The Overstory

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.

These discussion guides are from the publisher, W.W. Norton, and were written by Professor Everett Hamner.

Book club questions for The Overstory by Richard Powers

Use these discussion questions to guide your next book club meeting.

The Overstory is broken into four sections: Roots, Trunk, Crown, and Seeds. Each section is introduced by a short passage from an unusual, even mysterious point of view. How does this book’s structure and voice depart from the typical shape and terms of a novel? Does seeing the book in the form of a giant tree change how you read it?

Nicholas inherits a scrapbook filled with photographs of the same tree taken monthly over three-quarters of a century. Are there any acts of sustained attention in our digital age that permit a similar experience of deep time?

Is Neelay’s fall from the tree entirely accidental? How does it shape his future storyline? Does his descent into virtual worlds dovetail with the other characters’ experiences and choices? Why do his “learners” come so fully to the foreground in the final section, Seeds?

The book suggests that life is asking something of humanity—that humans are not alone in possessing subjectivity and agency, desire, and purpose. Is this true? Did your belief in the urgency and importance of trees change while reading the novel? Did the book affect your sense of human uniqueness?

Powers’s characters observe how easily humans let group affirmation replace real insight. Douglas notes humanity’s “overwhelming tendency to mistake agreement for truth” (p. 84), and Adam’s professor lectures about how “we’re all operating in a dense fog of mutual reinforcement” (p. 233). How does the novel challenge this habit of groupthink? What does it propose as an alternative? Can the habit ever really be escaped?

The Overstory is full of marriages, partnerships, love affairs, and various nontraditional arrangements. It also features multiple separations and abandonments. What does the book’s depiction of the variety of human intimacy have to do with its preoccupation with the nonhuman world?

Consider Olivia’s declarations that “exponential growth inside a finite system leads to collapse” (p. 321) and that “we’re not saying don’t cut anything. . . . We’re saying, cut like it’s a gift, not like you’ve earned it” (p. 289). Is a reintegration of humans into the living world incompatible with global capitalism? Can an individualistic, human-centric, commodity culture ever become “tree conscious”? Is Olivia right when she suggests that a civilization that’s alienated from the nonhuman world is doomed?

Where does the book come down on violent resistance? What kinds of political engagement or resistance are you willing to condone? Does the prospect of environmental catastrophe and mass extinction change where you draw the line? Is there anything in the nonhuman world that you would risk your life to defend?

In what ways does The Overstory draw upon indigenous religious traditions? Does it participate in or resist cultural appropriation? Is the book ultimately scientific or mystical?

This novel often reflects on the capabilities and limitations of fiction, as when Ray realizes how characters “cross all distances to sit next to you in your mechanical bed, keep you company, and change your mind” (p. 383). What world myths and legends does the novel invoke? Why are stories so important to The Overstory?

In her final lecture at Stanford, does Patricia choose to drink or not to drink the Tachigali versicolor extract—to commit suicide or “unsuicide” (p. 466)? How do Powers’s choices in narrating this moment reflect the novel’s takes on ambiguity, evolution, activism, interdependence, and branching?

One of the ending scenes of the novel is Mimi sitting in stunned silence against a tree in a San Francisco park, struggling to accept a gift from Douglas. Is this a moment of psychological paralysis or spiritual awakening? Another scene is a final art installation by Nick. Is this installation a rejection or continuation of his prior activism? What hope, if any, does the end of the novel hold out?

The Overstory Book Club Questions PDF

Click here for a printable PDF of the The Overstory discussion questions