The Overstory is the type of novel I dread reviewing. At nearly 500 pages, nine protagonists, and scores of literary and cultural references, there’s so much to unpack that a review could easily become a doctoral thesis if one had the time and inclination. To properly review, I would almost have to start over and take extensive notes as I read, planting even more stickies on all the pages that contain something interesting or pivotal. Reading this book was both exhausting and exhilarating.
The novel is broken down into 4 sections that reflect the lifecycle of trees. In “Roots,” we meet each of the nine protagonists and learn the histories that drive them to converge with each other in the second section, “Trunks.” The third section, “Crown,” deals with the aftermath of those connections, while “Seeds” looks dimly into the future. Each character, from Mimi, the daughter of a Chinese immigrant, to Doug, an Air Force veteran, to Olivia, a reckless, selfish bitch (her own description) turned environmental activist, each character has or develops a unique relationship with trees. Some connections are obvious: Neelay, a programming prodigy, falls out of a tree as a child à la Finny from A Separate Peace. Unlike Finny, Neelay is merely paralyzed and goes on to create an industry-changing virtual-reality universe. Patricia Westford, an awkward, hearing-impaired child, becomes a dendrologist who makes ground-breaking discoveries about communication between trees, only to be dismissed by the scientific community (the character appears to have been inspired by real-life dendrologist Suzanne Simard, author of Finding the Mother Tree). Other connections are more tenuous. Ray and Dorothy, who carry on a tumultuous affair and later enter into a tumultuous marriage, discover their love of nature only later in life. Adam has his love of science crushed as a child by cynical adults and only reconnects with it after meeting Olivia and Nicholas, an artist whose family’s chestnut tree serves as another pivotal character.
The disconnection between people and nature is a central theme in The Overstory. When Doug discovers large swaths of land have been clear-cut, he gets a job planting seedlings. He thinks he’s helping the situation until he discovers that planting seedlings is an avenue for companies to get approval to cut down more trees. Mimi just wants a quiet place in a small patch of nature to enjoy her lunch hour, until the city razes the trees in secret in the face of mounting protests. Party girl-turned-activist Olivia puts her life on the line to tree sit in a magnificent redwood named Mimas. I’m going to tell you up front that, in spite of Olivia’s assurances, this subplot does not have a happy ending. As young Adam observes, “Humankind is deeply ill. The species won’t last long.”
If this all sounds a bit heavy handed, I thought so to, at first. At times, at least during the first third of the book, I felt the book landing on the pompous side of persuasive. But it won me over completely, because what Richard Powers has to say about forest health and our relationship to trees is accurate and backed by research. When Patricia commiserates with a fellow botanist about the conventional wisdom of clearing fallen trees from the forest floor, for “the health of the forest,” she is echoing Suzanne Simard’s real-life experience. “Improve forest health. As if forests were waiting all these four hundred million years for us newcomers to come cure them. . . . A person has only to look, to see that dead logs are far more alive than live ones.”
When I read novels or see movies that support causes to which I’m sympathetic, I try to imagine myself as a cynic or nonbeliever faced with this work of fiction and whether it would persuade me. That sometimes leads me to become overly critical, which I think was what was happening in the first part of this novel. But then I came to my senses and started arguing to myself. Am I really supposed to temper my opinions and arguments in an effort to persuade the most unreasonable elements of society? So when I came to this passage, it felt like Powers was speaking to me: “They start in on the songs. Adam fights down his hatred of virtuous singing. The shaggy nature-souls and their platitudes make him queasy. . . . .All around him spread the garish colors of ad hoc democracy. Maybe it’s okay. Maybe mass extinction justifies a little fussiness. Maybe earnestness can help his species as much as anything.”
This novel made me even more alert to the issues we are facing on this planet. When I see a lone tree on a lawn, I find myself getting depressed because the homeowner is probably trying their best, but I know that one tree on a sea of lawns isn’t enough. When I mop up cat vomit with a handful of paper towels, I feel guilty, thinking of the statement that “What you make from a tree should be at least as miraculous as what you cut down.”
Yet in the end, the trees will outlast people. Trees evolved close to 360 million years before Homo erectus, and I dare say they will find a way to carry on without us. If you don’t find that thought comforting, you probably won’t enjoy The Overstory as much as I did.