The Overstory: A Novel
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4.3 • 1.8K Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction
Winner of the William Dean Howells Medal
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize
Over One Year on the New York Times Bestseller List
Named One of the Best Books of the 21st Century by the New York Times Book Review
A New York Times Notable Book and a Washington Post, Time, Oprah Magazine, Newsweek, Chicago Tribune, and Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year
"The best novel ever written about trees, and really just one of the best novels, period." —Ann Patchett
The Overstory, winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, 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 Northwest and beyond. 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.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
The Overstory is an intricate, compassionate, and searching novel whose threads interlock like the roots of sequoia trees in a redwood forest. It starts a century before the central conflict—the timber wars in Oregon—and revolves around nine characters whose lives are dramatically impacted by trees. Richard Powers writes beautifully about the environment and its impact on human beings. His story urges us to see nature not as an abstract concept but as an inextricable part of our daily existence, surrounding us like a forest and moving through us like sap.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Occupying the same thematic terrain as Annie Proulx's Barkskins, the latest from Powers (Orfeo) is an impassioned but unsatisfying paean to the wonder of trees. Set primarily on the West Coast, the story revolves around nine characters, separated by age and geography, whose "lives have long been connected, deep underground." Among these are a wheelchair-bound computer game designer; a scientist who uncovers the forest's hidden communication systems; a psychologist studying the personality types of environmental activists; and a young woman who, after being electrocuted, hears voices urging her to save old-growth forests from logging. All are seduced by the majesty of trees and express their arboreal love in different ways: through scholarship, activism, art, and even violent resistance. Some of the prose soars, as when a redwood trunk shoots upward in a "russet, leathery apotheosis," while some lands with a thud: "We're cashing in a billion years of planetary savings bonds and blowing it on assorted bling." Powers's best works are thrilling accounts of characters blossoming as they pursue their intellectual passions; here, few of the earnest figures come alive on the page. While it teems with people, information, and ideas, the novel feels curiously barren.
Customer Reviews
Beautifully written, but segmented and often confusing.
There’s no question that the author’s prose is beautiful and deliberate. At times however it seems to lose the plot and divert toward tree-themed poetry tangents. The Overstory I’d say is split into two halves. The first half of the book contains a series of mini-stories that seemingly have no connection with one another. Even still, they are charming and transportive. They are also intimate and revealing. We’re invited into the lives of people experiencing some of the most raw moments of their lives and that journey is magical. The second half of the book begins to pull these characters (or at least some of them) together around a central narrative. Despite the deep dives that the first half of the novel takes you on, separated by lengthy chapters, the second half of the book is one singular chapter that bounces quickly between one individual or group of people and another. Frankly it was confusing and jarring. Toward the end the book seems to be marching toward a finale that never comes. Instead it just sort of peters out. This is really too bad because the setup and introduction of the characters is one of the best I’ve ever read.
Haunting and Life-Changing
A magnificent work that will haunt you and lead you to action. You will never look at our world the same way again. Brought me to tears many times, but there is hope. Read this, it will disturb and move you.
Never the Same Again
It grows on you. It grows all around you. Roots and branches that weave a tale of people and trees. You’ll never look at a tree the same way again.