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The Overstory cover art

The Overstory

By: Richard Powers
Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
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Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION 2019

SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2018

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

A wondrous, exhilarating novel about nine strangers brought together by an unfolding natural catastrophe

An artist inherits a hundred 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. An Air Force crewmember 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.

©2018 Richard Powers (P)2018 Random House Audiobooks

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Critic reviews

"Really, just one of the best novels, period." (Ann Patchett) 

"The best book I’ve [listened to] in ten years." (Emma Thompson)

"Dazzlingly written." (Robert Macfarlane)

What listeners say about The Overstory

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Extraordinary

In a way, this novel tells us more about the understory than The Overstory. In spite of painting a world, ours, on the brink of disaster, it gives us defiance against so called ‘human progress’, sensitive intelligence towards and solidarity with Nature, a generous love of humanity, and, most of all, the possibility of redemption for our crimes against the Earth. And trees are the giant heroes of this story in an astonishingly empathetic, intelligent and generous way.
The rich, poetical, inventive, beautiful language of Richard Powers is a joy to listen to. And the reader conveys all these and the strength of the story perfectly.
Some readers might find this novel periphrastic and over long, but, in my opinion, this format could be seen as an almost pictorial representation of the shape and nature of trees themselves - trunks, growing, expanding, intertwining branches, leaves and roots.
Wonderful and necessary reading.

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13 people found this helpful

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Too Complex for audio

I only managed a half of Part One as I found the narrative too difficult to follow in audio version. As I listen while stitching I couldn’t remember where I’d left off, every time. Perhaps best if listened to without any distraction at all, which is not how I usually listen.

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10 people found this helpful

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Lockdown literature

This takes me to places that need 20 years to understand. Listening in a spring under lockdown has been a solace.

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9 people found this helpful

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This book is amazing

I think everyone should read The Overstory. It’s a life changer. It does not anthropomorphise trees and nature but makes a very good argument for leaving them alone to save us as well as them. This wonderful, upsetting at times but also a fantastic story is a cry for conservation and a vital warning to self obsessed, money hungry humans....

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7 people found this helpful

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Too tangential on the technical

The topic is very important and I was initially captivated by setting up the human vignettes around a type of tree. But the characters were never really developed, just stylized. And the details on the trees got to be a bit mind-numbing. I have about 5 hours to go, but not sure I will make it.

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6 people found this helpful

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The best book I ever read

It's a terrifying story beautifully told. It makes me wonder if I would have lived my life differently if I'd read it at twenty. I hope I'm not an aggressive spore blighting a beautiful thing but I'm not sure.

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4 people found this helpful

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wonderful book

I learnt so much about trees and history from this book. Definitely one to listen to over and over again.

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4 people found this helpful

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Aaah! Brilliant.

If you are a ’book-reading-person’; read this book. If you are not a ‘book-reading-person’, this is part of what you are missing out on. You can however love the Overstory anyhow in the forest.

I read “The Secret Life of Trees” by Peter Wohlleben two summers ago. The Overstory is for me a refresher and reminder of the awe we owe life - and trees, told through the lives of people connected to them, as we are; every one of us.

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4 people found this helpful

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Phenomenal

Richard Powers writes beautifully, researches meticulously and weaves stories that are completely engrossing and totally convincing. The Overstory is both a moving and powerful work of fiction and a convincing manifesto for trees.

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4 people found this helpful

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Stunning

I still have goosebumps from the end. This was a wonderful book. True poetry as it works in so many levels. The narrator is fantastic. I just am sad it is over. However, now I am free to go and plant a tree in it’s honour...

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3 people found this helpful