The Overstory by Richard Powers
I resisted this book for a long time, even as it got popular, largely because the only reasonable answer to the question of what the book is about is “trees.” While there is, ultimately, a plot, what really ties it together is thematic — and it’s a capital-I Issue at that — something so difficult to execute successfully that I tend to avoid those types of books altogether. But I ended up enthralled.
It took a while–you have to get through eight separate segments with entirely different characters and settings, some of them multigenerational, and although ultimately each does somehow involve tees, they are not otherwise connected to each other–until they are, which starts to build its own kind of suspense. I truly don’t think any one character is dominant, and that may be part of the theme, too. They are a forest.
Powers is known for writing, loosely, about science, of course a major interest of mine. So many people do that with research that feels ostentatious, but here, it feels organic. His knowledge is woven into word choice and sentence structure, into unobtrusive bits of background. While the book is big and rambling and flowery and sometimes unfocused, it is also immensely readable and enjoyable.
Amy P. Knight 