A timely, necessary read
The Overstory Author: Richard Powers Publisher: William Heinemann
THE Overstory by American writer Richard Powers is about trees and a group of people whose lives are in some way shaped by them.
In the first part of the novel we are introduced to each of the nine main characters and their family history in a series of short stories.
These include artist Nicholas Hoel, the descendant of a Norwegian immigrant to Iowa; engineer Mimi Ma, the half-Chinese daughter of an immigrant from Shanghai; Neelay Mehta, who is crippled after a fall from a tree but goes on to become the worldfamous creator of a virtual world; Douglas Pavlicek, a US Army Sergeant who falls from a plane and is saved by the branches of a banyan tree; Patty Westerfield, a researcher who discovers that trees communicate with each other through scent; and Olivia Vandergriff, a college student who emerges from a near death experience believing that her purpose in life is to protect trees.
Several of the characters are drawn together as eco-activists fighting for the survival of trees. Eventually, though, direct action is taken to dangerous extremes with far-reaching consequences.
Despite the novel’s complexity and large cast of characters, Powers keeps the plot heart-thumpingly tense for the most part, and we are fully caught up in all the individual stories.
The research that Powers draws on shows that trees are alive in ways that most of us hitherto have not recognised. They are as much characters in this novel as the human players, and include the generations-old chestnut tree of the Hoel family and the giant redwood named “Mimas” that is home to Nicholas and Olivia who for almost a year.
The conclusions of the novel are timely, given the fact that the human race is sleep-walking towards eco-suicide (as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report out this week has shown us). However, as one of the characters says, “The best arguments in the world won’t change a person’s mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story.” Yes, The Overstory is a necessary read.