---
product_id: 119676667
title: "The Overstory"
price: "17322 Ft"
currency: HUF
in_stock: null
reviews_count: 8
url: https://www.desertcart.hu/products/119676667-the-overstory
store_origin: HU
region: Hungary
---

# The Overstory

**Price:** 17322 Ft
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- **What is this?** The Overstory
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## Description

The Overstory: A Novel [Powers, Richard] on desertcart.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The Overstory: A Novel

Review: This Novel will Change how you view Trees and Life - The main characters in this epic story Nicholas Hoel (Watchman), Olivia Vandergriff (Maidenhair), Mimi Ma (Mulberry), Douglas Pavlicek (Doug-fir), Adam Appich (Maple), Dr. Patricia Westerford, Neelay Mehta, Dorothy Cazaly Brinkman, and Ray Brinkman, all have interesting and sometimes tragic life stories that somehow connects them to trees. Their life stories are told in a captivating but fast paced manner that sometimes seemed compressed but for a good reason. The book did not just tell us about the current personalities of the characters without giving the history. Our personalities are partially formed by our parents, grandparents, great grandparents, cultures far away from where we live, by nature and by trees. In some cases, the history of several generations was covered in a couple of pages. I am a curious person, and I found this kind of novel character development powerful and very entertaining. In a fashion that reminded me of Stephen King’s the stand, the life events of the characters and their family history bring them together in the defense of old growth redwood forest in Oregon. There are also hints of paranormal phenomena. In Oregon, things get very wild and even violent and it became difficult for me to put the book down. It felt very real and very tense and mistakes were made, bad mistakes. The book is certainly a page turner. The Overstory asks whether humans are the only ones that matter by challenging human-centered perspectives and exploring the lives, consciousness, and value of trees. The book shows that other beings have their own valuable and interesting experiences, and presents scientific ideas that trees have a form of communication and intelligence. I learned that trees communicate with each other through a network of fungi in the soil. By looking up the facts about this I found out that this was not fiction made up by the author. There is an entire new science on this topic called mycorrhizal ecology or biocommunication, sometimes referred to as the “Wood Wide Web”. Dr. Patricia Westerford is based on a real person, Dr. Suzanne Simard of the University of British Columbia. The book also points out that we humans do not understand the amount of destruction that we are causing to the world’s forests. This is a book that speaks for the trees, but in addition, the trees speak for us. This is one of the most fascinating novels that I’ve read. It has an important message that some of us will understand but that some of us may not grasp. In any case, I can certainly understand the books popularity. I highly recommend it.
Review: This book has forever changed my brain on many ideas, worthy ideas, best ideas! A must read! - Overstory was a book club recommendation. I've already read Lab Girl and the Hidden Life of Trees so when I read Overstory, I felt I was in a familiar forest walking with old friends on the trail. Richard Powers, the author, is a poet, a literary writer and delivers a poignant message in a delicious style. Both of the mentioned books are embued inside Power's story and melded into characters with passion, grit, love and unstoppable influence - felt then or later - in the storyline and especially in the reader/witness. I loved the writing and then I loved the story/stories. I hadn't read any reviews and so when I started out with the character sketches as chapters i though how clever to have a book written in all "overstories" - the way a writer or artist makes preliminary and brief notes on a protagonist. but, I was soon to find out that the overstory was about the trees, the magnificent trees and my heart opened, my eyes, opened and my world point of view enlarged such that I'll never be the same. This book changes the structure of mind and future in all the best ways. a beautifully written book and a must read for all of our futures. Trees and connections and merchandising and monetizing our world for a few short years of pleasure are toppling our planet and, hey we're on the planet. I've shared this book with 8 - 10 friends now and always include that this is one of those books that is a classic and is a must-read. i'll be reading it again after our book club meeting and it will be one of those books that i will not recycle. i need this one with me. I still give a 5 star because of the effect it has had on me, but for the meat of the story, I wanted more development from some of the characters and at the end, I got lost often in the names; in the metaphors that seemed to be more author-writerly than for the movement of the plot. Powers lost literary steam, or maybe his editors did at the end and it sort of wound down into a slow coasting rather than a summarizing climax. I told my friends that maybe this how trees actually are - strong for a long time (the book could be edited to be shorter) and then they fall. That being said, I still loved it, wanted to read more Powers and have bought several more of his many novels. Loved his science through characters and nature. STRONG points in the 5 star.

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Best Sellers Rank | #7,127 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #7 in Political Fiction (Books) #176 in American Literature (Books) #191 in Literary Fiction (Books) |
| Customer Reviews | 4.4 out of 5 stars 41,228 Reviews |

## Images

![The Overstory - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81m48JcL6yL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ This Novel will Change how you view Trees and Life
*by T***N on November 10, 2025*

The main characters in this epic story Nicholas Hoel (Watchman), Olivia Vandergriff (Maidenhair), Mimi Ma (Mulberry), Douglas Pavlicek (Doug-fir), Adam Appich (Maple), Dr. Patricia Westerford, Neelay Mehta, Dorothy Cazaly Brinkman, and Ray Brinkman, all have interesting and sometimes tragic life stories that somehow connects them to trees. Their life stories are told in a captivating but fast paced manner that sometimes seemed compressed but for a good reason. The book did not just tell us about the current personalities of the characters without giving the history. Our personalities are partially formed by our parents, grandparents, great grandparents, cultures far away from where we live, by nature and by trees. In some cases, the history of several generations was covered in a couple of pages. I am a curious person, and I found this kind of novel character development powerful and very entertaining. In a fashion that reminded me of Stephen King’s the stand, the life events of the characters and their family history bring them together in the defense of old growth redwood forest in Oregon. There are also hints of paranormal phenomena. In Oregon, things get very wild and even violent and it became difficult for me to put the book down. It felt very real and very tense and mistakes were made, bad mistakes. The book is certainly a page turner. The Overstory asks whether humans are the only ones that matter by challenging human-centered perspectives and exploring the lives, consciousness, and value of trees. The book shows that other beings have their own valuable and interesting experiences, and presents scientific ideas that trees have a form of communication and intelligence. I learned that trees communicate with each other through a network of fungi in the soil. By looking up the facts about this I found out that this was not fiction made up by the author. There is an entire new science on this topic called mycorrhizal ecology or biocommunication, sometimes referred to as the “Wood Wide Web”. Dr. Patricia Westerford is based on a real person, Dr. Suzanne Simard of the University of British Columbia. The book also points out that we humans do not understand the amount of destruction that we are causing to the world’s forests. This is a book that speaks for the trees, but in addition, the trees speak for us. This is one of the most fascinating novels that I’ve read. It has an important message that some of us will understand but that some of us may not grasp. In any case, I can certainly understand the books popularity. I highly recommend it.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ This book has forever changed my brain on many ideas, worthy ideas, best ideas! A must read!
*by J***R on June 15, 2019*

Overstory was a book club recommendation. I've already read Lab Girl and the Hidden Life of Trees so when I read Overstory, I felt I was in a familiar forest walking with old friends on the trail. Richard Powers, the author, is a poet, a literary writer and delivers a poignant message in a delicious style. Both of the mentioned books are embued inside Power's story and melded into characters with passion, grit, love and unstoppable influence - felt then or later - in the storyline and especially in the reader/witness. I loved the writing and then I loved the story/stories. I hadn't read any reviews and so when I started out with the character sketches as chapters i though how clever to have a book written in all "overstories" - the way a writer or artist makes preliminary and brief notes on a protagonist. but, I was soon to find out that the overstory was about the trees, the magnificent trees and my heart opened, my eyes, opened and my world point of view enlarged such that I'll never be the same. This book changes the structure of mind and future in all the best ways. a beautifully written book and a must read for all of our futures. Trees and connections and merchandising and monetizing our world for a few short years of pleasure are toppling our planet and, hey we're on the planet. I've shared this book with 8 - 10 friends now and always include that this is one of those books that is a classic and is a must-read. i'll be reading it again after our book club meeting and it will be one of those books that i will not recycle. i need this one with me. I still give a 5 star because of the effect it has had on me, but for the meat of the story, I wanted more development from some of the characters and at the end, I got lost often in the names; in the metaphors that seemed to be more author-writerly than for the movement of the plot. Powers lost literary steam, or maybe his editors did at the end and it sort of wound down into a slow coasting rather than a summarizing climax. I told my friends that maybe this how trees actually are - strong for a long time (the book could be edited to be shorter) and then they fall. That being said, I still loved it, wanted to read more Powers and have bought several more of his many novels. Loved his science through characters and nature. STRONG points in the 5 star.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Because 'Tree' & 'Truth' Share the Same Root
*by E***K on April 25, 2020*

In this Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Overstory, one of the characters offered some profound advice to his students. “You can’t see what you don’t understand. But what you think you already understand, you’ll fail to notice.” Before we bought our current family home, we visited. With most of the furniture moved out and life hidden from view, the rooms were staged for a buyer. All except the young boy with autism, who could not be subdued during our tour of the home for sale. He sat on the couch and jumped up to pace, groans for words, his hands thrown against his stomach in uncomfortable, unpredictable bursts. His mother, long in patience and able to see what most could not, interpreted his enthusiasm for us and for our young children. His mother saw what we could not, knew everything was fine. In her son’s honor and in his name, a young tree had been planted years prior in the backyard of the house that we wanted to buy, because the boy’s parents understood. They saw. They did not fail to notice. Yes, we bought the home and our children played for hours in that backyard. We did not see the boy’s tree, just as we didn’t see the boy. The author of this book has caused me to see that tree, and others, much differently. Other trees including the ones no longer there. The author screams his warning to see their disappearance, page aftrr page. Our children chose instead to live in the wild little forest growing on the edge of our property line, beneath the boy's tree. Here, they buried their childhood. Deceptively dense on a postage stamp of swamp, this little forest was rife with potato vines, knee-high undergrowth and thin trunks that bent in the wind to shake off little white flowers. It sheltered courage within the walls of a young boy’s fort; it sprouted imagination in a backlot to short films on a young girl's handheld camera. Those leaves and vines covered hope and shame and anger and joy and love and peace. Then, just as our children all entered their teens, our little town outgrew itself. Progress sent machines to tear down our forest and build a mandatory retention pond. Every vine, every stump, every little white flower was erased from the yard and forever from the planet, so that our neighbors could use more water and so that the water would have some place to go other than out onto our dirt roads. Against our will, the machines tore away everything but the autistic boy’s tree. Quietly, this had grown tall, with a trunk too wide to hug. Today, that tree is the lone survivor of our backyard forest. This beautiful, magnificent tower of memory tells the stories of my three kids’ childhood. I just finished reading The Overstory by Richard Powers. I read it because I love trees (not just the one in my backyard), and because I want to read good writing. This book offers both. Powers tells the stories of 9 characters whose lives all profoundly intersect with trees. And what do all stories do, one of those characters asks in the book? “[Good stories] kill you a little. They turn you into something you weren’t” (page 412). Is that why I read? To become something I wasn’t? To grow? Or to put it another way, to die just a little? Is it death? The author wants us to think about the environment like we’ve not thought about it before. He doesn’t serve up a green brochure or a scientific journal article disguised as a flimsy four-part play. He introduces us to people and pulls them together in ways that surprise and distress and move and frighten his reader. After all, propaganda about the destruction of trees would not make us think differently. We would just see what we think we see without understanding, without knowing. “The best arguments in the world won’t change a person’s mind,” says one of the characters in this book. “The only thing that can do that is a good story.” He got me thinking anyway. Powers ends his novel on the second to last page with a reminder that “the word ‘tree’ and the word ‘truth’ come from the same root” (page 500). Because of his story, I see trees with new eyes. But Powers begs his readers to do more than just listen and nod. He storytells his heart out and, in return, begs me to die a little.

## Frequently Bought Together

- W. W. Norton & Company The Overstory: A Novel
- Harper Perennial Demon Copperhead: A Novel

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*Product available on Desertcart Hungary*
*Store origin: HU*
*Last updated: 2026-03-13*