Book Club Guide

The Overstory

by Richard Powers · 2018 · Literary Fiction

Key themes

Trees as characters — the non-human world that sustains and outlasts us
Environmental activism and the line between protest and violence
How human time compares to the deep time of forests

About this book

Nine Americans whose lives are changed by trees — a chestnut tree photographed for generations, a couple bonded by a sentinel banyan, a scientist who discovers trees communicate — are drawn together in a defence of old-growth forests. Powers's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel makes trees the protagonist of American history and asks whether human consciousness will arrive before or after the damage is done.

Published in 2018, The Overstory won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2019. Powers spent years researching tree science, including reading hundreds of papers on forest ecology. He has described it as the most important thing he has written.

Discussion questions

The novel is structured like a tree — roots, trunk, crown, seeds — with the nine protagonists' stories converging. How does this formal choice mirror the novel's ecological argument?
Powers gives the trees their own narrative perspective in sections. How effective is this technique — does it create genuine fellow-feeling for non-human life, or does it feel like ventriloquism?
Several characters commit acts of environmental sabotage and face serious consequences. How does the novel engage with the ethics of direct action — and does it have a position?
The novel makes the argument that we cannot imagine time scales long enough to understand what we are destroying. How does Powers try to extend the reader's temporal imagination?
The Overstory is science-inflected literary fiction. How does Powers integrate the scientific research about trees without making the novel feel like a lecture?