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A review by bookswithchaipai
The Overstory by Richard Powers
adventurous
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
5.0
THE OVERSTORY - RICHARD POWERS
Genre - Literary Fiction, Nature, Historical
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction -2019
5/5
Ever since I read Bewilderment by Richard Powers, my eyes were set on this book. The high-placed accolades are well deserved because this book, the type of which I haven’t read till date, that wholly revolves around trees, was an eye opening experience.
THe first part reads like an anthology of short stories, about nine people from different walks of life, seemingly completed unrelated. But as one reads deeper, just like the branches of a tree converge and form the trunk, the connections build, and due to wildly varying reasons they come within each others stratosphere, finding a kinship born out of their love for trees.
There might be nine converging story lines but the true hero of them all is our oldest ancestors, the true owners of the earth, the one’s we have stopped noticing as much as we should - TREES. As a nature-lover who finds peace amongst the dancing trees and the singing ocean, I started noticing every blade of grass, each tiny leaf & the artistic tree barks and branches which emulate true art.
Apart from the captivating stories, the wealth of information I gleaned from these pages - about how trees communicate, the root systems, the aroma that they exude, the ecosystem which builds around even a dead tree - could not be captured even in an encyclopaedia. Recently I listened to Elif Shafak’s interview, about trees being sentient beings, with a secret communication system, older than the first man and who might live longer than the last one, which drove this point home.
*BOOK TRIVIA*
Patricia Westerford is probably based upon the scientist who first researched the way trees communicate, Dr. Suzanne Simard.
A documentary about environmental activists from the Redwood Summer of 1990 – when guerrilla groups mobilised against the logging of California’s giant sequoias – inspired this books core drama.
*
This book contains a secret, a secret very hard for the human brain to comprehend, one which might even lead to the extinction of mankind if the small band of emerging tree huggers, who are considered stir-crazy, are not taken seriously.
Genre - Literary Fiction, Nature, Historical
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction -2019
5/5
Ever since I read Bewilderment by Richard Powers, my eyes were set on this book. The high-placed accolades are well deserved because this book, the type of which I haven’t read till date, that wholly revolves around trees, was an eye opening experience.
THe first part reads like an anthology of short stories, about nine people from different walks of life, seemingly completed unrelated. But as one reads deeper, just like the branches of a tree converge and form the trunk, the connections build, and due to wildly varying reasons they come within each others stratosphere, finding a kinship born out of their love for trees.
There might be nine converging story lines but the true hero of them all is our oldest ancestors, the true owners of the earth, the one’s we have stopped noticing as much as we should - TREES. As a nature-lover who finds peace amongst the dancing trees and the singing ocean, I started noticing every blade of grass, each tiny leaf & the artistic tree barks and branches which emulate true art.
Apart from the captivating stories, the wealth of information I gleaned from these pages - about how trees communicate, the root systems, the aroma that they exude, the ecosystem which builds around even a dead tree - could not be captured even in an encyclopaedia. Recently I listened to Elif Shafak’s interview, about trees being sentient beings, with a secret communication system, older than the first man and who might live longer than the last one, which drove this point home.
*BOOK TRIVIA*
Patricia Westerford is probably based upon the scientist who first researched the way trees communicate, Dr. Suzanne Simard.
A documentary about environmental activists from the Redwood Summer of 1990 – when guerrilla groups mobilised against the logging of California’s giant sequoias – inspired this books core drama.
*
This book contains a secret, a secret very hard for the human brain to comprehend, one which might even lead to the extinction of mankind if the small band of emerging tree huggers, who are considered stir-crazy, are not taken seriously.