Overstory: Richard Powers

 

Some books change your lens, and you start looking at things in a completely different way, and when that deals with the fundamentals of life – suddenly you start connecting the dots. Overstory is one such book which will make you look at trees in a completely different way.

The basic premise of the book is that trees talk to each other, take care of the world around it and are intelligent. The older generation / tribes / sages in the context of India understood this and hence they are a big part of myths and philosophy – like Rigveda / Bible etc.

Right from page 1 trees are symbiotically woven into every character and their family. I loved the choice of characters and for me, the first section – Roots which creates the foundation of all the 8 characters was the best part and held me spellbound by it’s lovely storytelling.

The second part – Stem is all about getting them together for the cause – which is protecting the trees from corporates who were razing them to ground to create resorts or properties. Some portion of it was long winded and but this is where the trees form the center piece – trees are described in a way that you can touch and feel them. I googled and saw the Red Wood trees and they are nothing like I had seen in Assam or the Himachal / Uttarakhand belt. These are like giants and, I cannot imagine a forest of such trees or how would somebody cut them.

Some portions of the book could have been smaller (630+ pages), some characters were there for no reason – at least I could not connect with characters like that of Ray & Nilay. But one would overlook these minor things and admire the ambition of the book – which is to write a book where trees are the real heroes. The book won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2019. and is based on the principles laid out in The hidden life of trees By Peter Wohllwben.

As I was reading the book over a period of week ten days, I would go for a walk and look at the trees around my apartment with awe – imagining what’s happening inside the tree and all the birds, squirrels, woodpeckers, ants, mushrooms, bees, insects and the whole eco-system which exists because of these trees.

Trees always fascinated me and they have been part of many folklore, stories, poem. Here’s something from the book which I really liked:

We all travel the Milky Way together, tress and men….In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks. The clearest way into the universe is through a forest wilderness. Muir