THE OVERSTORY

by Richard Powers

(Vintage £8.99, 640 pp) FROM Sara Maitland’s Gossip From The Forest to Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life Of Trees, vegetation has become a literary star.

Richard Powers’s latest novel, shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize, drew comparisons with Melville’s Moby-Dick for its ambition as the ‘great American eco-novel’.

Constructed in four parts, named Roots, Trunk, Crown and Seeds, the novel begins in the 19th century, when Jorgen Hoel and his new wife Vi plant six chestnut trees on their Iowa farm. It traces the often cruel relationship of humans with trees across generations.

Jorgen’s descendant, Nick, follows family tradition by becoming an environmental activist, inspired by the thought that the words tree and truth ‘come from the same root’.