The Overstory by Richard Powers

Although it grows into a vast novel about trees, The Overstory starts small. We begin with the roots, eight independent short stories, introducing nine people whose lives later interlock. There’s an artist who carries on the family tradition of photographing the lone chestnut tree planted by a great-grandfather on their farm in Idaho; there’s a Vietnam veteran, whose life was saved by a banyan tree; a scientist who discovers that trees communicate with each other in a great interconnected root network; a hard-partying student who electrocutes herself, dies, and is brought back to life by tree spirits.

And as their lives begin to touch, the stories coalesce. These roots grow into the trunk and canopy of the novel – as each character is summoned to the fight to preserve the unknowably complex beings we know as trees. It is a story of environmental activism, a call to rethink the place of humans in the world, and to appreciate trees for the astonishing things they are.

There is a lot to learn from this novel, from the blight that ravaged the mighty chestnuts of America’s east coast, to the timber wars of the 1990s and the fight to save the last pockets of virgin forest. Where a straight argument for saving trees might fall flat, Powers inspires us to look at them with fresh appreciation. But something gets lost in the largesse of his ambition: as each story competes for attention, few have the space to take root. [Galen O'Hanlon]

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Penguin, 5 Apr, £18.99