Overstory, The

by Richard Powers (2018)

9/10

Took a while to get going, ramped up into an utterly magnificent midsection, but then let me down a bit with a fairly disperse, unresolved ending. And yes I understand that a disperse and unresolved ending absolutely fits the rest of the book thematically, and was almost certainly intentional, but it still vaguely dissatisfied my conventional expectations of a novel. What is essentially the climax occurs at about the 3/4 mark of the book, and the last quarter has a distinct “falling action” vibe.

Even a somewhat dissatisfying ending, however, does not really diminish what Powers accomplished with the rest of the book. It is both novel and eco-political manifesto, and it succeeds as both treatise and art. Would I have liked him to be more overtly socialist on the manifesto side? Sure — I no longer think “mere” anti-capitalism is explicit enough, and I believe we need to positively name what we propose as an alternative. But that’s a quibble.

Powers has given us a borderline masterpiece, and in so doing has arguably evolved the novel form itself. If I were to develop a Modern Lit curriculum I would probably have to include this as a current exemplar, alongside maybe Susanna Clarke and something like House of Leaves (of course with authors like Borges and Calvino being the foundations). Highly recommended for all.