Global ecological collapse is the biggest story of our age. Broken cycles of air, water and earth are challenges against which trade wars pale in comparison. But it has also proved one of the hardest narratives for writers to tell. Novels such as Cormac McCarthy’s The Road have offered powerful warnings about the aftermath of disaster, yet few writers have grappled with how the journey towards catastrophe unfurls. Any agency the natural world might possess – its ability to feel, communicate and adapt – has rarely provided more than background to humanity’s self-centred toil.
Thankfully, The Overstory, the latest book from the American novelist Richard Powers, a writer who puts science at the heart of his fiction, has taken that last assumption and shaken it by its roots. Tracing the lives of nine individuals as they attempt to save the virgin forests of North America, the novel ties together the struggles of humans and plants, and reveals a world “where the wrong people have all the rights”.
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