Richard Powers, THE OVERSTORY

This Pulitzer-prize winning novel is part epic and part fable, though it begins with what I'd characterize as a series of short stories about different families in which a tree has some significance. It's about trees, yes; but it's also about how humans have mistakenly come to see ourselves as the central figures in our narrative. Trees have lives and ways of communicating among each other that we are only beginning to understand ... because we're not looking and listening properly. So much has already been written about this book that I'm not going to try to explain it. But it's a bighearted, ambitious book, very well-written, and it shifted the way I look at the world. I'd recommend to anyone.