RAWTS: Matt’s Take on The Overstory
{Book Report by Matt; flip back to 12/30 for background.}
The Overstory is a book about trees...an incredibly beautiful & well-researched book that weaves plant science through everything, painting the background for the individual narratives driving the plot line as well as being the plot itself. The book follows the lives of numerous characters—scientists, professors, engineers, lawyers, etc—and how their lives intersect, mostly related to some interest in trees.
That oversimplifies it a lot though because it’s also a book about death—of the biosphere, of people, of old-selves. It’s a book about rebirth as all the characters face life-changing events, most of which are quite dire (one literally dies & resuscitates), leading to life pivots despite facing serious adversity. And it’s a book about time, following these folks from birth to death (mostly) but more interestingly exploring the mismatched time perspective of humans and trees, and how that skews our sense about their worth.
As a confessed non-reader, I was totally drawn in. When I was reading, I didn’t want to stop. It spoke to various parts of me: my science background, environmentalist leanings, & wannabe psychoanalyst tendencies. That said, if I wasn’t reading it, it was hard to pick up.
I will say that sometimes it felt like Powers was just jamming in every factoid that his research dug up. Maybe he should’ve called the book “Overburden” (get it?!). Also, frankly, it was at times hard to follow: Who is this again? Wait, what just happened? But maybe it’s supposed to be that way.
As for co-reading, in retrospect, we should have insisted on reading more in parallel. Shockingly, I was way ahead of voracious reader Amy. (She was plowing through other books, many of which were on tight library or book club timelines.) There was a lot that I came across & was dying to chat with her about but couldn’t for fear of spoiling things. Next time.
Y’all were awesome with the crowd-sourced recommendations. Thank you! The Overstory was a perfect pick. And fortunately your list of recommendations was long enough that I’ll just pick another...if Amy will have me.
originally published on instagram