kfitz reviewed Bewilderment by Richard Powers
A beautiful gut punch
4 stars
I adore Richard Powers. This isn't one of my top three but it's nevertheless wonderful, and heartbreaking.
Hardcover, 304 pages
Published Sept. 21, 2021 by W. W. Norton & Company.
The astrobiologist Theo Byrne searches for life throughout the cosmos while single-handedly raising his unusual nine-year-old, Robin, following the death of his wife. Robin is a warm, kind boy who spends hours painting elaborate pictures of endangered animals. He’s also about to be expelled from third grade for smashing his friend in the face. As his son grows more troubled, Theo hopes to keep him off psychoactive drugs. He learns of an experimental neurofeedback treatment to bolster Robin’s emotional control, one that involves training the boy on the recorded patterns of his mother’s brain…
With its soaring descriptions of the natural world, its tantalizing vision of life beyond, and its account of a father and son’s ferocious love, Bewilderment marks Richard Powers’s most intimate and moving novel. At its heart lies the question: How can we tell our children the truth about this beautiful, imperiled planet?
I adore Richard Powers. This isn't one of my top three but it's nevertheless wonderful, and heartbreaking.
It explores everything in one book — space, existentialism, disability, environmentalism, and politics. It's the first time that my fixation on the Fermi paradox became useful to me, as the book referenced it a few times in its questioning of humanity's loneliness. This was a brilliant read, with references to past works and current events. I could not put down the first half of the book. However, exaggerations on the incompetence of the government (with ~everyone~ in authority seemingly against science, and the president having full-control on all three branches of the gov) chipped away at realism rather than contributed to it. The broadness of the book's themes is its strength as well as its weakness, as the development of its political aspect paled in comparison to the exploration of Robin's differences through his relationships with people.
Edit (26 May 2022): I just learned that neurofeedback therapy is not only real, but FDA-approved. Here I was, naively thinking that this book was near-future science fiction. But no, it is pretty much now.
‘Every one of us is an experiment, and we don’t even know what the experiment is testing.’
This was my first experience reading Richard Powers, and it was unfortunately somewhat underwhelming. The epigraph had a line from Lucretius which got me very excited, because who doesn’t love De rerum natura? But… this book is nowhere near that level; in fact, go read Lucretius instead, you’ll be better off for it. Sure, there are some clever turns of phrase, but the prose is filled with them to the point that they seem mundane, not revelatory. The characters are somewhat stocky; once you meet them, it’s not hard to understand their personalities, and they don’t experience …
Edit (26 May 2022): I just learned that neurofeedback therapy is not only real, but FDA-approved. Here I was, naively thinking that this book was near-future science fiction. But no, it is pretty much now.
‘Every one of us is an experiment, and we don’t even know what the experiment is testing.’
Nope. Nope. Nope. Just, uh uh, no way. No can do.
The only reason I am giving this 2 stars and not 1 is because the book, in spite of itself, did give the reader some things to ponder. About the natural world and humans place in it. About the way we alter it even as we revere it. About who we are, nature vs nurture, the way we alter our "real" selves through drugs, therapy, etc... Does it make us "better" even though we are not truly "ourselves" any longer? Stuff like that is worth examining.
But the rest was schlock. Pure cornball. And the ending. Just nope, nope, nope.
Read it if you are a corny, sentimental type. I, myself have had a life-long adversion to corny and the obvious. I am a life-long contrarian and refuse to be lead. Oh you might get me to follow along …
Nope. Nope. Nope. Just, uh uh, no way. No can do.
The only reason I am giving this 2 stars and not 1 is because the book, in spite of itself, did give the reader some things to ponder. About the natural world and humans place in it. About the way we alter it even as we revere it. About who we are, nature vs nurture, the way we alter our "real" selves through drugs, therapy, etc... Does it make us "better" even though we are not truly "ourselves" any longer? Stuff like that is worth examining.
But the rest was schlock. Pure cornball. And the ending. Just nope, nope, nope.
Read it if you are a corny, sentimental type. I, myself have had a life-long adversion to corny and the obvious. I am a life-long contrarian and refuse to be lead. Oh you might get me to follow along for a while but there comes a point when I balk. In this story that point was reached. You won't get the intended reaction from cold-hearted me-I guarantee.
An intimate parental dive into the wonder of the natural world and urge to activism in the face of our wide-eyed trance walk to species destruction. This felt narrower and less rounded than The Overstory, which may be fitting to cataclysm, and the traumas and some obvious referents may irk (mostly they didn't interfere here). The middle half's beauty justified it all for me.
A beautiful expression of the definitive feeling of our time for me.
An excellent, if tragic, novel of love, life, family and the 'planet'.