The Overstory

De: Richard Powers

Narrado por: Suzanne Toren

Pulitzer Prize, Fiction, 2019

A monumental novel about reimagining our place in the living world, by one of our most "prodigiously talented" novelists (New York Times Book Review).

The Overstory unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fable that range from antebellum New York to the late 20th-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond.

An air force loadmaster in the Vietnam War is shot out of the sky, then saved by falling into a banyan. An artist inherits 100 years of photographic portraits, all of the same doomed American chestnut. A hard-partying undergraduate in the late 1980s electrocutes herself, dies, and is sent back into life by creatures of air and light. A hearing- and speech-impaired scientist discovers that trees are communicating with one another.

These and five other strangers, each summoned in different ways by trees, are brought together in a last and violent stand to save the continent's few remaining acres of virgin forest. 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.

©2018 Richard Powers (P)2018 Recorded Books

Beautiful and painful

I just finished reading this for the third time in about a year and a half. There is everything in this book. I will no doubt reread it many times. I cannot reccomend highly enough. The pain is because of all that we are NOT doing to save the biome.

Very well written, but rambles on

I purchased this title after it was recommended by NPR's Best Books of 2018.

The narrator performed well, especially considering the challenges of portraying characters with accents and speech impairments. She gave personality to each character in the novel, which was paramount in a book with 9 main characters.

The first half of the book is very captivating. The chapters read like poetic verses, filled with metaphor and imagery. The author does an excellent job of exploring the deep human nature of each of the characters so that they become easily relatable. I enjoyed how trees symbolized something important in each character's story.

The second half of the book, though, was tough to get through at times. The tone of the book shifts into something that reads more like a manifesto on environmental conservation with conviction, though not convincing. The characters tend to get very repetitive and say the same message in a hundred different ways -- "humans are destroying the earth." Certain characters stories get long-winded and overly and unnecessarily detailed. The first half of the book has a very good flow, but the second half of the book at times gets tough to follow. It has its moments that really impress upon the reader, but the second half of the book did not engage me as much as the first half. I am a completionist so I was determined to finish the book no matter how I thought it dragged on.
The ending wasn't very satisfying; I really thought this book could have ended at around Chapter 18. (There are 30 chapters in the book, each chapter being roughly around 50 minutes long.)

Timely advocacy, timely inspiration

Plant colonies and their relationship to who we are, where we find solace and strength. different take; that will resonate with hikers, advocates of preserving our national parks, our heritage for our children; and the history of what we have lost personified in the American Chestnut, deforestation rates and corporate intentions on our future. All co-mingled with the stories of men and women you will care about.

Quality uneven

There were stretches of this book that great and highly engaging mixed with portions that were not.

The narration was annoying. Personally I dislike narrators who “over act” the different characters with phony voices. This narrator even broke into song at one point...and not too good effect. Also this narrator had a certain prissy quality and seemed to overcompensate when the dialogue was occasionally raunchy.
Since I was trapped in the car on a lon trip, I finished the book but I wouldn’t share it with a friend.

Well Written...Frustrating Narration

Though it feels a bit awkward to critique a Pulitzer Prize-winning book, I would still like to offer my opinion.

First, the story. The fairly wide cast of characters are generally well-crafted, and their stories—which all eventually involve trees—are artfully woven together, some coming into contact with others. This worked quite well.

Second, the writing. Mr. Powers definitely has a talent for word-craft. To me, this was the strongest part of the book. The imagery and the messages resonate quite strongly, especially in light of our own ever-developing Climate Change struggle. Still, there is a repetitive nature to some of the writing that can sometimes wear on one’s patience.

Third, the narration. Suzanne Toren is undoubtedly talented (I can only image how challenging it must be to narrate and entire novel), but her style did not fit well with the male and foreign-born characters of this book; the men mostly sounded guttural and raspy, and the foreign nationals sounded like they all have the same generalized accent. The biggest problem for me was the volume; low in general (as compared to other audio books in my library), and further reduced by Miss Toren’s tendency to whisper-read short passages from time to time. This otherwise fine book would truly have benefited from an ensemble cast reading.

Overall, definitely worth a listen, but expect to maintain a fair amount of patience.