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Literature for the Twitter generation

Robert Macfarlane is a magician with words. In Underland he shows us how to see in the dark. His writing is like a vortex... Once caught, you're pulled deeper and deeper with each page

Devastating, lyrical, blazingly vivid... An examination of the darknesses invisible beneath our feet. The book's great power comes from Macfarlane's deliberate turn away from despair and toward a deliberate, loving, and luminous sense of awe

Robert Macfarlane's writing reminds us of the astonishing variety of things you can see when you go at walking speed, and of how strange and rich the world is

The great nature writer, and nature poet, of this generation

Exquisite. [Robert Macfarlane] evokes so vividly places to which I and probably you will never go, and at the eeriness of the places themselves and the sense of vast scale they restore to us at a time when it can feel like the world has shrunken around us

An epic descent into a series of underground and underwater landscapes

Beautifully written and wise, this haunting book is a treasure... It reads like a seamless dive, crawl, and trek through deep time, in sense-rich landscapes, accompanied by fascinating views of the human saga. Its unique spell is irresistible

Beautifully and bravely balanced... This is a radical book in every sense. It goes as deep as it can, unafraid of the risk that what it finds will turn everything on its head

Thrilling and soulful, raw and erudite. Robert Macfarlane writes of his astonishing subterranean explorations with wondrous, indelible power... Underland is a profound reckoning with humankind's self-imperiled position in nature's eternal order. It is a book of revelations

Robert Macfarlane has long provided us with some of the most distinctive and sensitive thinking about how humans understand and experience the terrestrial world. Underland [is] his most urgent, universal, and expansive book yet

What a total delight. Once again, so many enlivening encounters along paths less frequently trod. Macfarlane remains our perfect guide, reminding us there's so much in the world to wonder at

Eye-opening, lyrical and moving...capturing the poetry beneath the science.

Underland is a startling and memorable book, charting invisible and vanishing worlds. Macfarlane has made himself Orpheus, the poet who ventures down to the darkest depths and returns - frighteningly alone-to sing of what he has seen

You'd be crazy not to read this book

Marvellous... Neverending curiosity, generosity of spirit, erudition, bravery and clarity... This is a book well worth reading

Extraordinary... at once learned and readable, thrilling and beautifully written

Must read

Medical science books are rarely as gripping as Unnatural Causes. It's grimly fascinating, and I suspect I'll read it at least twice.

[A] rich literary canopy … Powers, one of a remarkable generation of polymathic American novelists including William T. Vollmann and the late David Foster Wallace, has produced a brilliant encyclopaedic [novel] … A rich entanglement of discourses, disciplines, data, characters and styles, mirroring the most biodiverse ecosystem.

In his extraordinary 12th novel, Powers follows nine characters whose lives are bound up with the beauty, history, science, mythos and heedless destruction of trees … Passionately ecological in its themes, the novel doesn’t hammer at them. The green message becomes a natural element borne eloquently through the narrative.

This eco-epic has affected me as no novel has for many years … The book brings to life the greatest problems of our time – climate change and biodiversity collapse – and gets under the skin in a way that just reading about the science doesn’t always manage … The structure of the book, meshing and connecting and interweaving, is explicitly and implicitly about ecology. But as rich and compelling as the human lives are, the trees are the stars. Powers conveys wonder about the natural world and an extraordinary depth of ecological insight: it’s this which makes the novel so powerful … The Overstory has already been compared to Moby Dick. It is to trees what Herman Melville’s epic is to whales in that it changes our understanding of our relationship to a natural resource … The Overstory is a profound work … This is the first time I’ve read a novel that manages to celebrate and warn about the natural world in such a compelling and affecting way. It’s changed the way I look at trees, and I loved trees to begin with. We are being engulfed by an ecological crisis of our own making, which gives this book an urgency you should not resist.

A story about trees, nature and people, and the complicated relationships that hold the world together. Layered and intricate, it’s a wonderful epic … It’s a beautiful, brilliant and involving book, with a vital message at its heart.

Operatic … a novel devoted to “reviving that dead metaphor at the heart of the word bewilderment”.

It can change the way you think about trees slightly, and it certainly did for me.

The Overstory is a visionary, accessible legend for the planet that owns us, its exaltation and its peril, a remarkable achievement by a great writer.

This book is beyond special. Richard Powers manages to turn trees into vivid and engaging characters, something that indigenous people have done for eons but that modern literature has rarely if ever even attempted. It’s not just a completely absorbing, even overwhelming book; it’s a kind of breakthrough in the ways we think about and understand the world around us, at a moment when that is desperately needed.

A magnificent saga of lives aligned with the marvels of trees, the intricacy and bounty of forests, and their catastrophic destruction under the onslaught of humanity’s ever-increasing population … A virtuoso at parallel narratives ... gripping… Powers’ sylvan tour de force is alive with gorgeous descriptions; continually surprising, often heartbreaking characters; complex suspense; unflinching scrutiny of pain; celebration of creativity and connection; and informed and expressive awe over the planet’s life force and its countless and miraculous manifestations … [A] profound and symphonic novel.

Here is a big, brave, ambitious novel… The writing is breathtaking, the message is devastating. This book will fill you with wonder.

Formidably forks through time and place as it considers how best to care for our world.

An astonishingly rich book. Rich in ideas and imagination. Rich in drama, wisdom and truly illuminating facts about trees.

There is a lot to learn from this novel.

Moby Dick for trees.

Alert to the large ideas and generous to the small ones; in an age of cramped autofictions and self-scrutinising miniatures, it blossoms.

Brilliant at the futility of human action.

A masterpiece of operatic proportions … What Powers means to explore is a sense of how we become who we are, individually and collectively, and our responsibility to the planet and to ourselves … A magnificent achievement: a novel that is, by turns, both optimistic and fatalistic, idealistic without being naïve.

His masterpiece.

You will careen through this book. The prose is driven. You don’t really get to draw breath … The writing is steel-edged, laser-sharp when Richard Powers wants it to be. When he sets out to nail meaning, it’s done. There are sentences you return to and wonder at.

This walk through the woods via words is a passionate paean to the natural world that prompts us to appreciate afresh our place on the planet.

[I]t’s huge, it’s exciting, it’s wondrous … This really deserves to be read.

The Overstory is a book you learn from.

Dazzlingly written… Among the best novels I’ve read this decade… Despite its deep-time perspective, it could hardly be more of-the-moment

A beautiful novel about humans reconnecting with nature in a fascinatingly, inventive world with colourful, rich characters, it will rekindle your love for nature

An intriguing, powerful book

Absolutely blown away by this epic, heartbreaking novel about us and trees

This extraordinary novel transformed my view of nature. Never again will I pass great tree without offering a quiet but heartfelt incantation of thanks, gratitude and wonder

A sweeping novel that skilfully intertwines many different stories of trees and people to create a paean to the hidden power and vital importance of the natural world

Absorbing, thought-provoking and more than enough incentive to embrace your inner tree-hugger

The Overstory is filled with character and incident enough to engage anybody, but it's also filled with philosophy, science, poetry, and colour. It's a celebration of the world and humanity, but also tells of our coming doom. Perhaps above all it's a eulogy to trees. Eulogy is the right word because the novel celebrates the life, the beauty and wisdom of trees-but also their death. The novel also casts a cold-but loving-eye on humanity

The Overstory has the mix of science and fiction that I so love; it widens my understanding and respect for the creatures who share this planet

Stunning... It's been one of those rare books that has had a profound effect on me, and which has changed my perspective on life

Mind-boggling and visionary. The multi-stranded novel is a masterpiece in which science and poetry are deeply intertwined

A compelling read is that is near impossible to put down

The Overstory is a prescient novel that urges us to take responsibility for our actions

A masterpiece of storytelling at its very best. Powers weaves together science, poetry, nature and humanity so beautifully that it makes my heart ache and my mind fly

A wild and expansive novel, knitting together a glorious and diverse cast of characters, some of them human, some of them trees. I defy you not to be moved, and then angered about what we are doing to our planet and these glorious sentinels rooted upon it

My novel of the year was Richard Powers' masterpiece, The Overstory... it's a magnificent read

The Overstory by Richard Powers is likely the most beautiful book ever written about people and trees