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The Overstory

by Richard Powers
The Overstory

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  • Synopses & Reviews

ISBN13: 9780393635522
ISBN10: 039363552X



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Staff Pick

In The Overstory, Richard Powers has created a beautiful tribute to nature, connection, activism, and home, and I was captivated from the first page. In this interlocking story with multiple time periods and characters, we are reminded that there is still so much to learn about our world. Recommended By Leah C., Powells.com

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

A monumental novel about trees and people by one of our most "prodigiously talented" (The New York Times Book Review) novelists.

An Air Force loadmaster in the Vietnam War is shot out of the sky, then saved by falling into a banyan. An artist inherits a hundred years of photographic portraits, all of the same doomed American chestnut. A hard-partying undergraduate in the late 1980s electrocutes herself, dies, and is sent back into life by creatures of air and light. A hearing- and speech-impaired scientist discovers that trees are communicating with one another. These four, and five other strangers — each summoned in different ways by trees — are brought together in a last and violent stand to save the continent’s few remaining acres of virgin forest.

In his twelfth novel, National Book Award winner Richard Powers delivers a sweeping, impassioned novel 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, The Overstory 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, exploring the essential conflict on this planet: the one taking place between humans and nonhumans. 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.

The Overstory is a book for all readers who despair of humanity’s self-imposed separation from the rest of creation and who hope for the transformative, regenerating possibility of a homecoming. If the trees of this earth could speak, what would they tell us? "Listen. There’s something you need to hear."

Review

"A magnificent saga....Powers’s sylvan tour de force is alive with gorgeous descriptions; continually surprising, often heartbreaking characters; complex suspense; unflinching scrutiny of pain; celebration of creativity and connection; and informed and expressive awe over the planet’s life force and its countless and miraculous manifestations....profound and symphonic." Booklist (starred review)

Review

"The time is ripe for a big novel that tells us as much about trees as Moby Dick does about whales....The Overstory is that novel and it is very nearly a masterpiece....On almost every page of The Overstory you will find sentences that combine precision and vision." The Times (London)

Review

"The Overstory is a visionary, accessible legend for the planet that owns us, its exaltation and its peril, a remarkable achievement by a great writer." Thomas McGuane

Review

"[Powers is] brilliant on the strange idea of 'plant personhood...' opening our eyes to the wondrous things just above our line of sight. Memorable chapters unfold [with] many unforgettable images in a novel devoted to 'reviving that dead metaphor at the heart of the word bewilderment.'" Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal

Review

"This book is beyond special. Richard Powers manages to turn trees into vivid and engaging characters, something that indigenous people have done for eons but that modern literature has rarely if ever even attempted. It's not just a completely absorbing, even overwhelming book; it's a kind of breakthrough in the ways we think about and understand the world around us, at a moment when that is desperately needed." Bill McKibben

Review

"An extraordinary novel....An astonishing performance....There is something exhilarating, too, in reading a novel whose context is wider than human life. The Overstory leaves you with a slightly adjusted frame of reference....What was happening to his characters passed into my conscience, like alcohol into the bloodstream, and left a feeling behind of grief or guilt, even after I put it down." The Guardian

About the Author

Richard Powers is the author of twelve novels, most recently The Overstory. He is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and the National Book Award, and he has been a Pulitzer Prize and four-time National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. He lives in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains.

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Average customer rating 4.2 (6 comments)

`
Weems , July 21, 2022 (view all comments by Weems)
I came back to this book after a false start because Keanu Reeves spoke highly of it. Powers, a man whose name would NEVER work in a work of fiction if you were naming an author who wrote Big Books, is an author of Big Ideas, though I am honestly only acquainted with two of his novels now. Powers works on good scientific knowledge of nature and how screwed we’ve made ourselves through our treatment of it, but not just to preach but to examine how we throw ourselves blindly to (and past) the brink (he types during a near-90 day in upstate NY), and how even our efforts to save ourselves only leads to stubborn acts of reciprocation (sound familiar?), but with hope that the world will correct us, that we are necessary but certainly not top of the food chain.

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Weems , July 21, 2022 (view all comments by Weems)
I came back to this book after a false start because Keanu Reeves spoke highly of it. Powers, a man whose name would NEVER work in a work of fiction if you were naming an author who wrote Big Books, is an author of Big Ideas, though I am honestly only acquainted with two of his novels now. Powers works on good scientific knowledge of nature and how screwed we’ve made ourselves through our treatment of it, but not just to preach but to examine how we throw ourselves blindly to (and past) the brink (he types during a near-90 day in upstate NY), and how even our efforts to save ourselves only leads to stubborn acts of reciprocation (sound familiar?), but with hope that the world will correct us, that we are necessary but certainly not top of the food chain.

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`
RiversRoxx , May 20, 2020
Ed Abbey would be pleased with this story, especially the first 3/4 of it. The last quarter is where reality impacts harder than even Ed was willing to write. A worthy and inspirational read for anyone who truly hopes the many species of lives on this planet will survive. Plant a tree. It’ll serve you well.

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Bill Brewer , December 04, 2019
Too hard to follow. This is "clever writing" forcing the reader to have to ponder which character he is writing about. All of the characters live in tragic situations. The beauty of trees and forest are drowned out by an depressing tone to the book. As an Oregonian, I am glad to have struggled through the book. The author first gives light to the sensitivity of the Pacific Northwest forest in his discovery of the tree corridors which are a couple 100 yards deep along the major rural highways that mask massive clear cuts. He has a cynical look at the tree planting that has gone on for many years giving no mention to the school children that went on field trips to replant the burned over Tillamook Burn. He addresses the cutting of a small urban forest in Portland to make way for the development but he does not mention the fact that Portland was command central for the ecological protests of last quarter of the 20th century. He does not sound the alarm that the state of Oregon is run on revenue derived from logging what is now second growth timber the the grade school children planed in the 1950s. There is a story told to about the current plight of the Northwest Forest but this is not it.

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Lukas , January 29, 2019 (view all comments by Lukas)
This is one of the most remarkable novels I've read in the past few years. It all comes down to trees. Winner of the National Book Award.

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Tisa , May 15, 2018 (view all comments by Tisa)
This book club read was a little intimidating at the start, but after I read the first 50 or so pages, I was hooked! Don't let the 500+ number of pages deter you, because this novel is unlike any other you've read, and it will fascinate you. The careful, well-crafted design of the plot takes the lives of 7 people and weaves them around and through the "lives" of the trees they live, grow, and make history with. The lives of these characters exemplify American life and history from the time their ancestors arrived to the end of the story (no spoilers here). You will learn about trees, the American Northwest, Midwest, NY, and how these characters built lives that revolved around the trees among them, and how the trees' lives were affected by the actions or non-actions of mankind. I learned a lot about the nature of the environment as it relates to trees, as well as the nature of man in response to threats on that environment. The language is beautiful. Every sentence is perfectly worded and reflects the masterful writer that Powers is. His reverence for nature is apparent, and you will come away with a new respect for the lives of trees and those who strive to protect them.

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Product Details

ISBN:
9780393635522
Binding:
Hardcover
Publication date:
04/03/2018
Publisher:
W W NORTON & CO
Pages:
512
Height:
1.50IN
Width:
6.20IN
Illustration:
Yes
Author:
Richard Powers

Ships free on qualified orders.
Add to Cart
$27.95
New Hardcover
Ships in 1 to 3 days
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