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    The Overstory
    The Overstory
    The Overstory
    Audiobook22 hours

    The Overstory

    Written by Richard Powers

    Narrated by Suzanne Toren

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    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.

    Editor's Note

    Pulitzer Prize winner…

    Richard Powers’ magisterial work is, ultimately, about being unable to see the forest for the trees. Except in this case, it’s human beings who are the trees, and trees that are the forest. Don’t worry; this isn’t an environmental polemic. Or maybe it is, but you’ll be far too engrossed in the writing to notice. “The Overstory” won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateApr 3, 2018
    ISBN9781501982026
    The Overstory

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    Reviews for The Overstory

    4/5

    1,448 ratings123 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Magnificent. An epic achievement that grasps heart and soul in a way that few novels have in a long time, and definitively changed how I look at the world. The story and vision are intertwined perfectly to pierce the veil of modern distracted numbness and remind us of what we all are but have forgotten.

      3 people found this helpful

    • 2/5
      Summary: Trees are great, we are but a momentary pestilence that will ultimate provide fertiliser. Long, arduous and dull. 2 silver ferns out of a possible 5 eucalyptus trees. Buy a digital copy and save the forest!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Very hard form of narrative to get into. Characters are a bit flat, but well-formed. Though the story isn't plot-driven, especially at first, one does emerge eventually. It's the kind of book you're glad you read once you make it through it. Important work, tough read.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Reader was incredible. The story is transformative. Worthy. Enlightening

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      I didn’t love the voices but I appreciate the effort with which this was done. Overall thank you very much. As for the book- well written and cultivated.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Powers is a stylist beyond words —and here, he understands trees, people—oddly, seems to understand me

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Richard Powers delivers what can be a life changer for those with only a loose connection to nature, while giving many of us a welcome renewal for these challenging times.
    • 3/5
      I did like the character introductions, and the language was powerful, it's just that watching the essential implacable greed of humanity grind the characters between the powers of short sighted self interest and the law isn't any fun.
    • 3/5
      I didn't finish it because my library loan ended. I really liked the short stories. I hear it gets weirder after that so I guess I didnt miss anything.
    • 5/5
      I want more stars. Every human can learn from this book.
    • 1/5
      Yes heart in right place. It's all good, no bad thoughts expressed, but this was the worst book i have read in years. If this is a good example of the modern novel then I am glad i haven't bothered with many of the others. God i hate it when an author turns a noun into a verb. Cloying overwritten treacle.......
    • 4/5
      Sometimes flawed but engaging and important. Dramatically read with skill.
    • 1/5
      This was a very hard listen, nonsensical, things left undone.
    • 5/5
      4,8 stars

      I felt pretty emotional throughout this book and there's no way I'll be able to review this coherently.

      I don't remember if I've ever felt this impacted by a novel.
    • 5/5
      Many fully developed stories of individuals whose lives are shaped by trees. Their characters evolve over decades. Their lives eventually intersect with great drama and suspense. Deep time perspective reverent on the lives of trees on the planet.
      The language is colorful, powerful, with many phrases worth recording to recall for the future.
      The narration by Suzanne Toren is so virtuosic, that now I'm looking up other books that she has narrated.
    • 3/5
      Terrible ending The beginning and middle was fine Wendy, Gail died I was into it anymore
    • 4/5
      This was an interesting read. I think 3.5 stars would be more accurate. There were characters and parts of the book I really loved, and parts that fell short. The plot kind of unraveled at the end, but I think that may have been on purpose. There were lots of trees, and I loved those story lines best. I think this is a book that a re-read would be good.
    • 3/5
      This is truly an epic novel; I found it quite long, however.
    • 5/5
      Beautifully written, gorgeous epic story. I loved it. I see trees in a whole different light.
    • 3/5
      Not my kinda book. There’s definitely some good things about the writing, and I found it to be a page-turner. But I also thought it was mushy, overwrought, and too full of magical realism or whatever it’s called. And 500 pages does not improve my attitude if I’m feeling so-so about a novel...
    • 5/5
      By far my favorite book, and the voiceover artist is incredible on this audiobook. It takes a while to understand where things might unfold, and it's very worth the wait.
    • 5/5
      Great story! And informative about the world we live in....
    • 5/5
      A magnificent story, heard from a truly wonderful voice, read aloud by a surprise wizard!
    • 4/5
      "What is the single best thing a person can do for tomorrow's world?"

      According to Dr. Patricia Westerford, it is to commit suicide. Our relationship with nature is uneasy, destructive, and exploitative. _The Overstory_ is an important, apocalyptic novel written for mass consumption. Reading this made me look at trees with new appreciation, especially the solitary soldiers that dot our suburban neighborhood.

      The novel itself outruns its ambitions. Powers is writing in big novel mode, with perhaps too many characters to follow (a couple lead to narrative dead ends). But its messaging is on point. We are destroying pristine nature at a horrifying pace, which will cause the tree of life to topple, directly on our heads. It's impossible to be sanguine about our collective future after reading this.
    • 4/5
      Reason Read: AUC, ROOT, Pulitzer I really enjoyed the first book that I read by Richard Powers so looked forward to finally reading another. I did not enjoy this as much. Why? I do not know. Too long? Too many characters mixed into the trees and hard to keep story lines clear. The people grew entangled just like the tree roots. This is a story of trees, about man's poor stewardship of his God given charge to care for the earth and God's creation.
    • 5/5
      I cried when the narrator spoke those grief-laced words, “The end”. My newest lifelong friends have gone silent. It’s fiction, screams my rational mind. But I am in love, whimpers my heart. All that is left now are the most real characters of The Overstory — the trees. Admittedly, I am an inveterate tree lover. My favorite smell emanates from the bark of a sun baked Jeffery pine. My favorite color is the green of new redwood foliage. In the book, I particularly enjoyed the discoveries of Patricia Westerford, who understands from both emotional and scientific perspectives that there is no life as we know it without vast forests of trees. Trees speak to her. One of the many things she learns from listening to them is how intimately they experience their connection with all other living things. She comes to understand that to a tree, a bird sitting on a branch is part of itself, not a separate entity. That the relationship is ephemeral matters not at all. A Monterey pine once shared that same wisdom with me. I love the passion each character develops for trees and appreciate the urgency they feel about protecting them. I am inspired by the overlapping stories of each main character. I’ll miss them, and I’m really glad I listened to the audiobook. Scout, Santa Rosa CA.

      4 people found this helpful

    • 5/5
      This book is one for the ages. So beautifully written, so powerful. I found myself caught helplessly in the narrative and so grateful for it. I believe we must do more for our planet, but reading this framed the urgency of that need in a way I could understand more vividly, especially knowing that the need to protect our earthly co-habitators are the guardians of our own perseverance. I am absolutely reading this again someday after the first read sinks in.
      Shout out also to Suzanne Toren’s performance - she made each character come to life, accents and all, and made the nearly 23 hours of listening so enjoyable.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      Four stars for ambition. Four stars for writing. One star for overall execution/editing/enjoyment. Having been bedazzled by Powers’ “Bewilderment”, I was eager to read his Pulitzer Prize-winning book. I had mild reservations when I saw the work’s girth, but I reminded myself that Powers had penned one of my favorite books over the past couple years. Surprisingly, I was so bored by “The Overstory” that I almost stopped reading it three times. I finally called it quits two-thirds of the way through this agonizingly slow-moving book. Perhaps if Powers had focused on a few key characters and turned in a tome half the length, this ode to trees may have been more effective. With apologies to the Pulitzer judges, “The Overstory” is grossly overrated.
    • 5/5
      Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 2018, The Overstory is an ambitious environmental fable of nine main characters that explores our relationship with nature, the psychology of why we're so bad at acting on climate change, our perception of time, the meaning of hope, and much, much more. Everyone should read this book and wake up to what we’re doing to our planetary home before it’s too late.
    • 4/5
      A sad, troubling, but wonderful book.