The Overstory - June 2019 Book Group discussion thread
10 watchers
Jun 2019
8:52pm, 21 Jun 2019
18,145 posts
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Columba
If I had been filling in the poll on this one (which I wasn't) I would have had to go back and change my score at least twice. First of all I loved it. This is partly because I am always prepared to be interested in trees. So big, so old, so harmless, living and growing for so long... I loved the Ents in Lord of the Rings. Then I got a bit tired of the succession of short stories. Then I went right off it because of the style, - short sentences, breathless type. However, it wasn't like that all through, so probably it was to do with the structure of the novel; fast growth (of trees) represented by short quick sentences. Maybe. All the people in the initial short stories came back. I couldn't remember which names were associated with which stories, but thank goodness the author had simply named the stories with the characters' names, so it was easy to look back and find out. Some of the characters I could believe in, some I couldn't. The author does a nice line in metaphors. Clever. When I'd finished, I considered going back again to the beginning and skimming through because undoubtedly I'd notice things I hadn't first time round... But no, it hadn't engaged me enough for that. So back to the library it went this morning. What did anyone else think?.... |
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Jun 2019
9:02pm, 21 Jun 2019
18,146 posts
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Columba
I have read back and found out. The representation of the world's history to an hour on a clock, with the human race appearing 3 seconds beforfe midnight, is not original. I've come across it several times before. Going back to look up some of the references. There's a yew tree about 25 miles from where I live which is said to be 5,000 years old (or thereabouts). |
Jun 2019
10:05pm, 21 Jun 2019
40,152 posts
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McGoohan
I was waiting for Columba to comment because I thought she was having a similar reading experience to me. Looks like that is confirmed. This was very much like reading a David Mitchell to me: lots of disparate characters and threads worked slowly together by the end. And like DM I blew hot and cold with this. It would ‘click’ with me and I’d think ‘I’m loving this’ and then a few pages later, I’d want to hurl it aside in annoyance. There were times when the book sat there like a big fat brick and I’d have a sinking feeling and not want to pick it up. At other times, particularly the last hundred pages or so where I just wanted to get back to reading it to see what happens next. However, my overall reading experience wasn’t… well it wasn’t great but it wasn’t bad either. It didn’t make me feel inspired or hopeful or anything much. There were a few traits that just irritated… OOOOOOooooooooo There we go: that was an artist’s impression of me rolling my eyes at ‘Watchman’ and ‘Maidenhair’. I almost dislocated my face at those bits. I found the whole eco-warriors bit extremely unconvincing. As they adopted those Gaia-earth-mother names, they all seemed to just melt into a single-character munge. Speaking of which, the faceless corporation bad guys: they really were utterly faceless, undescribed examples of The Man. I rolled my eyes too at the swathes of confrontations between the lovely caring eco-people and the big, nasty, unwilling-to-listen capitalists. Said the millionaire author. (He is, I checked.) Some of the characters too: why were they even there? Ray and Dorothy. I actually quite enjoyed reading about them but was waiting for them to have any relevance to anything and… they didn’t really. Neelay too was a trope rather than a person. They could have all been excised from the book with no real loss and it would have been kinder to my back, having to constantly lift this bloody thing. The ending was the weakest bit though. Not just that final section, but leading up to it. The thing where Patricia kills herself – er, oops, spoiler alert – was very poorly written. This was the most obvious bit of Powers’ frequent incursions into the story of his extensive research. ‘Here’s another amazing fact about trees,’ worked within some purple prose into the narrative. I started to read those in the voice of the David Tennant Dr Who - it’s an in-joke in our house that during the Tennant Years, every now and then, DT would have to say out loud, ‘Aren’t humans amaaaaaazing?’ I got very bored by the end with the emergence of every fact about trees ever discovered being thrown at me by the slenderest of connections to the plot. ‘Aren’t trees amaaaaaaazing?’ And then it just ends. Bleargh. Hmm, so it looks like I hated it in the end doesn’t it? I didn’t hate it. I think it’s a good book and I see why it won the Pulitzer – it’s a weighty tome (in all senses) about serious issues. Powers, when he’s off his soapbox has a lovely elegiac style. The middle sections of the book, where you get the stories beginning to intertwine were the best for me. You leave one character and move onto another eager to find out what happened to the first one. My earlier quibbles with character and eye-rolling aside, I think it would have had 8 out of 10 for me, as I was back to loving it. The ending just blew it though. Scored it a 6 in the end. |
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Jun 2019
10:06pm, 21 Jun 2019
40,153 posts
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McGoohan
Bloody hell. That was a long comment. Mind you, it was a long book 
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Jun 2019
11:24pm, 21 Jun 2019
14,839 posts
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Chrisull
Kinda like me and the ending of Milkman...
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Jun 2019
11:55pm, 21 Jun 2019
40,160 posts
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McGoohan
Ah, I've got that cued up on Audible...
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Jun 2019
12:12am, 22 Jun 2019
37,819 posts
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Diogenes
Milkman delivers, right to the last drop of the last pint
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Jun 2019
7:08am, 22 Jun 2019
40,163 posts
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McGoohan
Hang on ... no I've got it on RB Digital
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Jun 2019
5:30pm, 22 Jun 2019
18,152 posts
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Columba
Oh, doesn't he just. Milkman. Deliver. To the last drop. I had it from the library, but think I shall have to get myself a copy to keep. LOL at McG's "single-character munge". Hadn't realised the author was a millionaire. Now suspect he doesn't really care about environmental issues at all, but just knows what sells. Has he spent any of his millions buying up pristine forest to preserve it? Or reforesting a deforested area? |
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Jun 2019
10:25pm, 22 Jun 2019
40,166 posts
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McGoohan
In fairness, he's not a *multi*-millionaire. His net worth is only about 1.5 million
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