The Overstory

This book is divided into four parts. The first part has the structure of an anthology, telling several different stories of unrelated characters, whose stories are all thematically intertwined in the way by which their relationship with the natural world typified by the presence, use, and destruction specifically of trees, affects their lives. The subsequent two parts of the novel weave all of these disparate characters together, and creates a unitary narrative in which they become eco-terrorists, which is totally awesome. The final section has them again coming apart, with a healthy dose of commentary on the disparity in their lives and the outcomes of their actions bases on their past and status. When reading the first section, it wasn’t clear to me what structure the book would settle on. I thought it would continue to be structured like an anthology, which to me, assuaged the risks of setting the book down for a long period to focus on other tasks. A fatal error. When I returned to the book, and it expected me suddenly to remember all the characters I had supposedly just read about, I was in a deplorable stupor. This might explain why I loved the first 1/4th of this book, but struggled through the following 3/4ths. Allow this quote to serve as a thesis statement:

“Stand your ground. The Castle Doctrine. Self-Help.

If you could save yourself, your wife, your child, or even a stranger by burning something down, the law allows you. If someone breaks into your home and starts destroying it, you may stop them however you need to….

He has no other way to say what so badly needs saying. Our home has been broken into. Our lives are being endangered. The Law allows for all necessary force against unlawful and imminent harm...

In mounting excitement, he sees how he must win the case. Life will cook the seas will rise. The plants lungs will be ripped out. And the law will let this happen, because harm was never imminent enough. Imminent, at the speed of people, is too late. The law must judge Imminent at the speed of trees.”

When this argument is proffered, near the end of the novel, the concept of “the speed of trees” has been being slowly constructed under your nose. The speed of trees spans generations of families and society, tying them together in surprising ways, tearing them apart in others. It recalls the Overview effect, a shift in worldview reported by some astronauts after viewing the blue marble of the Earth from a figuratively bird’s-eye view. That we are temporary members of nature contextually embedded in an ecosystem, for which we are responsible, is well-known and uncontroversial. The Overstory effectively imbues that somber reflective overview with charged human emotion, tying our whole society as intimately as it ties our individual life with the natural world. The Overstory is far from a perfect book. The irritants in its lofty writing style are munificent. It’s not even really a vital or pivotal book: Only the most benighted among us need any convincing at this point that the environment is like, good, dude, and only the most fervently mawkish among us need a narrative involving specific characters to come to that realization emotionally. It would be like someone suddenly thinking that the Vietnam War is bad because they just watched Star Wars. Still, the book is filled with passions and paeans that are likely to speak to you if you, like me, quake in the night with apprehensive vexation for the fate of the Earth.

Loved the scope of this and its overall kind of aura. But, man, the back third really dragged ass. Satisfying conclusion and it's the kind of book that has forever changed my brain in good ways. Really wish I could read The Secret Forest— but maybe The Hidden Life of Trees will suffice.

It could be the eternal project of mankind, to learn what forests have figured out.

The Overstory is really a lengthy love letter to trees more than it is a novel. Almost everything in the book is tied to trees in one way or another. The characters and plot all seem secondary to this tree theme. At the same time, though, the book follows nine different characters. It can be hard to keep them all straight and stay invested in all of them. Really my biggest complaint is that the book is probably twice as long as it needs to be to tell the same story. You'll find yourself reading a loving and vivid description of a tree or a laundry list of tree facts about every 10 pages. However beautifully written, these tree digressions wear thin after some time. The book is spread so thin across its many characters that many of them felt flat to me.

Despite all my complaints, the beginning of the book works pretty well as a collection of short stories. I think you also get the overall message that we should respect trees more from just those first 150 or so pages.