![]() ![]() ![]() But the writing is steel-edged, laser-sharp when Richard Powers wants it to be. For a book that approaches a quarter of a million words, respite might be required. By the end of it you'll know more about trees than you thought there was to know. ![]() There are sins of anthropomorphism and personification.Ĭhapter one begins: "Now is the time of chestnuts." It isn't the only sentence in the book that teeters on the brink. There are epiphanies and elemental brainstorms. There are scientists, actuaries, Vietnam vets and game designers. Nine characters converge on a ecological protest and splinter away from it. You don't know whether you should read it transfixed by the shadow of the fall of man, or throw it at the wall and run screaming into the forest. You can't say it works as a piece of prose and you can't say that it doesn't work. It might be a novel that reaches out for the unattainable and falls short of it, or a novel that overshoots its own good intentions. The Overstory might be a good book, and it might be a bad book. ![]()
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