Hey everyone, welcome to a vlog with the difference I'm sat here in St James's Sq
in central London which is just a stone's throw away from the Waterstones shop
on Piccadilly and the reason why I'm here is because it felt entirely
appropriate to be sat under this rather lovely tree to talk to you about this
book which is The Overstory by Richard Powers. Now eagle-eyed viewers, regular
viewers, may remember that I mentioned this book at the very beginning of the
year as one of the books that I was looking forward to reading this year and
that's because I've read quite a few books by Richard Powers over the years.
I started with a book called The Goldbug Variations which is about two scientists
who are looking to uncover the structure of DNA but it's also of course
about the structure of Bach's Goldberg Variations and it's also two love
stories so again we have this sort of structure of DNA of course as a double
helix. And so this gives you a little clue about Richard Powers; he likes to
tell human stories, put in a fair amount of science or something interesting like
that and then often the structure of the book itself will be influenced by what
is actually inside the book, what the book is about. And The Overstory
is no exception; as you can see from the cover here this is a book about trees.
This is why I'm sat here in the park feeling really conspicuous. And the
beginning of the book is called Roots and what we have here is a brilliant way
of introducing characters in a story where their lives are going to intersect
each of them is given their own chapter, it's a bit like reading a short story
about each of the characters. So we have eight short story chapters there at the
beginning, that is the root section, and then we get Trunk and we see how those
lives will start to come together and then we have the canopy opening out
later on in the book, we see how that narrative really unfolds and then right
at the end there's a little section called Seeds. And this is, as I say,
a brilliant device by Powers not only to allow the structure of the real subject
of the book, which is trees, to determine the structure of the book itself but
it's a very satisfying way of actually dealing with that narrative. You feel
like you really know those characters at the beginning and we'll be introduced to
some very diverse people; we have a scientist whose life work is to show how
trees actually communicate with each other and work together as a community
to help themselves deal with various threats to their survival, which is a
very recent discovery by science and completely fascinating; we have a
Vietnam vet who pretty much owes his life to a tree after falling into it; we
have a boy whose life has changed forever after falling out of a tree; we
have a woman who accidentally electrocutes herself and manages to
survive but when she comes to she hears voices which tell her to kind of follow
a path towards these trees and that takes it into a life of eco activism; so
we meet a whole group of people who are involved in that; we have a married
couple who have this thing of planting trees together and it's really a
portrait of their marriage; and very slowly we will see how these lives begin
to intersect and influence a narrative where they work together. And as you can
tell I loved it. There is so much to talk about with this book that I cannot
possibly cover in this vlog. I will say that Richard Powers is hopefully coming
across to the UK later in the year and I'm working very hard to see whether I can
get a chance to speak to him about this book; he will explain it far better than
me. There is plenty of science in there but there is also fascinating human
stories and the thing I think that is really clever is that the story that's
really been told is not the human stories it is the story of trees. That is
the main character of this book and there is something about that shift in
perspective which is actually what trees are all about. To explain: I recently had
the great fortune to speak to the physicist Carlo Rovelli and I mentioned
to him this book after we had our interview and he told me that he
sometimes gets very nervous before delivering a big lecture or a talk and
in that circumstance what he will do is he will take himself outside to a very
old tree which is near him and he will take the time to talk to the tree - he's a
fascinating guy Carlo Rovelli if you haven't seen the interview a link will have
appeared hopefully up here and you can go watch it. He's amazing. And there was
something about the perspective of talking to something which was here long
before you were here and will be here long after you have gone that kind
of time perspective has a very calming effect in his case
I think the big thing with this book is to show that the main character is not
so much humans and showing how humans affect trees, it's really showing how
trees affect humans and how important they are not just to our ecosystem but
to our understanding of how nature works and how important it is for us to
keep it alive. So as you can see there is plenty to talk about with this book, lots
to unpacked, primarily it's a great read. It's quite a big book but I did not feel
that it dragged at all, it doesn't feel heavy. It's sort of, as I said, a great
beginning where you feel like you really know the characters and then you've got
this lovely intertwining of narratives as you go along and then you feel that as
the canopy begins to expand, it's a great rush of that sort of narrative
release when you see how intricately he has worked out his structure and the
patterns within it. You can always rely on Richard Powers to do that and in fact
if I haven't mentioned it already there is a little quote on the front of the
book from Margaret Atwood who says 'It's not possible for Powers to write an
uninteresting book.' It really isn't and I would recommend looking at his back
catalogue if you haven't already. There are some absolutely brilliant books in
there; music and science tend to combine quite often: The Time of our Singing
and Orfeo are two other novels of his which are both sort of big, grand, epic
and fantastic. So there we go, before I get taken away by park police or stared
at too much more I will bid you adieu. Thank you so much for joining me this
week, I'll be back in a few weeks time to tell you about another book but until then, take care.