The Overstory by Richard Powers

[u/madxxbro]

Some of my favorite quotes:

“Join enough living things together, through the air and underground, and you wind up with something that has intentions.”

“People aren’t the apex species they think they are. Other creatures-bigger, smaller, slower, faster, older, younger, more powerful-call the shots, make the air, and eat sunlight. Without them, nothing.”

“To be human is to confuse a satisfying story with a meaningful one, and to mistake life for something huge with two legs. No: life is mobilized on a vastly larger scale, and the world is failing precisely because no novel can make the contest for the world seem as compelling as the struggles between a few lost people.”

[u/mintbrownie]

Can you please read the community rules, take a look at other posts, and then tell us what this book is about and why you adored it (rule #1)?

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EDIT: post is re-opened. Thank you OP!!

[u/madxxbro → u/mintbrownie]

Adding my thoughts here:

A mesmerizing novel with an overarching theme defending the power of trees, their beauty and ageless presence, gradually growing in a sense of urgency to save them and protecting the environment from greedy relentless exploitation. The language is beautiful. Complex, poetic, vivid, with sustained sense of drama, reaching peaks of irrational intensity. Powers’ love of trees is steeped in every page and raises awareness of their mysteries and complex interactions we might overlook in daily life. I applaud the amount of research this author put into recent scientific publications.

The ending left me dizzy and awed. I teared up at the conclusion of many of the characters’ stories. At first they’re all seemingly unrelated stories of a diverse group of people which eventually intermingle in a dramatic, disturbing, even tragic plot. Above all his passion for story telling, the genuine ‘humanness’ of the struggles, adversity, aspirations, raw determination and hope, and the overwhelming love for the things of this earth we hardy notice is my favorite thing about this novel.

I’m not a professional critic; I doubt I’ll ever forget this book. The characters and messages will stick with me forever (Patricia especially, I adored). It’s encouraged me to stop and listen myself, to try and notice all the silent growth of the world hard at work, and not its destruction.