6. “The Overstory” by Richard Powers.
An artist inherits a hundred years of photographic portraits, all of the same doomed American chestnut tree. A hard-partying under-graduate in the late 1980s electrocuted 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. An airforce loadmaster in the Vietnam war is shot out of the sky, then saved by falling into a banyan. This is the story of these and five other strangers, each summoned in different ways by the natural world, who are brought together in a last stand to save it from catastrophe.
Review : ⭐️⭐️⭐️. At over 600 pages, this is a chunker! I loved the first third of this book, was fully sold at 2/3rds and then bored silly by the end. Lots of beautiful imagery & I definitely want to help the trees more now - but I’m not sure who I’d recommend this book to. At once inspiring and preachy, necessary and overwritten. Go hug a tree. #theoverstory #richardpowers #trees #environmental #conservation #bookstagram #books #fiction #bookreview #penguinrandomhouse #vintagepress
