Jack Baty reviewed The Overstory by Richard Powers
Great start
4 stars
The first half was so great! I wish it didn't turn into an eco-terrorism story.
Paperback, 550 pages
French language
Published Sept. 6, 2018 by Le Cherche midi.
The Overstory is a novel by Richard Powers published in 2018 by W. W. Norton & Company. It is Powers' twelfth novel. The book is about nine Americans whose unique life experiences with trees bring them together to address the destruction of forests. Powers was inspired to write the work while teaching at Stanford University, after he encountered giant redwood trees for the first time.The Overstory was a contender for multiple awards. It was shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize on September 20, 2018 and won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction on April 15, 2019, as well as the William Dean Howells Medal in 2020. Reviews of the novel have been mostly positive, with praise of the structure, writing, and compelling reading experience.Patricia Westerford, one of the novel's central characters, was heavily inspired by the life and work of forest ecologist Suzanne Simard. Westerford pens the fictional novel …
The Overstory is a novel by Richard Powers published in 2018 by W. W. Norton & Company. It is Powers' twelfth novel. The book is about nine Americans whose unique life experiences with trees bring them together to address the destruction of forests. Powers was inspired to write the work while teaching at Stanford University, after he encountered giant redwood trees for the first time.The Overstory was a contender for multiple awards. It was shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize on September 20, 2018 and won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction on April 15, 2019, as well as the William Dean Howells Medal in 2020. Reviews of the novel have been mostly positive, with praise of the structure, writing, and compelling reading experience.Patricia Westerford, one of the novel's central characters, was heavily inspired by the life and work of forest ecologist Suzanne Simard. Westerford pens the fictional novel The Secret Forest, which mirrors notable ecological texts such as The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate- Discoveries from a Secret World by German forester Peter Wohlleben and The Secret Life of Trees by British science writer Colin Tudge.
The first half was so great! I wish it didn't turn into an eco-terrorism story.
NOT ME recommending a book by a white man
this is some seriously... good... shit...
fucking hell
so much to say - made me just appreciate the world around me and nature and god we really need to do something soon
heartbreaking
the international implications of that
time
really captured the nuance / mixed messages within environmental activism also
Richard may have accidentally written one of the best new materialist feminist texts of our times ???
also I hate long books and this was so engaging I just wanted to finish it