This mind-bending book will change how you see the world (Five stars)

Shape is a triumph of mathematical exposition, exposing profound truths - from the nature of distance to the predictability of randomness - as well as profound mistakes - from historical misattributions to Supreme Court justice hardheadedness - with eloquence and hilarious wit. Ellenberg's evident affection for both his subject and his reader makes us feel like the lucky ones who get to hear him hold forth in an intimate setting about his favorite subject, mathematics

Ellenberg's skill as a storyteller, combined with a natural ability to spot otherwise obscure connections, enables him to capitalize on geometry as math's gateway drug... A deeply enjoyable and insightful book

Ellenberg, in both his arguments and his enthusiasm, is persuasive

Serious mathematics at its intriguing, transporting best . . . [A] humorous, anecdotally rich dive into numerous mathematical theories

Unreasonably entertaining... reveals how geometric thinking can allow for everything from fairer American elections to better pandemic planning

Droopy cheese and the curve of the Earth, the everyday and the cosmic, are beautifully interwoven in the mathematician Jordan Ellenberg's new book Shape

Almost anyone is likely to enjoy Ellenberg's prose, and mind

One of the most fascinating books I have read in a long time. Engrossing, a haunting page-turner. A book I could not put down

Heart-wrenchingly honest

Gripping, grimly fascinating, and I suspect I'll read it at least twice

A deeply mesmerising memoir of forensic pathology. Human and fascinating

An absolutely brilliant book. I really recommend it, I don't often say that but it's fascinating

Puts the reader at his elbow as he wields the scalpel

Fascinating, insightful, candid, compassionate

I have thought about The Overstory ever since reading it last year… For me, what was so radical and exciting about this novel was the fact that the trees are probably more important than the human beings who trundle around them causing chaos. It was the first “eco-lit” novel I’ve read that made me stop and truly realise how sophisticated trees are, how magisterially brilliant. And, in a world where finally, collectively, we are acknowledging the threat of climate crisis, it reminded me of how important they are to the planet’s survival

No less a writer than Margaret Atwood has said of Richard Powers that “it’s not possible for him to write an uninteresting book”. On the evidence of The Overstory, he is continuing a remarkable run … This is a mighty, at times even monolithic, work that combines the multi-narrative approach of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas with a paean to the grandeur and wonder of trees that elegantly sidesteps pretension and overambition. Early comparisons to Moby-Dick are unfairly lofty, but this fine book can stand on its own … Written with a freshness that belies the well-worn subject matter … As befits a book that spans centuries, there is a richness and allusiveness to the prose that reaches back as far as Thoreau’s Walden, and Emerson is an acknowledged touchstone. The Overstory is high-minded but never precious … [A] majestic redwood of a novel … It is fitting that it ends with a message of hope. As with Larkin, a belief that humanity is capable of redeeming itself and beginning “afresh, afresh, afresh”.

His monumental novel The Overstory accomplishes what few living writers from either camp, art or science, could attempt … The Overstory is a delightfully choreographed, ultimately breathtaking hoodwink … The opener is a gorgeous family saga with the texture of a Ken Burns documentary … we’re in the hands of Richard Powers, winner of a genius grant, a storyteller of such grand scope that Margaret Atwood was moved to ask: “If Powers were an American writer of the 19th century, which writer would he be? He’d probably be the Herman Melville of Moby Dick.” His picture really is that big … Trees will bring these small lives together into large acts of war, love, loyalty and betrayal … The descriptions of this deeply animate place, including a thunderstorm as experienced from 300 feet up, stand with any prose I’ve ever read … The science in this novel ranges from fun fact to mind-blowing, brought to us by characters … who are sweet or funny or maddening in all the relatable ways … This is a gigantic fable of genuine truths held together by a connective tissue of tender exchange between fictional friend, lovers, parents and children.

The Great American Novel has been written many times. From Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851) to Don DeLillo’s Underworld (1997), American authors have produced works of sweeping grandeur that attempt to capture a people at a point in history. Yet these national epics have — you might conclude after reading The Overstory — failed to see the wood for the trees. … Richard Powers’ 12th novel is a rare specimen: a Great American Eco-Novel … Yet the literary greats that really inform Powers’ thinking and writing are the Transcendentalists Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman, as well as the metaphysical poets … But the great literary tap root that grounds his sprawling novel is Ovid’s The Metamorphoses … The great fork that took us away from our natural environment and other living things, that led us to a place where we have unthinkingly destroyed forest after forest and species after species must be challenged, argues Powers, and challenged through stories. “The best arguments in the world won’t change a person’s mind,” he writes. “The only thing that can do that is a good story.” This is a good story. It will change the way you look at trees.

Renews romanticism for the contemporary age; making space for the sentimental to breathe freely again, and challenging us not to be afraid to care … Powers’s mission is urgent: not only are we living through an age where science is rewriting what comprises consciousness, but we are simultaneously exploiting non-human life to an unprecedented extent … Powers’s place as one of the few established writers longlisted for this year’s Man Booker Prize is well deserved. ... And if Powers himself was a tree, it would surely be a mature oak, for The Overstory displays the kind of abundant creativity that restores faith in human endeavour.

[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

It is the imaginary world of a game, a world Zevin describes with the addict's ardour, which forms a universe even the sturdiest parent or antediluvian book-lover will be enticed into.

Friendship, love, loyalty, violence in America and the magic of invented worlds. Gorgeous

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a special book -- one that transports readers fully, as games do their players, into its immaculately crafted world

Woven throughout are meditations on originality, appropriation, the similarities between video games and other forms of art, the liberating possibilities of inhabiting a virtual world, and the ways in which platonic love can be deeper and more rewarding - especially in the context of a creative partnership - than romance.

Zevin probes at many of the themes that energize video games as a medium: their narrative depth, their therapeutic value, their casual violence, their toxic industry. And the possibility of living a better life in a virtual world

Zevin has the ability to make you care about her creations within paragraphs of meeting them... whose fates I consistently worried about when I occasionally had to put the book aside.

[An] engrossing, delightful novel... Zevin has the ability to make you care about her creations within paragraphs of meeting them... [Tomorrow] is rich with characters whose intertwined fates power the narrative

This book, with its respect for craft-the craft of love and games, or loving games-will remind you of how abundant one life is, how lucky we are to keep each other in our memories forever.

[I] raced through this pure wonder of a book in a few days

A 2022 book that everyone should read

A must-read

Anyone who reads Tomorrow And Tomorrow And Tomorrow can't stop talking about it

Utterly beautiful and endlessly hopeful, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a love letter to life, friendship, and creativity

[The] 2022 book that everyone should read

My #1 book to recommend . . . incredible, like The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon meets The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer. It's about love and friendship and video games

It feels right that the best video game novel out there is by a woman. Her story about the decades-long friendship and partnership between video game designers Sam and Sadie gets at so much about work, love and storytelling. It's a book that spawns great conversations.

In following Sam and Sadie's journey from Massachusetts to California and into the imagined worlds of their games, Zevin writes the most precious kind of love story

Zevin's writing is poetic, the plot is entertaining, moving and gripping and the nods to real life video games make it all feel incredibly real

Reading this is almost like an invitation from Zevin to enter a game...with every scene and moment so carefully constructed. Just brilliant

I loved it

A hugely enjoyable novel about lives and loves mediated by technology

This playful, accomplished novel is a poignant celebration of friendship, love - and gaming

An engrossing coming-of-age story

Epic in scale, with unforgettable characters, it breaks you heart and puts it back together