There was something about many of these characters that did not compel me as their initial introductions led me to feel they might, but they were never the point of this story. They act only as vessels for the wider and more pressing story of trees. The way Powers writes of nature is beautiful and deeply moving, and I have never read fiction that has made me more devastated for our treatment of the planet than this. It felt almost like a shock, to read such whole and devastated prose in awe and defence of the miraculous truth of the forests, and for that I am very grateful.

By midnight, most of the globe is converted to grow crops for the care and feeding of one species. And that’s when the tree of life becomes something else again. That’s when it’s great trunk starts to teeter.