Ratings26
Average rating4.2
*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 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.
Reviews with the most likes.
Compelling characters, beautifully written story, and fascinating science behind forests. Heartbreaking and very motivating.
I thought that writing from the perspective of trees offers a great captivating potential, unfortunately, the book is unnecessarily dry and still focuses in a human-centric way
En helt fantastisk og en helt håpløs roman ulikt alt annet jeg har lest. Mer en fabel enn en fortelling, og jeg er langt fra sikker på at jeg har forstått noe som helst - annet enn at mennesket kanskje ikke er Gaias viktigste livsform.
TThe first half of the book is very good as they bounce through the stories. The second half is just two huge chapters and they are very dense.