The Overstory: A Novel
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.
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Community Reviews
I read about 200 pages of this award winning book and just couldnât continue. The writing is pretentious and the plot was boring. I really donât understand the rave reviews.
A gigantic thank you to Sarah Matousek for hosting a beautiful evening under the stars last week for our discussion of The Overstory. The setting was perfect the snacks were delicious, and this book was a great source of conversation! There was this one paragraph early the book, during the Nicholas Hoel section, that is talking about the photographs he took. It says “everything a human being might call the story happens outside his photo’s frame. Inside the frame, through hundreds of revolving seasons, there is only that solo tree, its fissured bark spiraling upward into early middle age, growing at the speed of wood.” I think this sets the stage well for the book as a whole. An effort to look away from the “busy-ness” of the normal human story to look at the lives being led by floral and the contribution that those make to each of our lives, even if we are not quite looking at it. The writing, so many times, was lyrical and evocative with these amazing combinations of alliteration and sonic repetition that were breathtaking. One of the strong themes of the book seemed to be about connection and interdependence, yet we all noticed that many of the characters were isolated or lonely. If also felt like Powers was commenting that the loneliness is perhaps a product or a symptom of our separation from our more natural selves. Upon rereading the beginning after finishing (which made a lot more sense than the first time I read it), we discovered this paragraph speaking to that idea of meaning and purpose and connectedness …. “That’s the trouble with people, their root problem. Life runs alongside them, unseen. Right here, right next. Creating the soil. Cycling water. Trading in nutrients. Making weather. Building atmosphere. Feeding and curing and sheltering more kinds of creatures than people know how to count. A chorus of living wood sings to the woman: If your mind were only a slightly greener thing, we’d drown you in meaning.” The book lost steam for some in the later parts, and some let dissatisfied by the ending, but all agreed that it created an amazing, complex, enlightening environment that will forever make us look at trees a little bit differently.
A giant story about the connection between humans and nature and a love story for trees. Everyone agreed that it was beautifully written. Structured in an unconventional way, the book ties the stories together of many different people, giving us a look at how they got where we met them, and then bringing us along as they, in different ways, take a look at nature around them. The book was a bit heavy at times, emotionally and structurally. Very interesting, very beautiful, I feel like I am a better person after reading.
Was entranced by the beginning of this book, which is infused with bracingly beautiful prose. But it is just way too long, and the plot, once it finally appeared, struggled to coalesce all the stories - I preferred the almost short story structure of the beginning.
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