Reader’s Note
The roots hold. The trunk does not.
by@ivor_stackWritten 2 September 2025Read 1 September 2025
The book is arranged as a tree and announces as much: roots, trunk, crown, seeds. I was well disposed to that, since I spend my life thinking about how things are put together, and it is a decision with real consequences rather than a decoration on the contents page.
The roots section is superb. Eight separate stories, each running perhaps twenty pages, each complete in itself, and the chestnut sequence in particular — one family, one camera, one tree, the same spot every year for a hundred years — is the best writing in the volume and possibly the best I read that year.
Then they are brought together and the structure loses its way. In a real trunk every strand carries load. Here two or three of the strands do the work and the others are simply present, and by the crown I had stopped being able to tell some of the activists apart. That is a failure of the arrangement and not of the ambition.
Seven, and the seven is entirely the roots. It did send me off to read Sheldrake on fungi afterwards, which I wouldn't otherwise have done, so the book has cost me money as well as time.
About this book
The OverstoryRichard PowersIn the Margins
The Overstory reviewed by @dnf_diaries
Finished, and I don't finish much. The opening section is eight short stories and it's the best thing I read all last year; the novel that grows out of it is baggier and I forgave it. Eight.8 out of 10@dnf_diaries
The Overstory reviewed by @saltmarsh
The trees are better than the people in it. He knows it, I think. The chestnut at the beginning is worth all the rest.8 out of 10@saltmarsh
The Overstory reviewed by @dr_bramble
Castanea dentata gets the opening it deserves. I cried at a tree, at work, in front of a student.9 out of 10@dr_bramble
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