#Adam Appich

[cherylatownsend]

The Overstory by Richard Powers

One of the few surviving Chestnut trees is the center of a 125 year tale of multigenerational farmers, dwindling down to just a homestead, and this tree that anchors them since its planting. Immortalized in monthly photos, tasked from each father to son, it stands testament to survival, documented in its regal simplicity. Stoic when all else fade to memories.

The following tale is of a Chinese student of engineering who comes to America as his father’s last hope, as Mao takes their livelihood (and lives) away. He settles, schools, marries, and begets 3 daughters. He refuses his native tongue (yet for all his years in America, still talks like a newly embarked?) ... primarily set around a mulberry tree, of deep family lore, it is also where it ends.

Adam Appich is a gifted child in a family of mostly irrelevance. His story is sad, for the blindness and disdain. One of 5, he creates his own solitude in nature, observing. Each child had a tree planted for their birth, pertinently assumedly. Was not quite sure if the ending was intended to be humorous or not, but I chose to take it that way.

Douglas Pavlicek proves himself in the service, fighting in Vietnam and gets shot down after the war ends, still attaining a Purple Heart and an Air Force Cross for his injuries. No longer usable, he afters at a horse ranch where he reads Nietzsche to the steeds and tries to talk up the lonely street traffic via purposeful pot holes at the property end.

Quitting that job, he drives westward, happening upon a hidden clearcut while relieving himself roadside. The vastness angers, saddens and awakens him. National forests. Gone. He wants to take action. He hires on to replant designated areas, knowing it’s but a temporary fix, but a fix just the same.

I think that, so far, was the saddest chapter for me.

In Neelay Mehta, it dawns on me the centered eclecticism of this book. To write one story is good, admirable. To write 12 different stories in one book is, well, amazing. They need not all the pages each, as the story told us enough. I am in awe of the diversity, yet connection via a trees insertion. One or a forest, starring or backstage. Just as we all have that rooted factor in our own life - a tree, somewhere, sometime, mattered. Bravo, Powers, bravo.

Patricia Westerford !!!!

As brilliant as brilliant can be. I am in total, blissful awe. I don’t want to read another word, maybe ever. Just live in this story forever.

And then the stories start to connect. Branches grown inward towards the trunk of the whole. I wish I had paid more attention earlier.

I’m too connected, concerned, overpowered by the eco ramifications... it’s too real life (RL) given today’s atmosphere of disregard and gluttony. This book is breaking my heart.

I do not recommend this book for eco-empaths, but for general readership, it’s an in-depth read, fully charged and well executed. Powers delivers a diverse cast of characters that are all united in nature love. I wish I could say the same for all humanity.

[myrnaminkov]

Adam Appich

The Grahams laugh as the boy speeds off. From the landing, halfway up the stairs, Adam hears his mother whisper, “He’s a little socially retarded. The school nurse says to keep an eye.”

The word, he thinks, mean special, possibly superpowered. Something other people must be careful around. Safe in the boys’ room at the top of the house, he asks Emmett, who’s eight - almost grown - “What’s retarded?”

“It means you’re a retard.”

“What’s that?”

“Not regular people.”

And that’s okay, to Adam. There’s something wrong with regular people. They’re far from being the best creatures in the world. 

Richard Powers. The Overstory. W.W. Norton and Co, 2018

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