So many passages just shook themselves into my mind like leaves on a windy day. How crown-shy leaves leave a gap between themselves and their neighbors. How an oak may have five hundred million root tips that turn away from competition. How a root finds water, even water in a sealed pipe. They read about how a branch knows when to branch. Some part of the elongated boy in the futuristic wheelchair still wants to give the game away for free. The tractors grow too monstrous, the railroad cars full of nitrogen fertilizer too expensive, the competition too large and efficient, the margins too marginal, and the soil too worn by repeated row-cropping to make a profit. What a brilliant imaginative leap, immediately engaging! Then the prose kicked in and swept me along through the novel’s 500-odd pages so I couldn't stop.Įxtinction sneaks up on the Hoel farm–on all the family farms in western Iowa. Powers examines the tragic paradoxes of life in our world, in our time, by taking the long, long view that a tree takes. Because the very pages we use to mourn them are made from their bodies. Trees speak in this novel, which seems fitting, since in the real world we refuse to give them voices. Her ears tune down to the lowest frequencies, and she can hear the pine tree speaking to her. Why begin a new year with thoughts of the end of the world as we know it? Because human voices have spoken enough untruths, it seems right to hand at least some of our narrative over to those we have always assumed to be silent. The Overstory: Part 1: Roots Summary & Analysis Next Part 1: RootsNicholas Hoel Themes and Colors Key Summary Analysis In a city park, an unnamed woman sits leaning against a pine tree.
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