The Overstory by Richard Powers is our reading group book for December

The Overstory by Richard Powers has come out of the hat and will be the subject of our reading group discussion for the rest of December.

This is the 12th novel by the acclaimed author – and in common with several of his other works, The Overstory investigates moral and scientific issues, this time relating to the destruction of forests and the most pressing question of our time, as one character frames it: “What the Fuck Went Wrong with Mankind.”

Powers says the book was inspired by seeing Californian Redwoods. “When they’re as wide as a house and as tall as a football pitch you don’t have to be particularly sensitive to be wowed by it,” he told Emma John in a recent interview. “But once I started looking, I realised it’s not about the size and scale … it’s that I’ve been blind to these amazing creatures all the time.”

In spite of this wow factor, the project also encountered some scepticism, he explained. “For five years I’ve been telling people I’m writing a novel about trees, and they’ve said: ‘Really?’”

Any such doubts have been safely put to bed. When it came out this year, The Overstory received ecstatic reviews: “monumental” (New York Times), “profound and urgent” (New Scientist) and “a rousing, full-throated hymn to Nature’s grandeur” (San Francisco Chronicle). It was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize. And in the past few weeks, it has also been picked as book of the year in the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune – and here in the Guardian.

Plenty of people admire this book, in other words. Although there are things to bear in mind while reading. In his review for the Guardian, Benjamin Markovits praised the book as “an astonishing performance” but also said:

It’s an extraordinary novel, which doesn’t mean that I always liked it. Martin Amis’s brilliant description of what it’s like to admire a book – the stages you go through, from resistance to reluctance, until you finally reach acceptance in the end – is probably more linear than what usually happens. Because reluctance and acceptance can go hand in hand.

A hike through tangled woods rather than a walk in the park, by the sound of things. It’s also worth noting that the book is quite long – but since it’s December, and the slow month, we can take it in instalments. Also, if there’s one thing that we’ve established in 2018, readers can relish and enjoy so-called “challenging” books. I was particularly impressed by the original nomination for the book on last week’s blogpost from Rick2016, who promised: “The Overstory will change the way that you see the world … I can’t think of a higher recommendation for a book than that.”

Sounds like just the kind of thing we should be reading to round off this crazy year.

By way of encouragement, and thanks to Cornerstone, we have five copies of The Overstory to give to the first five people from the UK to post “I want a copy please”, along with a nice, constructive comment in the comments section below. If you’re lucky enough to be one of the first to comment, email the lovely folk on culture.admin@theguardian.com, with your address and your account username – we can’t track you down ourselves. Be nice to them, too.