The Overstory

Richard Powers | 2018

There are few novels I’ve read that match the ambitiousness of Powers’ The Overstory. This book is deeply rooted in science—filled with so many ecological, technical terms I recommend keeping a search engine nearby—yet, for the most part, advances at the pace of a thriller. This book completely transformed my perception of the tools available for storytelling while remaining in the bounds of seemingly straightforward narrative plots. My one complaint is it’s length and some lingering storylines that I didn’t feel were fulfilled. More importantly, however, was its ability to instill a profound appreciation for the marvel that is a tree and a terror for humanity’s ignorant blindness to their significance.

The Overstory is remarkable for me in that it combines so many elements of ambitious storytelling without becoming too confusing, cliché, or overworked. The heart of the story implements a sense of deep time much like in Underland, an absorbing video game reveals real life truths like in The Three-Body Problem, the fates and journeys of characters inextricably interconnect like those of Cloud Atlas, and the book’s narrative mimics its subject’s structure like the labyrinthian chapters of House of Leaves. Powers interweaves these literary devices in such a way that neither isolates readers nor unnecessarily complicates the story for dramatic effect, but to create a staggeringly impressive and moving novel. Much like a tree, The Overstory is composed of innumerable components interacting in infinitely complex ways, all to create an awe-inspiring and beautiful whole that will hopefully last millennia.

“A great truth comes over him: Trees fall with spectacular crashes. But planting is silent and growth is invisible.”

“The clarity of recent weeks, the sudden waking from sleepwalk, his certainty that the world has been stolen and the atmosphere trashed for the shortest of short-term gains, the sense that he must do all he can to fight for the living world’s most wondrous creatures: all these abandon Adam, and he’s left in the insanity of denying the bedrock of human existence. Property and mastery: nothing else counts. Earth will be monetized until all trees grow in straight lines, three people own all seven continents, and every large organism is bred to be slaughtered.”

“The books diverge and radiate, as fluid as finches on isolated islands. But they share a core so obvious it passes for given. Every one imagines that fear, anger, violence and desire, rage laced with the surprise capacity to forgive—character—is all that matters in the end. It’s a child’s creed, of course, just one small step up from the belief that the Creator of the Universe would care to dole out sentences like a judge in federal court. To be human is to confuse a satisfying story with a meaningful one, and to mistake life for something huge with two legs. No: life is mobilized on a vastly larger scale, and the world is failing precisely because no novel can make the contest for the world seem as compelling as the struggles between a few lost people.”