The Overstory

While it took me awhile to get into this book with all the varying characters, I loved the epicness of it. The beauty of weaving in so many different and varied characters to come together, sometimes indirectly, into one big mission for the planet and the trees. It explores so many themes and opinions and versions of reality, but underlying it is the web of connection that lies between all humans, of which trees are so representative. This book is an inspiring piece of epic art.

This book blew me away. I loved how it was told with a range of characters and stories converging into a single whole—like the forest and the trees. I learned more about trees than I ever thought I would care to know and loved every minute of it.

There's nothing more humbling, perhaps, than the vast forests that blanket our planet, and this novel and its unforgettable characters made me feel that in my bones. I'll never look at a tree or planet Earth quite the same way again.

“The Overstory” by Richard Powers is the best novel EVER written about trees. Full stop. But wait, I can’t stop. After ranging in the novel from the crown to the roots and from the densely forested Northeast to the giants of the Northwest, you will never take a single tree for granted again.

In fact, I’ll wager that, like me, after finishing this book you will go out and apologize to the familiar but ignored creatures that have patiently fed your soul while shading your body.

I especially loved that this book has the ability to bring together elements as disparate as science, politics, and our common humanity. I repeatedly stopped reading to think about what was written: a depiction of our society and our place at the crossroads of possible futures that will depend on our attitudes to the plants and animals that make up the earth we share.

But the moral core at the center of this novel makes it more than just a good story. I kept thinking that it was easy to imagine Powers’s book as what many people believe is the… show more.

This book forever changed the way that I look at trees. It’s a work of fiction, but elements are inspired by the life and research of ecologist Peter Wohlleben and his amazing discoveries of how trees communicate and cooperate.

It is incredibly well crafted and beautifully woven with ecological research in a digestible way. I admire an author who can weave together so many distinct narratives and lives, including the lives of trees.

It did the rounds in my family. Everybody was reading it across the world at the same time, and we loved chatting about it and discussing how… show more.

So much to learn about trees!

After reading this novel, I discovered Powers’ list of 25 (out of many more) books that influenced him while he was writing the book. Now I have read a significant share of these books too, and I have incorporated fascination and facts in my own writing. This novel, perhaps more than any other I have read, has led me to examine the vast and disturbing question that seems to haunt Powers—our alienation from nature, why? To question this, I feel, suggests a search that may lead to the “new story” our culture needs.

Powers… show more.

What’s not to love about a book structured as a tree? This is a vast, episodic novel that takes traditional storytelling and turns it on its head.

A cast of characters connect through stories that grow from seed to trunk to limb. I finished this long read and immediately wanted to start again. It’s the kind of book that rewards a second or third pass. Complex, rife with science and faith and desperate longing, this book is a celebration of the tree, a clarion call to return our attention to our roots before it is too late.

One of Powers’… show more.

I began the year by reading this book because in our time of environmental destruction, it felt only right to hand the narrative of people and trees over to the trees. I wasn’t disappointed.

Powers examines the tragic paradoxes of life in our world by taking a long, long view akin to the view that a tree takes. It’s a brilliant imaginative leap and the prose is marvelous to boot. It swept me along through the novel’s 500-odd pages so I could not stop.

I genuinely believe one of the most important ways we can improve our health and outlook on life is through connecting with nature, immersing our bodies in it as often as we can, to ground ourselves and reconnect. We are hard-wired to feel at ease in nature and studies back that up. 

I loved The Overstory, as Richard Powers shares about the interconnectedness of our world in the most beautiful way. It is impossible to come out the other side of that book without viewing the natural world differently, without being grateful for even being alive. 

My purpose is… show more.

It is rare that a book can change one’s perspective on life and living. This is one of those gems.

How I experience being in a forest, observing each and every tree, from the roots to the trunk to the crown, is now different. My appreciation of all the things in my house that are made from wood is now different.

The Overstory is a stunning ode to the natural world, woven in with impassioned activism and the tangled personal lives and goals of 9 strangers, each summoned in different ways by the trees. Powers repositions us as humans -… show more.