Powers is interested in the damage humans can do to something that has otherwise withstood hundreds of years of change. It’s amazing that they live for so long-the oldest tree in the world is over 4,800 years old!-despite being stationary. There’s a certain elegance to how trees fit into their ecosystems. You don’t need any special knowledge to follow the story, but it left me super curious about the subject. The book made me want to learn more about trees. It’s very well-written and takes twists you wouldn’t expect. If you are in the mood for something that stimulates your thinking instead of providing answers, though, you’ll love The Overstory. I didn’t mind the lack of clarity, but some other people might. (You don’t even find out whether one of the main characters lives or dies.) In the end, it’s not clear whether you’re supposed to see their actions as morally right or just kind of crazy.
Some of the characters meet up with each other, and others have totally separate stories. This isn’t a book where everything gets tied up with a bow. I thought the most interesting was Olivia Vandergriff, a college student who becomes a tree sitter named Maidenhair after being nearly electrocuted to death.Ī good friend thought I might enjoy reading about all the different stories, and he was right. Each character has some kind of connection to trees, including a Vietnam veteran who gets a job planting seedlings and an artist whose family has been photographing the same chestnut tree for a century. Mimi is just one of the nine characters that Powers follows in The Overstory, which won the Pulitzer Prize two years ago. Powers describes the moment the “outrage floods into her, the sneakiness of man, a sense of injustice larger than her whole life, the old loss that will never, ever be answered.” This reaction starts her on a path to become a radical activist willing to throw her entire life away to protect trees. In The Overstory by Richard Powers, Mimi Ma arrives at her office one morning to find that the woods she can see from her desk have been cut down. But what would happen if one day you woke up and they were gone? When you spend most of your life here, it’s tempting to take them for granted. Almost everywhere you look here in Washington state-at least in the western part of it-you can find massive fir trees and towering red cedars. I grew up (and still live) in a place known for its beautiful forests.
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