The Overstory

I shouldn't like this book. it's an extensive brain dump of information about forest intelligence, how trees in fact communicate with each other to warn of impending threats. How a vast underground network connect trees across thousands of kilometres creating a plant neurobiology. We have eco-warriors Watchman and Maidenhair, she a survivor of a near death electrocution that has left her with the ability to communicate with light beings that exhort her to save the trees! And to be honest it gets a little scattered nearing the end, juggling 9(!) different characters, some of whom I'm still a little unsure as to what they're supposed to represent, what story they're trying to tell.

But damn can Powers write about nature. I realize that my literary fiction diet is made up of cityscapes and suburbs. Characters that rarely look up from the concrete under their feet. Powers gets us outdoors and manages to evoke the wonder you felt staring at a massive redwood, or the spare jack pine on a rocky outcrop bending against the wind. It's a rare talent that can tread that line between deeply researched science and woo-woo nature gazing but Powers pulls it off with aplomb.