Moopy Book Club (September): Richard Powers - "The Overstory"

Rate "The Overstory" out of 5

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Cerro de Casa

Cerro de Casa

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From goodreads.com :

The Overstory is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of—and paean to—the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers’s twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours—vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.
 
I have been reading one book a week the past 3-4 months and this is the second time that I didn’t make it and won’t be able to finish two books the coming week to compensate for it. :(

I’ve been very busy, but I’m 100 pages in and this is so well written. The first story was exquisite, the rest have been slower. I still have no idea what this will be about (I almost never read the description in the back) other than the eco/tree theme but it’s very beautiful. I do however hope that this isn’t just a short story collection.
 
Finished the first part and so far I’m ready to declare it the second best book I’ve read this year. It helps that I’m so into nature nowadays. :disco:
 
This book was something else. Wow. Just wow. One of the best books I've read this year. I would like to write an in-depth review at some point but for now I will just say I really enjoyed this. 4/5
 
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It really is excellent, even if I’m in a bit of a meh section right now with all the activists marching and Mimi and Douglas getting arrested. I want more tree talk and mystical things and less Greenpeace.
 
This book has touched me to the core. I am looking at trees and fisting myself.

Well not really but you get my drift.
 
This week I’ve been watching Our Planet on Netflix (David Attenborough in me now) and it is only enhancing my experience of this book. I feel like booking a trip to Brazil to save the Amazon forest.
 
I’ve only read the first story and to be perfectly honest I thought about halfway through it that I was in for a drag, but then it all fell into place and broke my heart and now i’m excited for the rest.
 
It ebbs and flows and grows and expands and contracts and and stretches ....

Great book.

Sidebar: I will squeeze in 'The Testaments' before we start the next book (lovely @jivafox 's Richard Yates tome :disco: ).
 
I'm making slow progress, as with everything else these days (ie years), but I agree with the general sentiment that the book is lush like laurel green thick canopies in a rustling breeze

*hugs all trees in neighbourhood*
 
I hate to say it but reading this has turned into an uphill task. By the end of the Trunk section, I’ve almost started to hate most of the characters. I now only love Patricia. Hopefylly the remaning 200 pages will make upp for this.
 
RaspberrySwirl said:
I hate to say it but reading this has turned into an uphill task. By the end of the Trunk section, I’ve almost started to hate most of the characters. I now only love Patricia. Hopefylly the remaning 200 pages will make upp for this.
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What about Mimi Ma? She's my favourite!
 
Uhhh finally finished this. This book really made me branch and turn to catch more of its brilliance, but then I kept turning and turning but my rosebuds never got to bloom.

The first section was magnificent and heartbreaking and exciting, and then just when it seemed that all the characters would come together and their stories intertwine they turned into activists (some of them changing radically) and I couldn’t root for them and then the story really shifted and reading became a long struggle until the very end.

There were several moments of excellence (anything Patricia related and all the plant stories) but they were really drowned in a thick forest of difficult nonsense and video game talk. The story would have benefitted from being cut in half; at least three of the main characters could have been edited out without affecting the outcome of the story.
 
I have to hand it back to the library and I haven't finished :daf: so it'll be a little while yet before I finish it. but it's good so thank you whoever put in on the ballot

go Patricia btw
 
I just got to the Crown section but have to hand it in tomorrow, I've had a meeting all evening so if I try to read now I'll be out within a page or two...
 
Tree good - man bad.

This book was such a relief after the previous one. Powers is a compelling writer and I was hooked from the first page. Connecting each person and his/her story with a tree was very clever. It made me care more about the character instantly, and I was always interested to know how the tree would "interact" with the person.

The stories I liked most were Adam's and the computer designer's ones. Especially the arc about how the perfect virtual world became the same money grabbing planet as the real world kept me reading. Patricia started great as well but her being the constant victim made me lose interest in the end. Mimi Ma before becoming an eco terrorist was lovely as well, especially the parts about her father and the rings/scroll. The children stories were overall more interesting than the adult ones.

I didn't find the story about Maidenhair and Watchtower or whatever they were called endearing at all. When the story started with the electrocution I was fascinated how it would progress, but the constant naivety and the holier than thou attitude became most annyoing. See also: Douglas. Seeing white lights and hearing voices doesn't make you interesting.

Despite the great writing, the "tree good man bad" became a bit tedious half way through. If found it a bit hard to continue after about 2/3rd of the novel, and I had to force myself to finish it. Everyone in the novel was so honest and perfect and the logging people were all bad, it would've been interesting to see good people turn bad and vice versa. But obviously that's not the story Powers wanted to tell.

How he maintained the urgency about how logging is destroying the planet was very well done. I almost was a bit relieved when I found out a lot of the story takes place 20 years ago as if that somehow makes us present people less guilty. However, I'm very sorry about the Amazon fires but forgive me for not camping out in a big tree, eating blueberries and pooping from great heights in the presence of someone else. I don't believe eco activism is nearly as effective as well executed political pressure. Blaming the next person in the street like is done these days feels a lot like victim blaming, but that's a whole different argument.

I'm rating the book somewhere between 3 and 3,5 out of 5. The first half could easily have been a 4 but I'm a bit disappointed in the way it ended.
 
I'm afraid I've never been any good at LITERARY CRITICISM sweetcheeks. All I know is that I thought it was REALLY GOOD.
 
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