neelay’s “swollen, snapped claw” and how “he’s grown so gaunt he’s set for sainthood”, and the sympathy that he extends to his other creations is in shorter supply.