The Overstory (2018)

So of course very well-written in many ways, on the level of sentences and paragraphs and scenes. Big themes, thoroughly explored. Important topics. I learned a lot about trees and enjoyed much of it. I did not like the character of Olivia: she was too close to the manic pixie dream girl trope. Everyone falls in love with her because of course. She is right because of course. She dies because of course--so a little fridging in there too. I also don't think the alternative timelines/branches concept worked that well. I've seen it a lot and I understand why he used it but I don't think it was that effective. Felt like an out. And fed into the dream girl aspects of Olivia. Also, was there a single Black or Latinx character anywhere, even secondary or walk-on? Maybe there was one? How can you write an American Novel without any Black or Latinx characters? Especially an environmental novel? The main characters who are Asian also drifted toward stereotype--the computer genius Indian American (also some ableist stereotypes there, plus the other character's disability that comes and goes) and the Chinese-white character with cague ethnic presentation, broken-English with mystery trinkets dad, etc. And then the whole staring into the eyes as therapy. Anyway, raises some important issues, mostly readable, but a limited work. ( )

I didn’t finish this book. The first part was interesting. Short stories of people that did jot seem to connect to each other. This author has a fluid writing style and a way of turning a phrase that I really enjoyed. After reading 200 pages, I just lost interest. Too much philosophizing,

Beautiful and gripping if you’re into trees and nature writing. I liked the first half much better than the second half. Overall, the structure was more organic than literary; fitting. A collection of short beginning chapters are the roots of character development, these stories cohere into a sturdy large central plot trunk, then a lengthy conclusion is the canopy of characters dissipating into sky and wind and light and meaninglessness. I felt it became needlessly repetitive in its message, returning to the same or similar natural phenomena and climate warnings in ways that didn’t add much to character development, but only to the mood and style that was already firmly in place. Like he had poetically riffed on all his research for a bunch of pages that he couldn’t resist not killing off for the final edit. The canopy needed pruning.

Like a silly, short-lived human I wanted more meaning, more connections between the characters, who were rich and fascinating. Upon finishing I was surprised to see I had already, years ago, read an earlier book of Powers, Galatea 2.2. I rated it poorly because it felt too contrived, with a grand theme but lacking substance, just an extended rhetorical question. He’s definitely matured since then, but once again I feel like he tried for too much in one bite here. Was it really the story of trees and life? Or was it a story of man? I felt it could have been more powerful had it been more compact. Still... it raises enough questions about its own themes to make it fairly powerful.

Ultimately, I found it extremely depressing throughout, which I’m not confident was the final message. It made me think of the famous Thoreau quote that Rick Bass recently brought back to my consciousness: “I take infinite pains to know all the phenomena of the spring, for instance, thinking that I have here the entire poem, and then, to my chagrin, I hear that it is but an imperfect copy that I possess and have read, that my ancestors have torn out many of the first leaves and grandest passages, and mutilated it in many places. I should not like to think that some demigod had come before me and picked out some of the best of the stars… I wish to know an entire heaven and an entire earth.” ( )

Beautiful and gripping if you’re into trees and nature writing. I liked the first half much better than the second half. Overall, the structure was more organic than literary; fitting. A collection of short beginning chapters are the roots of character development, these stories cohere into a sturdy large central plot trunk, then a lengthy conclusion is the canopy of characters dissipating into sky and wind and light and meaninglessness. I felt it became needlessly repetitive in its message, returning to the same or similar natural phenomena and climate warnings in ways that didn’t add much to character development, but only to the mood and style that was already firmly in place. Like he had poetically riffed on all his research for a bunch of pages that he couldn’t resist not killing off for the final edit. The canopy needed pruning.

Like a silly, short-lived human I wanted more meaning, more connections between the characters, who were rich and fascinating. Upon finishing I was surprised to see I had already, years ago, read an earlier book of Powers, Galatea 2.2. I rated it poorly because it felt too contrived, with a grand theme but lacking substance, just an extended rhetorical question. He’s definitely matured since then, but once again I feel like he tried for too much in one bite here. Was it really the story of trees and life? Or was it a story of man? I felt it could have been more powerful had it been more compact. Still... it raises enough questions about its own themes to make it fairly powerful.

Ultimately, I found it extremely depressing throughout, which I’m not confident was the final message. It made me think of the famous Thoreau quote that Rick Bass recently brought back to my consciousness: “I take infinite pains to know all the phenomena of the spring, for instance, thinking that I have here the entire poem, and then, to my chagrin, I hear that it is but an imperfect copy that I possess and have read, that my ancestors have torn out many of the first leaves and grandest passages, and mutilated it in many places. I should not like to think that some demigod had come before me and picked out some of the best of the stars… I wish to know an entire heaven and an entire earth.” ( )

"To be human is to confuse a satisfying story with a meaningful one, and to mistake life for something huge with two legs." (383)

The profuse blurbs in my copy of this Pulitzer-winning novel include one from Nathaniel Rich at The Atlantic, highlighting author Richard Powers' anomalous work in a field where "literary convention favors novelists who write narrowly about personal experience," and Powers himself has been quoted as complaining that “Literary fiction has largely become co-opted by that belief that meaning is an entirely personal thing.” None of which is to say that this book lacks vividly-realized characters with complex interiority. But it may perhaps account for why the comparanda that occurred to me when reading it were more science-fictional than "literary."

Certainly the "cli-fi" element will put many readers in mind of the work of Kim Stanley Robinson, who has treated this large theme in many capable novels. I also observed a kinship to Ian McDonald's River of Gods, where the forest in Powers' book takes on the organizing and animating function of the river in McDonald's. Both of these novels have a regard for artificial intelligence that de-centers it from the human perspective. Yet another book brought to mind is The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell, a work of science fiction published as literary fiction. Mitchell's "atemporals" have some of their role taken up by the trees in The Overstory, but more importantly his social and philosophical concerns and the way he illustrated them through personal situations seemed quite similar to what I found in this book.

In addition to beautiful prose and profound reflection, there's a considerable amount of failure and death--both arboreal and human--in this novel. It is a sweeping tragedy that brought me to tears a few times. The final summation was a bit less intellectually honest than what I took away from Scranton's Learning to Die in the Anthropocene, but I guess I would still call The Overstory good medicine for those willing to take it.

"And what do all good stories do? ... They kill you a little. They turn you into something you weren't." (412)