The Overstory, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, 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.
Content warning Review of the ending
The ending left a lot to be desired but I suppose there’s no way to end a plot that has such high aims.
I loved this book, but was simultaneously disappointed at the lack of acknowledgement for Native knowledge on the themes of the book.
Best book I’ve read in years. Read it. You won’t regret it.
Warning: like all Richard Powers novels, it’s not light reading. Read it when you have time to savor it and concentrate.
