The Overstory by Richard Powers
“No one sees trees. We see fruit, we see nuts, we see wood, we see shade. We see ornaments or pretty fall foliage. Obstacles blocking the road or wrecking the ski slope. Dark, threatening places that must be cleared. We see branches about to crush our roof. We see a cash crop. But trees - trees are invisible.”
It won the Pulitzer Prize and was shortlisted for the Man Booker, it is a New York Times bestseller and was named as Amazon’s Book of the Year; there is almost no doubt that you have heard of this book, or have seen a multitude of people flicking through its pages on the tube. Coming in at a hefty 640 pages this book is not for the faint-hearted, but it is well worth the effort.
The blurb was, to me, misleading. Although this book’s strongest theme is trees, it is also about people and it touches on many pertinent social issues of today – for example, climate change, protests, technology and social welfare. It will change your entire perspective on the natural world and will have you ogling trees wherever you go.
The first half of the novel reads like a selection of short stories, all of which centre around a character and their relationship to trees. The narrative presents a young introverted girl whose father regularly takes her out of school to teach her the ways of the forest; an American soldier who, when fighting in the Vietnam War was saved by a tree; an immigrant father and son obsess over building a computer together; a young woman who has lost her way at University and almost killing herself – accidentally.
These people come from different parts of the world and are living in America. The second half of the book sees these nine strangers protest against the destruction and deforestation of trees – some of their stories join up, and others live out their lives separately but are still utterly enthralled by nature.
“But believe me: trees want something from us, just as we’ve always wanted things from them. This isn’t mystical. The ‘environment’ is alive – a fluid, changing web of purposeful lives dependent on each other. Love and war can’t be teased apart. Flowers shape bees as much as bees shape flowers. Berries may compete to be eaten more than animals compete for the berries. A thorn acacia makes sugary protein treats to feed and enslave the ants who guard it. Fruit-bearing plants trick us into distributing their seeds, and ripening fruit led to colour vision. In teaching us how to find their bait, trees taught us to see that the sky is blue. Our brains evolved to solve the forest. We’ve shaped and been shaped by forests for longer than we’ve been Homo sapiens.”
If you have been inspired by this book and now can’t get enough of trees, or if you want to get inspired to read it, then I would like to recommend a documentary series on BBC; The Americas with Simon Reeve. In one particular episode (episode three) Simon explores California, and you will get to see the true size of some of the trees that are described in The Overstory.
#FLODown: This book is like nothing else I have ever read before. Gorgeous prose, interesting characters that are full of depth, scientific and educational without crossing the line into boring…
Words by Mollie Kate Cohen
