new york times book review the overstory

The Novel That Asks, ‘What Went Wrong With Mankind?’

Richard Powers’s climate-themed epic, The Overstory , embraces a dark optimism about the fate of humanity.

“P eople see better what looks like them,” observes the field biologist Patricia Westerford, one of the nine— nine —main characters of Richard Powers’s 12th novel, The Overstory . And trees, Patricia discovers, look like people. They are social creatures, caring for one another, communicating, learning, trading goods and services; despite lacking a brain, trees are “aware.” After borers attack a sugar maple, it emits insecticides that warn its neighbors, which respond by intensifying their own defenses. When the roots of two Douglas firs meet underground, they fuse, joining vascular systems; if one tree gets ill, the other cares for it. The chopping down of a tree causes those surrounding it to weaken, as if in mourning. But Powers’s findings go beyond Dr. Pat’s. In his tree-mad novel, which contains as many species as any North American forest—17 are named on the first page alone—trees speak, sing, experience pain, dream, remember the past, and predict the future. The past and the future, it turns out, are mirror images of each other. Neither contains people.

Powers is the rare American novelist writing in the grand realist tradition, daring to cast himself, in the critic Peter Brooks’s term, as a “historian of contemporary society.” He has the courage and intellectual stamina to explore our most complex social questions with originality, nuance, and an innate skepticism about dogma. At a time when literary convention favors novelists who write narrowly about personal experience, Powers’s ambit is refreshingly unfashionable, restoring to the form an authority it has shirked. A former computer programmer and English major at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Powers has written novels about the history of photography, artificial intelligence, nuclear warfare, race and miscegenation, the Holocaust, neuroscience, virtual reality, the chemical industry, and genetic engineering. It was only a matter of time before he took on the greatest existential crisis human civilization faces: the destruction of the natural conditions necessary for our own survival.

“What the Fuck Went Wrong with Mankind” is the central question of The Overstory , as posed by Douggie Pavlicek, a Vietnam War veteran who reinvents himself as a radical eco-activist. Powers has assembled a cast of impeccably credentialed characters to come up with an answer. Douggie himself participated in the Stanford Prison Experiment as a college student, which led him to conclude that “the greatest flaw of the species is its overwhelming tendency to mistake agreement for truth.” Adam Appich is a psychologist who studies the ways in which people blind themselves to catastrophes, particularly those that unfold gradually. Ray Brinkman is an intellectual-property lawyer who asks whether trees can be said to have legal rights. Nicholas Hoel is the heir to a family art project—several generations committed to photographing, once a month, the growth of a chestnut tree—that has instilled in him an awed appreciation of human transience. (The Hoel Chestnut photographs may have been inspired by a similar project undertaken in Norwich, England, from 1914 to 1942, while Patricia Westerford’s discoveries resemble those of the Canadian forest ecologist Suzanne Simard, and of a German forester with the same initials, Peter Wohlleben, whose 2015 best seller, The Hidden Life of Trees , appears to be the basis for Patricia’s book, The Secret Forest .)

Powers’s dominant mode of narrative is synopsis, a necessary crutch given the novel’s mob of characters and epochal chronological scale. The opening section proceeds through five generations of Hoels; three generations of another family, the Mas; and the entire youth of most of the other main characters. Five of them later converge in a series of tree-saving “actions” that imitate the tactics of Earth First (a group itself inspired by a novel, Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang ) and the more radical Earth Liberation Front: human barricades, tree-sitting, sabotage, arson.

By the end of the novel, all but one of the nine have become committed activists. Two end up in federal custody, one dies, one commits suicide, two go into hiding. But all of them earnestly embrace the same platform: Forests must be preserved, or nature will have its revenge. The argument is divided democratically among the book’s voices, but it is unerringly consistent. Each of the following reflections belongs to a different character:

“Some of these trees were around before Jesus was born. We’ve already taken ninety-seven percent of the old ones. Couldn’t we find a way to keep the last three percent?” “We don’t make reality. We just evade it. So far. By looting natural capital and hiding the costs. But the bill is coming, and we won’t be able to pay.” “It’s so simple,” she says. “So obvious. Exponential growth inside a finite system leads to collapse. But people don’t see it.” The towering, teetering pyramid of large living things is toppling down already, in slow motion, under the huge, swift kick that has dislodged the planetary system. The great cycles of air and water are breaking. The Tree of Life will fall again, collapse into a stump of invertebrates, tough ground cover, and bacteria, unless man … Reefs blanch and wetlands dry. Things are going lost that have not yet been found. Kinds of life vanish a thousand times faster than the baseline extinction rate. Forest larger than most countries turns to farmland. Look at the life around you; now delete half of what you see .

E ach might also just as easily belong to Powers, whose authorial voice speaks in unison with his characters. When enormous ancient trees are chopped down, the sound is “like an artillery shell hitting a cathedral.” The tree-ramming bulldozers are “the color of bile.” The police are uniformly faceless and brutal, swabbing a protester’s eye with a Q-tip laced with chemical agents and beating others senselessly. The life of a tree-sitter, by contrast, is idyllic. After Nicholas spends weeks in the branches of a redwood, his senses clarify, his thoughts deepen, his spirit rises—he no longer minds that he has to use his feces as compost for the wild huckleberries that serve as the foundation of his diet. “Who could stay on the ground, once he has seen life in the canopy?” Nobody in his right mind is the tacit rejoinder.

The most rhapsodic prose is reserved for the trees themselves. Powers writes of a character being “drugged” by the glory of the green world, but every one of his characters becomes an addict. Many have visions. One is visited by beings of light, another by a ghost, a third by premonitions—all urging solidarity with threatened trees. When Patricia travels to the Brazilian rain forest, she overdoses:

There are trees that flower and fruit directly from the trunk. Bizarre kapoks forty feet around with branches that run from spiky to shiny to smooth, all from the same trunk. Myrtles scattered throughout the forest that all flower on a single day. Bertholletia that grow piñata cannonballs filled with nuts. Trees that make rain, that tell time, that predict the weather. Seeds in obscene shapes and colors. Pods like daggers and scimitars. Stilt roots and snaking roots and buttresses like sculpture and roots that breathe air. Solutions run amok. The biomass is mad.

Why would anyone want to destroy all this? Powers’s characters blame the usual human motivations: greed, ignorance, inertia, primitive instinct. Nicholas rues the fact that every tree visible from his canopy perch “belongs to a Texas financier who has never seen a redwood but means to gut them all to pay off the debt he took on to acquire them.” We never meet this Texas financier, however, or anyone else who might profit from development or deforestation, apart from several anonymous voices making threadbare arguments about well-paying jobs and preserving their “way of life.”

Such frail opposition is easily overwhelmed. When Patricia gives expert testimony in court, a skeptical judge quickly comes around. “I never imagined!” he marvels, as if ready to cast off his robe and climb the nearest ponderosa pine. “Trees summon animals and make them do things? They remember? They feed and take care of each other?” Patricia and the rest of the activists are right, of course. The great cycles of air and water are breaking, the Tree of Life is collapsing, things are going lost that have not yet been found, and people don’t see it. The bill is coming and we won’t be able to pay.

But why make these points in a novel and not, say, a tract, journalistic report, or polemic? Powers addresses this question within the pages of The Overstory . Ray, the intellectual-property lawyer, blames the collapse of human civilization on fiction itself: “The world is failing precisely because no novel can make the contest for the world seem as compelling as the struggles between a few lost people.” Adam, the psychologist, throws a novel against a wall because he is tired of reading “about privileged people having trouble getting along with each other in exotic locations.” (That does, in fairness, sound like a crappy novel.) But Adam’s critique is extraliterary: “The best arguments in the world won’t change a person’s mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story.” There is a term for stories written with the purpose of converting minds to support a cause. And it is the opposite of literature.

When Douggie sees from the air the effects of clear-cutting in the Pacific Northwest, he observes that “it looks like the shaved flank of a sick beast being readied for surgery. Everywhere, in all directions. If the view were televised, cutting would stop tomorrow.” Would it? If more people understood what was at stake, would they cease to consume fossil fuels or, as one character urges, “become indigenous again”? Is all that stands in the way of enlightenment the lack of a robust public-information campaign or a climate-themed Uncle Tom’s Cabin ?

Y ou’d think Powers , if not his characters, would recognize the flaw in this argument. The climate problem is a human problem. A short-term species cannot adequately prepare for the long term—and won’t, if doing so means sacrificing present convenience. No amount of bad news will change that. No amount of bad news has changed it. That the culprit is misinformation, or a failure to excite the imagination, is a persistent, but self-defeating, fantasy.

Explore the June 2018 Issue

Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.

Most Americans do not understand the perils of climate change—or of deforestation, clear-cutting, habitat loss. But those who perpetuate the disinformation campaigns, including the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, the House and Senate majority leaders, and the president of the United States, likely do. It is easier, politically, to claim scientific murkiness than to tell the truth: They value their self-interest over the condition of the world their grandchildren will grow up in. Whether this self-interest is venal or foolish is irrelevant. It’s human nature. And that raises a more difficult question: not whether we should take action, but how to come to terms with the fact that our species has proved itself incapable of doing so.

“Humankind is deeply ill,” Adam concludes. “The species won’t last long.” This is the consensus among Powers’s characters, and it’s a darkly optimistic one. Optimistic for the planet, pessimistic for the fate of humanity. Once man clears out, nature will return. “ Hang on ,” Douggie thinks, addressing his beloved Douglas-fir seedlings. “ Only ten or twenty decades. Child’s play, for you guys. You just have to outlast us. Then no one will be left to fuck you over. ” The best way to cure man’s “endless suicidal appetite” for growth is to hasten the inevitable suicide. From death, life will burst. It’s the foundational lesson of forest science.

Powers’s characters embrace the urgency of activism and the passivity of fatalism, but he rarely places the two forces in opposition to each other. The only character who is consumed by this kind of self-questioning is the novel’s most convincing one. Neelay Mehta, paralyzed in a childhood tree-climbing incident, becomes a Silicon Valley mogul after he creates one of the most popular computer games on the planet—a world-building enterprise that resembles SimCity. Its millions of players sit cocooned in their bedrooms, bathed in the glow of verdant pixels, creating new Earths. With time, however, the game’s exoticism fades. The virtual Earths come to resemble ours, ravaged by gluttony, overdevelopment, and rapacious, short-term profiteering.

“We have a Midas problem,” Neelay tells his indifferent project managers. “There’s no endgame, just a stagnant pyramiding scheme. Endless, pointless prosperity.” He argues for land-use regulations and consumption taxes. His project managers think he’s gone nuts. What’s the fun in limits? And why jeopardize the game’s profitability? Let the obsessed players keep building infinitely, earning ever-increasing profits. The name of the game, after all, is Mastery.

This article appears in the June 2018 print edition with the headline “Rhapsody in Green.”

​When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

• Member Login
• Library Patron Login

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR

FREE NEWSLETTERS

Search: Title Author Article Search String:

Reviews of The Overstory by Richard Powers

Summary | Excerpt | Reading Guide | Discuss | Reviews | Beyond the book | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio

The Overstory

by Richard Powers

Critics' Opinion:

Readers' Opinion:

• Literary Fiction
• Wash. Ore. Idaho
• 1980s & '90s
• Dealing with Loss
• Nature & Environment
• Top 20 Best Books of 2018

Rate this book

About this Book

• Reading Guide

Book Summary

"The best novel ever written about trees, and really just one of the best novels, period." —Ann Patchett Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize New York Times Bestseller A New York Times Notable Book and a Washington Post, Time, Oprah Magazine, Newsweek, Chicago Tribune, and Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2018 The Overstory is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of—and paean to—the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers's twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. 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.

Excerpt The Overstory

First there was nothing. Then there was everything. Then, in a park above a western city after dusk, the air is raining messages. A woman sits on the ground, leaning against a pine. Its bark presses hard against her back, as hard as life. Its needles scent the air and a force hums in the heart of the wood. Her ears tune down to the lowest frequencies. The tree is saying things, in words before words. It says: Sun and water are questions endlessly worth answering. It says: A good answer must be reinvented many times, from scratch. It says: Every piece of earth needs a new way to grip it. There are more ways to branch than any cedar pencil will ever find. A thing can travel everywhere, just by holding still. The woman does exactly that. Signals rain down around her like seeds. Talk runs far afield tonight. The bends in the alders speak of long-ago disasters. Spikes of pale chinquapin flowers shake down their pollen; soon they will turn into spiny fruits. ...

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

• Why do you think Powers leads with the story of the chestnut trees?
• How has your attitude toward the environment changed in the last 10 years? How about the last 20 years or longer? Has The Overstory changed your perspective?
• Have you been an activist? If so for what causes? What triggered your involvement?
• Which of the characters do you most relate to and why? Which do you find hardest to understand?
• Many of the main characters are associated with a specific tree. Which tree would you pick to represent you? Why?
• Doug, Mimi, Adam, Nick and Olivia are all tied together in a plotline revolving around ecoterrorism. How do you think the Brinkman's, Patricia Westerford's and Neelay Mehta's stories tie in with theirs? How are ...

Please be aware that this discussion guide may contain spoilers!

• "Beyond the Book" articles
• Free books to read and review (US only)
• Find books by time period, setting & theme
• Read-alike suggestions by book and author
• Book club discussions
• and much more!
• Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
• More about membership!

Pulitzer Prize 2019

Media Reviews

Reader reviews, bookbrowse review.

Many glowing adjectives can be used to describe a novel by Richard Powers: brilliant, moving, mesmerizing. But one word succinctly captures the feeling I come away with every time I put a novel of his down: awe. Of course, given that I look forward to a new Powers novel just as eagerly as my daughter waited for the next in the Harry Potters series, I will be the first one to admit I come to the table already biased. But Powers meets my ridiculously high expectations every single time. He does it again with The Overstory , a sprawling, messy, breathtaking and yes...awe-inspiring tome about trees... continued

Full Review (616 words) This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For full access, become a member today .

(Reviewed by Poornima Apte ).

Write your own review!

Beyond the Book

India's chipko andolan.

This "beyond the book" feature is available to non-members for a limited time. Join today for full access.

Read-Alikes

• Genres & Themes

If you liked The Overstory, try these:

The Light Eaters

by Zoë Schlanger

Published 2024

About this book

Award-winning Atlantic staff writer Zoë Schlanger delivers a groundbreaking work of popular science that probes the hidden world of the plant kingdom and reveals the astonishing capabilities of the green life all around us.

by Carys Davies

More by this author

A stunning, exquisite novel from an award-winning writer about a minister dispatched to a remote island off of Scotland to "clear" the last remaining inhabitant, who has no intention of leaving—an unforgettable tale of resilience, change, and hope.

Books with similar themes

Support bookbrowse.

Join our inner reading circle, go ad-free and get way more!

Find out more

BookBrowse Book Club

Win This Book

The Bluestockings by Susannah Gibson

An illuminating group portrait of the eighteenth-century women who dared to imagine an active life for themselves in both mind and spirit.

Solve this clue:

and be entered to win..

Your guide to exceptional           books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.

Subscribe to receive some of our best reviews, "beyond the book" articles, book club info and giveaways by email.

Free Weekly Newsletters

Keep up with what's happening in the world of books: reviews, previews, interviews and more.

Spam Free : Your email is never shared with anyone; opt out any time.

Find anything you save across the site in your account

Briefly Noted

The Overstory , by Richard Powers (Norton) . The preservation of primeval trees and dwindling forests unites nine characters in this capacious novel. Two protesters spend ten months living in the canopy of a redwood wider than a house. A psychologist travels to study the activist group they belong to, wanting to understand their immunity to the bystander effect (the assumption that someone else will fix a problem). After a violent action against the logging industry, the characters are forced to scatter. Powers edges their experiences toward the supernatural, while pressing an ethical imperative, voiced by one character: “When you cut down a tree, what you make from it should be at least as miraculous as what you cut down.”

Theory of Bastards , by Audrey Schulman (Europa) . The protagonist of this genre-blurring novel—set in a vaguely dystopian near-future characterized by extreme weather and an overdependence on technology—is Frankie, an evolutionary psychologist who studies mating habits but whose own sex life has been impaired by severe endometriosis. Following a hysterectomy, she throws herself into the observation of bonobos, primates known for their peaceable ways and their vigorous orgies; she communes with her ape subjects and even experiences desire for a kind married colleague. Then a cataclysm occurs, creating a world in which the “careful theater” of civilization has been stripped away and leaving Frankie, her colleague, and the bonobos dependent on one another.

A Lab of One’s Own , by Patricia Fara (Oxford) . This timely history explores the contributions of British women to science, medicine, and industry during the First World War. Drawing on a wealth of previously neglected archival sources, Fara shows how suffragettes, having laid the groundwork for change early in the century, helped usher women into posts left vacant by men; by the war’s end, some three million women were employed in industry, and female scientists had risen to the highest levels in universities, laboratories, and hospitals. A few received proper recognition (the chemist Martha Whiteley was awarded an O.B.E. for her work on tear gas), but the vast majority were pushed from the historical record as swiftly as they were pushed from their jobs by returning men.

A Mouth Is Always Muzzled , by Natalie Hopkinson (New Press) . Through the lens of Guyana’s 2015 national elections, this essay collection shows how the country’s political and cultural life is still influenced by the twin legacies of British colonialism and the sugar trade. In profiles of artists such as the writer Ruel Johnson, who posts Facebook essays about political corruption, and the painter Bernadette Persaud, who mourns the decay of the national art collection, Hopkinson illustrates the ways that intellectuals chafe against a state that is unable to provide basic necessities, let alone a flourishing cultural sector. “When do ideas become action?” she writes. “When must the state protect society from subversive ideas? When must society protect subversive ideas from the state?”

Richard Powers

American novelist.

The Overstory

Last Updated: May 1, 2024 by semper2013

Winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction Shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize New York Times Bestseller A New York Times Notable Book and a Washington Post , Time , Oprah Magazine , Newsweek , Chicago Tribune , Kirkus Reviews , and Amazon Best Book of the Year

Now Available in Paperback

The Overstory , winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of—and paean to—the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers’s twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. 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.

“The best book I’ve read in 10 years. It’s a remarkable piece of literature, and the moment it speaks to is climate change. So, for me, it’s a lodestone. It’s a mind-opening fiction, and it connects us all in a very positive way to the things that we have to do if we want to regain our planet.” ―  Emma Thompson

“An ingeniously structured narrative that branches and canopies like the trees at the core of the story whose wonder and connectivity echo those of the humans living amongst them.” ―  citation from the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction

“This book is beyond special.… It’s a kind of breakthrough in the ways we think about and understand the world around us, at a moment when that is desperately needed.” ―  Bill McKibben

“A towering achievement by a major writer.” ―  Robert Macfarlane, author of  Underland

“Monumental…  The Overstory accomplishes what few living writers from either camp, art or science, could attempt. Using the tools of the story, he pulls readers heart-first into a perspective so much longer-lived and more subtly developed than the human purview that we gain glimpses of a vast, primordial sensibility, while watching our own kind get whittled down to size.… A gigantic fable of genuine truths.” ―  Barbara Kingsolver,  The New York Times Book Review

“The best novels change the way you see. Richard Powers’s  The Overstory does this. Haunting.” ―  Geraldine Brooks

“This ambitious novel soars up through the canopy of American literature and remakes the landscape of environmental fiction.… Remarkable.” ―  Ron Charles,  The Washington Post

“The best novel ever written about trees, and really, just one of the best novels, period.” ―  Ann Patchett

• Anticipation for The Overstory
• British and American advance reader copies released
• New novel in Spring 2018

Category: Novels , recent

Comments are closed.

Copyright © 2024 · All Rights Reserved · Richard Powers

• Office Products
• Office & School Supplies
• Education & Crafts

Sorry, there was a problem.

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required .

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

Image Unavailable

• To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the author

The Overstory: A Novel Paperback – April 2, 2019

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction Winner of the William Dean Howells Medal Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize Over One Year on the New York Times Bestseller List A New York Times Notable Book and a Washington Post , Time , Oprah Magazine , Newsweek , Chicago Tribune , and Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year "The best novel ever written about trees, and really just one of the best novels, period." ―Ann Patchett

The Overstory , winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of―and paean to―the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers’s twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. 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.

• Print length 512 pages
• Language English
• Publisher W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date April 2, 2019
• Dimensions 5.5 x 1.2 x 8.3 inches
• ISBN-10 039335668X
• ISBN-13 978-0393356687
• See all details

Products related to this item

From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews

About the author, product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition (April 2, 2019)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 512 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 039335668X
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0393356687
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.26 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1.2 x 8.3 inches
• #5 in Class Records & Lesson Books
• #8 in Political Fiction (Books)
• #367 in American Literature (Books)

Videos for this product

Click to play video

A novel that forever changes how you see the world

TheEnglishTeacher

The Overstory (Thorndike Press Large Print Core)

Amazon Videos

About the author

Richard powers.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Customer reviews

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

Reviews with images

• Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

Top reviews from other countries

• About Amazon
• Investor Relations
• Amazon Devices
• Amazon Science
• Sell products on Amazon
• Sell on Amazon Business
• Sell apps on Amazon
• Become an Affiliate
• Advertise Your Products
• Self-Publish with Us
• Host an Amazon Hub
• › See More Make Money with Us
• Amazon Business Card
• Shop with Points
• Reload Your Balance
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Amazon and COVID-19
• Your Account
• Your Orders
• Shipping Rates & Policies
• Returns & Replacements
• Manage Your Content and Devices

• Conditions of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure
• Your Ads Privacy Choices

• ADMIN AREA MY BOOKSHELF MY DASHBOARD MY PROFILE SIGN OUT SIGN IN

Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

Kirkus Reviews' Best Books Of 2018

New York Times Bestseller

Pulitzer Prize Winner

THE OVERSTORY

by Richard Powers ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 3, 2018

A magnificent achievement: a novel that is, by turns, both optimistic and fatalistic, idealistic without being naïve.

Powers’ ( Orfeo , 2014, etc.) 12th novel is a masterpiece of operatic proportions, involving nine central characters and more than half a century of American life.

In this work, Powers takes on the subject of nature, or our relationship to nature, as filtered through the lens of environmental activism, although at its heart the book is after more existential concerns. As is the case with much of Powers’ fiction, it takes shape slowly—first in a pastiche of narratives establishing the characters (a psychologist, an undergraduate who died briefly but was revived, a paraplegic computer game designer, a homeless vet), and then in the kaleidoscopic ways these individuals come together and break apart. “We all travel the Milky Way together, trees and men,” Powers writes, quoting the naturalist John Muir. “In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.” The idea is important because what Powers means to explore is a sense of how we become who we are, individually and collectively, and our responsibility to the planet and to ourselves. Nick, for instance, continues a project begun by his grandfather to take repeated photographs of a single chestnut tree, “one a month for seventy-six years.” Pat, a visionary botanist, discovers how trees communicate with one another only to be discredited and then, a generation later, reaffirmed. What links the characters is survival—the survival of both trees and human beings. The bulk of the action unfolds during the timber wars of the late 1990s, as the characters coalesce on the Pacific coast to save old-growth sequoia from logging concerns. For Powers, however, political or environmental activism becomes a filter through which to consider the connectedness of all things—not only the human lives he portrays in often painfully intricate dimensions, but also the biosphere, both virtual and natural. “The world starts here,” Powers insists. “This is the merest beginning. Life can do anything. You have no idea.”

Pub Date: April 3, 2018

ISBN: 978-0-393-63552-2

Page Count: 512

Publisher: Norton

Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018

LITERARY FICTION

Share your opinion of this book

More by Richard Powers

BOOK REVIEW

by Richard Powers

More About This Book

SEEN & HEARD

THE SECRET HISTORY

by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992

The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.

Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992

ISBN: 1400031702

Page Count: 592

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992

More by Donna Tartt

by Donna Tartt

HOUSE OF LEAVES

by Mark Z. Danielewski ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 6, 2000

The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and...

An amazingly intricate and ambitious first novel - ten years in the making - that puts an engrossing new spin on the traditional haunted-house tale.

Texts within texts, preceded by intriguing introductory material and followed by 150 pages of appendices and related "documents" and photographs, tell the story of a mysterious old house in a Virginia suburb inhabited by esteemed photographer-filmmaker Will Navidson, his companion Karen Green (an ex-fashion model), and their young children Daisy and Chad.  The record of their experiences therein is preserved in Will's film The Davidson Record - which is the subject of an unpublished manuscript left behind by a (possibly insane) old man, Frank Zampano - which falls into the possession of Johnny Truant, a drifter who has survived an abusive childhood and the perverse possessiveness of his mad mother (who is institutionalized).  As Johnny reads Zampano's manuscript, he adds his own (autobiographical) annotations to the scholarly ones that already adorn and clutter the text (a trick perhaps influenced by David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest ) - and begins experiencing panic attacks and episodes of disorientation that echo with ominous precision the content of Davidson's film (their house's interior proves, "impossibly," to be larger than its exterior; previously unnoticed doors and corridors extend inward inexplicably, and swallow up or traumatize all who dare to "explore" their recesses).  Danielewski skillfully manipulates the reader's expectations and fears, employing ingeniously skewed typography, and throwing out hints that the house's apparent malevolence may be related to the history of the Jamestown colony, or to Davidson's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a dying Vietnamese child stalked by a waiting vulture.  Or, as "some critics [have suggested,] the house's mutations reflect the psychology of anyone who enters it."

Pub Date: March 6, 2000

ISBN: 0-375-70376-4

Page Count: 704

Publisher: Pantheon

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2000

More by Mark Z. Danielewski

by Mark Z. Danielewski

• Discover Books Fiction Thriller & Suspense Mystery & Detective Romance Science Fiction & Fantasy Nonfiction Biography & Memoir Teens & Young Adult Children's
• News & Features Bestsellers Book Lists Profiles Perspectives Awards Seen & Heard Book to Screen Kirkus TV videos In the News
• Kirkus Prize Winners & Finalists About the Kirkus Prize Kirkus Prize Judges
• Magazine Current Issue All Issues Manage My Subscription Subscribe
• Writers’ Center Hire a Professional Book Editor Get Your Book Reviewed Advertise Your Book Launch a Pro Connect Author Page Learn About The Book Industry
• More Kirkus Diversity Collections Kirkus Pro Connect My Account/Login
• About Kirkus History Our Team Contest FAQ Press Center Info For Publishers
• Privacy Policy
• Terms & Conditions
• Reprints, Permission & Excerpting Policy

© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Popular in this Genre

Hey there, book lover.

We’re glad you found a book that interests you!

Please select an existing bookshelf

Create a new bookshelf.

We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!

Please sign up to continue.

It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!

Already have an account? Log in.

Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.

Almost there!

• Industry Professional

Welcome Back!

Sign in using your Kirkus account

Contact us: 1-800-316-9361 or email [email protected].

Don’t fret. We’ll find you.

Magazine Subscribers ( How to Find Your Reader Number )

If You’ve Purchased Author Services

Don’t have an account yet? Sign Up.

• Bookreporter
• ReadingGroupGuides
• AuthorsOnTheWeb

The Book Report Network

Sign up for our newsletters!

Regular Features

Author spotlights, "bookreporter talks to" videos & podcasts, "bookaccino live: a lively talk about books", favorite monthly lists & picks, seasonal features, book festivals, sports features, bookshelves.

• Coming Soon

Newsletters

• Weekly Update
• On Sale This Week
• Summer Reading
• Spring Preview
• Winter Reading
• Holiday Cheer
• Fall Preview

Word of Mouth

Submitting a book for review, write the editor, you are here:, the overstory.

Every once in a while, you happen upon a book whose reading experience is completely immersive, the kind of book you wake up thinking about and stay up late just to read a few more pages. Richard Powers’ latest novel, THE OVERSTORY, offers that kind of experience, made all the more remarkable because it’s not a thriller or a suspense novel, but rather a 500-page ode to a truly slow-moving organism: the tree.

Powers, in previous works like THE GOLD BUG VARIATIONS and GALATEA 2.2, has gained a reputation for being a rather cerebral novelist. And certainly THE OVERSTORY is powerfully intellectual and well informed, littered with quotes and philosophies from Muir, Thoreau and Carson, as well as tidbits about everything from computer science to cutting-edge studies in plant biology. But Powers’ new novel, while intellectually rigorous, is also passionate and full of genuine emotional yearning and regard for the fragile, ailing planet on which we reside.

"THE OVERSTORY is a vital and urgent novel, one that is profoundly humanistic while also reminding readers that human lives are dwarfed by forces we haven’t even begun to comprehend."

Like a tree, THE OVERSTORY is separated into sections: “Root,” “Trunk,” “Crown” and “Seeds.” In the opening section, “Root,” Powers introduces us to his rich and varied cast of characters, whose lives at first might seem completely disconnected from one another. There’s Nick Hoel, an art student whose forebears brought one lone chestnut tree from the East Coast to their Iowa farm and recorded its growth over decades. There’s Adam Appich, a quiet child from an exuberant family, who finds meaning and solace in tracking and recording the symbiotic relationships of ant colonies. There’s Patricia Westerford, whose lifelong passion for and academic study of trees grows out of the spark lit by her arborist father. And, among others, there’s Olivia Vandergriff, a cynical college student whose near-death experience alters the course of her life --- and the lives of many others.

Each of these characters, as they are introduced in exquisitely crafted vignettes, is identified with a particular tree species. But, like the forest itself, in the novel’s subsequent sections, the boundaries between these individuals and their personal stories grow increasingly porous, as their connections --- whether powerfully personal or more incidental --- grow intrinsic to their lives, their communities and their world.

This book is epic in every sense of the word --- it extends over multiple decades and ranges freely through geography as well, though its heart seems to lie with the grand giants in the redwood groves of California and the Pacific Northwest. Images of environmental activists occupying a series of platforms precariously perched high in the limbs of an ancient giant slated for destruction are indelible, as is a moment when a tech guru, at odds with the virtual world he has built, tries and fails to argue for a different, more compassionate and creative type of world-building.

If the novel’s opening section is structured more formally, its final section becomes gradually more impressionistic and even mystical at times, as the boundaries between stories and between lives --- both human and plant, real and imagined --- break down. As Powers profoundly, and at times tragically, illustrates how much we owe to one another and just how high the stakes are, the book begins to serve as a call to action --- for humans to sit up and take notice of the world around us, to wonder if the Earth might be better off without us, and to question what might be done to salvage our relationship with the organisms whose effects we might not either see or entirely understand.

THE OVERSTORY is a vital and urgent novel, one that is profoundly humanistic while also reminding readers that human lives are dwarfed by forces we haven’t even begun to comprehend.

Reviewed by Norah Piehl on April 13, 2018

The Overstory by Richard Powers

• Publication Date: April 2, 2019
• Genres: Fiction
• Paperback: 512 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• ISBN-10: 039335668X
• ISBN-13: 9780393356687

• Find a Library
• Browse Collections
• The Overstory

ebook ∣ A Novel

By richard powers.

Add Book To Favorites

Is this your library?

Sign up to save your library.

With an OverDrive account, you can save your favorite libraries for at-a-glance information about availability. Find out more about OverDrive accounts.

9781039000681

Richard Powers

Random House of Canada

20 April 2021

Find this title in Libby, the library reading app by OverDrive.

Search for a digital library with this title

Title found at these libraries:.

• Top Rated Books
• Top Club Picks This Week
• BOOK CLUB INSIDER
• New Releases
• Now in Paperback
• Reese Witherspoon Book Club
• Oprah's Book Club
• Read with Jenna
• Amazon Best Books
• People Picks
• Entertainment Weekly Picks
• Vogue Recommends
• Skimm Reads
• From Page to Screen

Member Login

Forgot your login/password?

BKMT READING GUIDES

The Overstory: A Novel by Richard Powers

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize New York Times Bestseller A New York Times Notable Book and a Washington Post, Time, Oprah Magazine, Newsweek, Chicago Tribune, and Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2018 "The best novel ever written about trees, and ...

Introduction

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize New York Times Bestseller A New York Times Notable Book and a Washington Post , Time , Oprah Magazine , Newsweek , Chicago Tribune , and Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2018 "The best novel ever written about trees, and really just one of the best novels, period."?Ann Patchett

An Air Force loadmaster in the Vietnam War is shot out of the sky, then saved by falling into a banyan. 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. These four, 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.

In his twelfth novel, National Book Award winner Richard Powers delivers a sweeping, impassioned novel of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of?and paean to?the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, The Overstory unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond, exploring the essential conflict on this planet: the one taking place between humans and nonhumans. 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.

The Overstory is a book for all readers who despair of humanity’s self-imposed separation from the rest of creation and who hope for the transformative, regenerating possibility of a homecoming. If the trees of this earth could speak, what would they tell us? "Listen. There’s something you need to hear."

Editorial Review

Discussion questions, notes from the author to the bookclub, book club recommendations.

Recommended to book clubs by 4 of 4 members.

Member Reviews

It took awhile for it to all come together but the individual character’s stories were compelling on their own. It was not a quick read but it was definitely worth the effort.

Now serving over 80,000 book clubs & ready to welcome yours. Join us and get the Top Book Club Picks of 2022 (so far).

Get Top Club Picks Delivered Weekly

• Contact Info
• For Authors & Publishers
• Privacy Notice
• Randy Susan Meyers
• Anna Quindlen
• AUTHORS & PUBLISHERS
• Feature your book on BookMovement!

© 2003 - 2024 BookMovement, LLC. All rights reserved.

• The Overstory

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 twentieth-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 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. 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.

Book Reviews

In a way, The Overstory would have deserved 10 stars just for the respect that I felt for Richard Powers after finishing the book. Without a doubt Powers has done a tremendous amount of background work for the book, and at least my expertise is not sufficient to prove any of his claims wrong.

There are as many as nine protagonists, who at first seem like a motley crew, but most of whom I grew fond of surprisingly strongly when the story progressed. After all, it's as much a story about people as it is about trees. The book is long and slow, a little like the trees themselves. The metaphor is hardly a coincidence. And no, the book isn't suitable for the hasty. You really have to stop by it to understand the wisdom that is conveyed by it.  The same thing is urged in the book every now and then: if you stop and listen, you can hear the trees talking.

Read more ...

Powers invites his readers to learn more about trees, so that we could learn to understand and respect them. Still, the book doesn't preach, but really inspires to look at trees in a new way. That's what happened to me, at least. Sure, it also happened to me that from time to time I felt buried under all the philosophical reflection and the avalanche of information. I’m sure there’s a lot more to realize in the book for re-reading.

The title of the book is apt when playing with the ambiguity of the word "story". A small but charming detail.

• Risingshadow
• Richard Powers

This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website.

• Biggest New Books
• Non-Fiction
• All Categories
• First Readers Club Daily Giveaway
• How It Works

The Overstory

Embed our reviews widget for this book

Get the Book Marks Bulletin

Email address:

• Categories Fiction Fantasy Graphic Novels Historical Horror Literary Literature in Translation Mystery, Crime, & Thriller Poetry Romance Speculative Story Collections Non-Fiction Art Biography Criticism Culture Essays Film & TV Graphic Nonfiction Health History Investigative Journalism Memoir Music Nature Politics Religion Science Social Sciences Sports Technology Travel True Crime

June 24 – 28, 2024

• The hottest new trend in publishing: Monster smut
• The Baillie Gifford boycotts and the necessity of sustainable, ethical sources of arts funding
• Kevin Nguyen on what Game of Thrones did to media

Make a gift to PBS News Hour and your donation will be doubled !

Support Intelligent, In-Depth, Trustworthy Journalism.

What do you think? Leave a respectful comment.

Elizabeth Flock Elizabeth Flock

• Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/discussion-questions-for-the-overstory

Discussion questions for ‘The Overstory’

Our November pick for the PBS NewsHour-New York Times book club is Richard Powers’ “The Overstory.” Become a member of the Now Read This book club by joining our Facebook group , or by signing up to our newsletter . Learn more about the book club here .

“The Overstory” by Richard Powers

Below are questions to help guide your discussions as you read the book over the next month. You can also submit your own questions for Richard Powers on our Google form . Powers will answer reader questions on the PBS NewsHour broadcast at the end of the month.

WARNING: Spoiler alert on questions further down.

• Why do you think Richard Powers chose the title “The Overstory”?
• What was your experience with trees as a child, and what has it been as an adult? Have trees shaped your life in any meaningful way? Do you have a favorite tree?
• Adam initially builds his career on studying the faults in human brains, such as confirmation bias and the conflation of correlation with causality. Meanwhile, Douglas is convinced that humans’ greatest flaw is mistaking agreement for truth. What questions does this book ask about human failings?
• What does Powers mean when he describes humans as “trapped in blinkered bodies”?
• What do you make of the voices Olivia hears, and her sense of conviction that “the most wondrous products of four billion years of life” need our help?
• Which character’s story do you identify with the most, and why?
• It is a difficult moment for Douglas when he learns that all of his years of planting trees have only allowed companies to increase its annual allowable cut. How did this book make you think differently, if at all, about clear-cutting? Do you see it happening in your own community?
• What are you learning about trees that you didn’t know before? Did some of Patricia’s research surprise you, either about the “giving trees” or the ways dead trees contribute to forests? Did any of it change the way you see trees?
• Patricia describes trees and humans as being “at war” over land and water and the atmosphere, and that she can see “which side will lose by winning.” What does she mean by that?
• The book is divided into four parts: “Roots,” “Trunk,” “Crown,” and “Seeds.” What is the significance of each section? Were you surprised when the stories began to intertwine?
• Our book club just finished reading “We the Corporations,” a book about the ways corporations have gained many of the same rights as individuals. In “The Overstory,” Ray is moved and upset by a legal argument that suggests trees should also share those rights. Do you agree?
• Were you surprised by the lengths that Adam, Olivia, Nicholas, Mimi and Douglas went to try to wake people up to the destruction of forests? What did you think of their tactics?
• What have you read in the news lately that mirrors the stories in “The Overstory”? How is “The Overstory” playing out in real life in your own community?
• What is the significance of the worlds Neelay creates within his game, “Mastery”?
• What was your opinion of “direct action” as a means of effective activism before the book? What is your opinion after reading it? Do you think it should play a role in addressing the destruction of our planet?
• Toward the end of the book, Dorothy is arrested for her determination to let her yard grow wild. Did this book change how you see your own backyard?
• As the book closes, Mimi seems to say that the world as it has been is ending and a new one will begin. Does that ring true to you? How does that make you feel?
• Richard Powers writes: “The best arguments in the world won’t change a person’s mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story.” Do you agree? Did any part of this story change your mind?

Elizabeth Flock is an independent journalist who reports on justice and gender. She can be reached at [email protected]

Support Provided By: Learn more

Support PBS News:

Educate your inbox

Subscribe to Here’s the Deal, our politics newsletter for analysis you won’t find anywhere else.

Thank you. Please check your inbox to confirm.

to submit an obituary

To place an obituary, please include the information from the obituary checklist below in an email to [email protected] . There is no option to place them through our website. Feel free to contact our obituary desk at 651-228-5263 with any questions.

General Information:

• Your full name,
• Address (City, State, Zip Code),
• Phone number,
• And an alternate phone number (if any)

Obituary Specification:

• Name of Deceased,
• Obituary Text,
• A photo in a JPEG or PDF file is preferable, TIF and other files are accepted, we will contact you if there are any issues with the photo.
• Ad Run dates
• There is a discount for running more than one day, but this must be scheduled on the first run date to apply.
• If a photo is used, it must be used for both days for the discount to apply, contact us for more information.

Verification of Death:

In order to publish obituaries a name and phone number of funeral home/cremation society is required. We must contact the funeral home/cremation society handling the arrangements during their business hours to verify the death. If the body of the deceased has been donated to the University of Minnesota Anatomy Bequest Program, or a similar program, their phone number is required for verification.

Please allow enough time to contact them especially during their limited weekend hours.

A death certificate is also acceptable for this purpose but only one of these two options are necessary.

Guestbook and Outside Websites:

We are not allowed to reference other media sources with a guestbook or an obituary placed elsewhere when placing an obituary in print and online. We may place a website for a funeral home or a family email for contact instead; contact us with any questions regarding this matter.

Obituary Process:

Once your submission is completed, we will fax or email a proof for review prior to publication in the newspaper. This proof includes price and days the notice is scheduled to appear.

Please review the proof carefully. We must be notified of errors or changes before the notice appears in the Pioneer Press based on each day’s deadlines.

After publication, we will not be responsible for errors that may occur after final proofing.

All obituaries appear on TwinCities.com with a permanent online guestbook presence. If you wish to have the online presence removed, you can contact us to remove the guestbook online. Changes to an online obituary can be handled through the obituary desk. Call us with further questions.

Payment Procedure:

Pre-payment is required for all obituary notices prior to publication by the deadline specified below in our deadline schedule. Please call 651-228-5263 with your payment information after you have received the proof and approved its contents.

Credit Card: Payment accepted by phone only due to PCI (Payment Card Industry) regulations

EFT: Check by phone. Please provide your routing number and account number.

Cash: Accepted at our FRONT COUNTER Monday – Friday from 8:00AM – 3:30PM

• The minimum charge is $162 for the first 10 lines.
• Every line after the first 10 is $12.20.
• If the ad is under 10 lines it will be charged the minimum rate of $162.
• On a second run date, the lines are $8.20 per line, starting w/ the first line.
• For example: if first run date was 20 lines the cost would be $164.
• Each photo published is $125 per day.
• For example: 2 photos in the paper on 2 days would be 4 photo charges at $500.

Please follow deadline times to ensure your obituary is published on the day requested.

MEMORIAM (NON-OBITUARY) REQUEST

Unlike an obituary, Memoriam submissions are remembrances of a loved one who has passed. The rates for a memoriam differ from obituaries.

Please call or email us for more memoriam information

Please call 651-228-5280 for more information.

HOURS: Monday – Friday 8:00AM – 5:00PM (CLOSED WEEKENDS and HOLIDAYS)

Please submit your memoriam ad to [email protected] or call 651-228-5280.

Books | ‘Cli-fi’: Minnesotan’s new collection of…

Share this:.

• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to print (Opens in new window)
• Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
• Submit to Stumbleupon (Opens in new window)

Today's Paper

• Movies & TV
• Food & Drink
• Treasure Hunt

Things to Do

Books | ‘cli-fi’: minnesotan’s new collection of stories tackles climate change in imaginative ways, besides talking bears, her book is made up of humorous, horrific, satirical stories.

“ Experts See Eco-Disaster for These Polar Bears ” shouted a headline in the New York Times recently. The story says polar bears in the Southern Hudson Bay, an “indicator species,” could go extinct as early as the 2030s because the sea ice that helps them hunt for food is thinning.

This doesn’t surprise Minnesotan Ashley Shelby . Her new book, “ Honeymoons in Temporary Locations ,” begins with polar bears in the story “Muri.” It’s narrated by the captain of an icebreaker bringing the last pod of Baffin Bay polar bears to the coast of Antarctica in an attempt to keep them alive. The bears, who can talk, take over the ship under the leadership of the bear Muri, and turn it back north. They know they will die of starvation but they want to do so in their ancestral home.

“That’s one of the challenges of writing something speculative,” Shelby said of this intersection of fiction and reality. “It takes years to write a book and the speculative becomes documentary. These are strange times, strange and uncanny and hard to make sense of.”

“Honeymoons in Temporary Locations,” a story collection Shelby will launch this week in Minneapolis, is one in the growing category of climate change fiction dubbed Cli-fi. There’s debate in the literary world about whether Cli-fi is a genre or a spin-off of science fiction. Shelby, who worked in New York publishing, feels it’s a “problematic term” that creates barriers for readers to find the work.

“My argument at this point is that Cli-fi is realistic fiction,” she said. “It’s not a term of art; it’s a term of convenience used in publishing, like ‘chick lit.’ I would say to the reader that I acknowledge climate change is not part of your regular thinking and these stories might be weird to you. These are not your traditional stories for the most part, taking you to places you might not have expected or even wanted to go. I want the reader to walk away thinking ‘Wow, that really resonated with me,’ or ‘I hated this book.’ I ask them to think about it.”

Shelby acknowledges she never thought she’d write anything like “Muri,” inspired by Herman Melville’s 1855 novella “Benito Cereno,” about an 18th-century slave revolt on a Spanish slave ship.

Besides talking bears, her book is made up of humorous, horrific, satirical stories told not in the usual narrative style but in imaginative ways — a travel brochure for “impact cruises” of endangered cities, menus (including Saddle of Squirrel in Merlot Sauce), medical patient impact studies, a Support Group for Recently Displaced Millionaires, a podcast titled Climate Crime Files. The only thing that hasn’t changed is bureaucracy, as shown by the story “Federal Eligibility Questionnaire from the Temporary Aid to Climate-Impacted Deserving Poor Benefits Program.”

One unsettling thread is emails from staff of a marketing campaign for Climafeel, a drug in development that treats the disease Solastalgia, a term you will be hearing with increasing frequency as our world literally heats up. Environmental philosopher Glenn Albrecht coined the term in 2005 to describe the specific kind of grief human beings experience as the natural world changes around them, a grief that anticipates a separation while you are still in the place you know you will leave. Or lose.

“Albrecht’s brilliant neologism haunts and disturbs me,” Shelby writes in her acknowledgments. “In these pages I’ve processed his concept by imagining solastalgia into an illness the world tries to cure, a disease to be eliminated, a mental illness to be treated. But grief is not pathological. It’s the inevitable endpoint of love.”

Shelby isn’t surprised therapists are reporting increased anxiety in their clients.

“When I got finished copies of my book I saw this was about solastalgia, written by someone who has it,” she said. “Biophilia (the urge to affiliate with other forms of life) is also a real thing. We have something bone-deep in us that reaches out to the natural world and creatures in it. As we see the connection starting to fray because of what’s happening in the world it impacts our mental health and experience of living in the world. That’s what I am feeling. I am not alone. This is not free-floating depression. Something is happening.”

The last generation

Shelby, 46, lives in an old farmhouse in Shorewood near Lake Minnetonka with her husband, Emmanuel (Manny) Benites, son Hudson, 17, and Josephine, 14, who prefers to be called Joey

On their acre of property Shelby has a garden “with so many little winged things.” Her favorite books growing up were “Watership Down” and “The Incredible Journey,” which gave her access to thoughts and emotions of animals. Now one of the things that bothers her most is “how the blameless fellow creatures are trying to make sense of what climate change is doing to them.”

Ashley’s family lives not far from the Excelsior home of her parents, Don and Barbara Shelby.

“I was born in Texas but I am a Minnesotan through and through,” she says. “My sisters (Lacy and Delta) and I were raised in Minneapolis’ Linden Hills area when it was mixed-income, before it became a wealthy enclave. It’s the place I go to in my mind sometimes and think of the good times. My generation is the last to have free rein, turned out of the house on our bikes, back at dinnertime.”

After graduating from Hopkins High School, Shelby earned a degree in journalism from Indiana University-Bloomington, and an MFA from Columbia University School of the Arts. Her first book, “ Red River Rising: The Anatomy of a Flood and the Survival of an American City ” (Minnesota Historical Society Press/Borealis Books, 2003), was nonfiction about the historic 1997 flood in Grand Forks, N.D. It is dedicated to Don Shelby, Emmy Award-winning retired WCCO reporter/anchor, who taught Ashley the importance of research and accuracy.

“My dad was a big figure in my life growing up,” she recalls.

Don Shelby, 77, is also an author. His book “ The Season Never Ends: Wins, Losses and the Wisdom of the Game ” was inspired by his life-long love of basketball. He admitted in a phone chat that he is still feeling “a little grief” after culling about a third of his formerly 10,000-book library. One he definitely kept is “Honeymoons in Temporary Locations.”

“It’s an incredible book. Important stuff, literature that changes minds.” he said. “It’s not dystopian in the sci-fi sense. What would be considered talk of the future ends up being true. Ashley has this Nostradamus piece of her that interests me.”

Shelby takes no credit for Ashley’s writing (“she got her mother’s brains”) but he does credit her growing up in a household watching news and being around her dad’s colleagues including Dave Nimmer, godfather to Ashley and her sisters. The Shelby daughters also saw their dad, who loves the outdoors, introduce environmental/climate change reporting years before anyone took it seriously, with some 800 stories aired on WCCO.

Don Shelby has worked hard at his commitment to the Earth as a volunteer helping mitigate the damage already done by rising temperatures. He participated in a project to reforest the 52-mile Mississippi River National Park that replaced dying or dead ash trees with species more accustomed to the climate farther south because trees are moving north. He has attended a climate change meeting in Oslo presented by the Nobel Peace Prize Committee as well as belonging to Climate Science Rapid Response Team, a match-making service to connect scientists with lawmakers and the media. He also serves on the board of Minnesota-based Climate Generation, which believes in the power of youth to have an impact on the systems perpetuating the climate crisis.

Writing for Beno

After Ashley wrote “Red River Rising,” she turned to fiction with her 2017 comic novel “South Pole Station” (University of Minnesota Press paperback), about a person who joins the National Science Foundation’s Artist & Writers program in Antarctica that becomes the center of global controversy when a fringe scientist claims climate change is a hoax.

“I am not a scientist,” Shelby says. “I wanted to be one but my mind didn’t trend that way. It takes me a lot more reads of scientific material to suck out meaning. Sometimes I wish I were better at science, but I’m glad I am not. I can utilize abstraction and imagination and creativity in a way that scientists cannot do day-to-day.”

After “South Pole Station” was published, Shelby started another book set in the climate-affected world, but it didn’t go well:

“I had difficulty using the tools I’d used for ‘South Pole Station.’ They weren’t up to the task of narrative, framework, characters and dialogue. Now I know it was (because of) my grief at what had happened and what will happen. I started having strange thoughts after reading ‘Benito Cereno,’ Melville’s masterpiece. For some reason, I thought, ‘What if it was bears?’ They are the most salient image used about climate change, a trope we look away from because it’s so upsetting. But I dismissed the idea as too big an ask of the reader, too ridiculous. No one would accept this premise.”

That changed when she started telling a story about talking bears to Beno, her son’s friend.

“He was only 11 years old, but he looked at me seriously, nodding, and said, ‘This is going to be bestseller,’ ” Shelby recalled. “That conversation made me go back to my desk and write ‘Muri.’ I didn’t think I would ever show it to anyone, but I would write it for Beno who saw something in it.”

To Shelby’s surprise, when “Muri” was published as a limited-run chapbook in Radix Media’s Futures: A Science Fiction Series, people not only read it, but it was adopted in university courses teaching climate fiction.

“I am so grateful for the generous readers of speculative fiction who wanted to know more about these bears,” she said. “This filled me with happiness and joy. It allowed me to have the courage to process grief about climate change in a way my brain was telling me I could do it, not with traditional forms but telling the story in your head as you are experiencing it without worrying about narrative form.”

The kids will understand

“This book is written in a way that will appeal to younger people,” Shelby says. “A story about a podcast resonates with them. Marketing documents for a drug resonates with a generation that has come to be suspicious of the pharma industry.”

Shelby’s concern for the confusion in some young people also runs through her stories. She’s writing about the in-between generation, youngsters who never knew the world in which their parents lived. As one character says, “How do you explain to a child who has never experienced the normal contours of spring why many adults preferred death than a world without it?”

“This generation knows things are changing,” Shelby says. She sees the toll climate change takes in her own family.

“My daughter has asthma and has difficulty breathing,” she says. “During soccer season in the summer she has to bring an inhaler and separate medication. Asthma rates are skyrocketing. For my daughter it’s always been like this. My and my dad’s generations don’t see it, but my kids see it clearly and they will understand how to address it in maybe uncomfortable ways. These climate change activists who deface artwork and block traffic are telling us in all different ways ‘this is the future.’ They are relying on us, but the people in power, the ruling class, are foisting this on us, making us feel guilty for using fuel or plastic straws. We are beholden to CEOs who create rocket ships and pay no attention to what they caused. It gets to me. That’s the emotion distilled in these stories..”

In the end, Shelby returns to our longings: “Solastalgia exists because we love Nature, and as long as we still love Nature, there is hope.”

Honeymoons in Temporary Locations

What: Ashley Shelby launches “Honeymoons in Temporary Locations” in conversation with Eric Holthaus, a St. Paul-based leading journalist on all things weather and climate change who has written for the Wall Street Journal, Slate, Grist and The Correspondent, where he currently covers our interconnected relationship with the climate.

When: 6 p.m. Tuesday, June 25

Where: Moon Palace Books, 3032 Minnehaha Ave., Mpls.

Admission: Free (masks required in the store)

Publisher/price: University of Minnesota Press ($22.95)

Information: Moonpalacebooks.com/events

For readers who want to dive into more climate fiction, here are titles that most often appear on reading lists.

• “American War,” Omar El Akkad
• “Barkskins,” Annie Proulx
• “Blackfish City,” Sam J. Miller
• “The Drowned World,” J.G. Ballard
• “Flight Behavior,” Barbara Kingsolver
• “How Beautiful We Were,” Imbolo Mbue
• “The Ministry for the Future,” Kim Stanley Robinson
• “Parable of the Sower,” Octavia E. Butler
• “The Overstory,” Richard Powers
• “The Water Knife,” Paolo Bacigalupi
• “War Girls,” Tochi Onyebuchi
• “The Swan Book,” Alexis Wright
• “Tentacle,” Rita Indiana
• “Oryx and Crake,” “The Year of the Flood,” “MaddAddam” trilogy, Margaret Atwood

More in Books

SUBSCRIBER ONLY

Books | literary calendar for week of june 30.

Books | Readers and Writers: Mysteries, dystopia and writings from jail

Restaurants, Food and Drink | It’s grill season. Learn how the BBQ Pit Boys conquered the world

Books | The top new books for your summer reading list

Books | Literary picks for week of June 23: Native American words and music are on display this week

Books | Literary calendar for week of June 23

Advertisement

Supported by

A Day-Glo New York Where Artists Could Afford the Rent

In his beautiful memoir, “Do Something,” Guy Trebay paints a picture of a vanished, pre-AIDS Gotham that’s both gritty and dazzling.

• Share full article

By Andrew O’Hagan

Andrew O’Hagan’s new novel is “Caledonian Road.”

• Apple Books
• Barnes and Noble
• Books-A-Million

When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.

DO SOMETHING: Coming of Age Amid the Glitter and Doom of ’70s New York, by Guy Trebay

Among the skills that can get a writer out of trouble, a sense of smell should not be underestimated. Stuck for an escape, cornered by the rats of cliché and sentimentality, today’s autofictionists are wont to brandish their anxiety, consort with their inner demons, flash their self-loathing and blame late capitalism — yet a nimbler response might simply be to sniff for fresh air and head for the door.

These days, it is often the memoirist (Noé Álvarez, Jane Bertch) who seems more powerfully attached to the idea of sensual delight as a point of departure. This general upgrade in the importance of the five senses may have Proustian bearings, but for some life-writers the question is really about how to survive what we recall.

Guy Trebay, a cultural critic and a reporter for the Style section of The New York Times, happens to be a sensualist so native to the task that his expertly perfumed memoir might easily have been sponsored by Guerlain.

We learn that at suppertime in his Long Island childhood, his mother would routinely dab herself with Shalimar before his father got home from work. In a slightly later part of the author’s life, whirling in otherness amid the beautiful freaks, dropouts and freedom-chasers in late-1960s Manhattan, he would occasionally fetch up at the Chelsea Hotel suite of the designer Charles James, a man of style and squalor who would cover the reek caused by his incontinent beagle with frequent spritzes of Habit Rouge.

Trebay has always been a slave to what we might call the olfactory sublime, and with good reason: His father enjoyed a short-lived success as the inventor of a “groovy” men’s cologne called Hawaiian Surf, “for the use of manly descendants in spirit, of a special breed of adventurer.”

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?  Log in .

Want all of The Times?  Subscribe .