Have you ever had a book completely change your mind on an important issue? This Guardian article features several prominent thinkers who speak about the books that influenced their thinking enough to change their minds.
Here is one featured response: Jessie Burton, author of The Restless Girls published by Bloomsbury.
“I have thought about Richard Powers’s novel The Overstory ever since reading it last year. It is ambitious, meditative, fundamentally quite weird, and both sprawling and specific. Nine very contrasting characters come to inhabit a world of trees, as Powers examines our interdependence with these natural miracles, our need for them, and how their beauty and strength need to be protected at all costs. 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 acknoweldging the threat of climate crisis, it reminded me of how important they are to the planet’s survival.”
