After a couple of false starts over the past few years, at the start of the year I decided to take my time with this 625-page novel.

I can see why it won the Pulitzer Prize; it's science journalism wrapped in, at times, beautiful prose. The stories that make up the 'overstory' start off as tiny vignettes, as leaves that develop into branches, before the main trunk of the storey becomes more visible towards the end.

That being said, I didn't love this book. I found the stories too fragmented to cohere into a meaningful whole. Also, the message I took away from it was that we're doomed as a species but Nature will be OK when we're gone. That may be true, but it comes across as a little... defeatist.