Book Review: The Overstory (2018). Richard Powers.

I previously reviewed three books by Richard Powers, including his most recent novel, Bewilderment, and two older ones, The Echo Maker and Orfeo, each of which were powerful tales of well-drawn characters struggling with individual personal crises in the midst of the larger calamities of planetary environmental decline and threats.

Powers’ 2018 novel The Overstory is very much in the same vein as these other works, but is perhaps the most remarkable of all of them, in that the central figure in the story is not the humans, but the ancient trees that surround them and sustain them. The dramatic tension at the heart of the story is the conflict between the humans who would destroy the trees, whose very existence supports their own lives, and a small group of humans who dedicate themselves to trying to save the trees and the forests, by whatever means they can devise.

Powers creates a powerful narrative story line about the trees themselves: he vividly describes their incomprehensibly long lives, their astonishing forms of communication and mutual support, and the complex planetary ecosystem which they have created over vast periods of time. In doing so, he provides a fascinating lesson in the contemporary scientific understanding of trees, and reveals many remarkable aspects of this ubiquitous ancient life form that is all around us, yet so often taken for granted.

However, there are important human characters in the story too. And here Powers uses a narrative device that is at first frustrating, which is that he slowly develops the backstories for a number of these characters in isolation from the others, one chapter at a time, so that deep into the book, it still seems that all we have is a series of short biographies of different people in different places, each in some way tied to a story of trees. 

Eventually, though, Powers brilliantly weaves all the threads together, as the characters meet each other, and begin to take individual and collective action, to fight for the trees, and to seek solutions to the environmental crisis they recognize. 

It was at this point, late in the book, that I began to recognize similarities to the real life story of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) in the American West in the 1990s and early 2000s, whose idealistic young members’ first non-violent tree-sitting actions eventually led to the formation of an eco-terrorist group.  

This book is fictional, and not in any sense a historical account, but the group's development within the novel, the psychological evolution of the members within the group as they become increasingly desperate to stop the logging of old growth forests, and many other aspects of the story seem reminiscent of what is known of the ELF, as well perhaps as that of many other small militant groups of young idealists throughout history.

The Overstory is simply a stunningly powerful novel about trees, our dependence on them, and the increasing urgency and desperation of sensitive souls among us who recognize the destruction we have wrought as a species on the trees and the planet, and try to take collective action to stop the devastation and save the forests. In the process, they run into the limitations of individual and small-group solutions, and are forced to face their own powerlessness to compel the outcomes they believe are necessary to save the world.

Although his most recent novel Bewilderment is also outstanding, and has very similar themes, I believe The Overstory is Powers’ greatest novel thus far, a marvelous book which has forever changed my own understanding of trees, their lives and the essential role they play in the environment of our world. Very highly recommended.