Upon finishing The Overstory, I needed someone to discuss it with immediately. In the opening section, “Roots,” which is the book’s strongest section and would stand alone as a spectacular short story collection, we are introduced to a suite of characters (and their ancestors) whose lives are then pulled together in the later sections. The structure is being lauded as untraditional, but I didn’t find it so. The content, however, is truly different from anything I’ve read. It would be impossible for The Overstory to fully live up to the hype it’s received, but it comes quite close.