Bewilderment: A Novel

It made me think deeply. I have read it twice already, and am sure i'll go back to it several times in the future. So many ideas to reevaluate, and the writing is so beautiful. We need more from Richard Powers.

Having lived in Madison and been an environmentalist all of my life o felt this book was written for me. I am enjoying it despite the grim reality it so skillfully describes. Rarely depicted characters wrestling with bleak topics most of us avoid or minimize.

It's beyond dispute that Richard Powers is an extraordinary writer. He describes the natural world so beautifully that I long to visit the places he describes and join his characters in a tent in the Smokey Mountains, and--as in The Overstory--he argues compellingly that our world is in danger and needs immediate intervention before we lose beauty and meaning we don't realize is around us. His depiction of a widower raising a young boy who's "on the spectrum" is similarly insightful and devastating. [Quick aside: I've read many reviewers who take issue with Theo's parenting decisions, particularly his reluctance to medicate his 8-year-old son. As a clinical psychologist who worked with children and families for years, I both empathize with and understand his struggles and decisions and don't fault him in the slightest] However, this is a book about devastating loss, both of the natural world and of loved ones. That sense of loss permeates every page, and the connection between the loss of a wife and the destruction of our planet is clear, particularly as expressed through Theo's son Robin. Through an intriguing process based on biofeedback, Robin is able to connect with his deceased mother and see the world through her eyes, giving the reader an alternative and more forgiving way to engage with those around us. When the funding for this research disappears--which is blamed on a President modeled explicitly on Trump--Robin experiences his own "Flowers for Algernon" moment, leading to a conclusion that should be heartbreaking but is instead simply too much. What a book so explicitly centered on loss needs is hope, usually through providing the reader insight into how one can continue to live--and perhaps even thrive--in unbearable circumstances. Powers doesn't provide this. Instead, he piles on the despair: unanswered questions about whether Theo's wife Alyssa was faithful to him and whether Robin is even his son on the personal side; a US President who succeeds in his January 6 coup and becomes essentially an authoritarian dictator, a police force and local-level bureaucrats who function as his secret police, and a complete dismantling of funding for the sciences on the political side (those of a certain political persuasion will HATE this book); and mad-cow disease transferring to humans, a disease spreading to wheat plants across the world, toxins and wildfires running rampant throughout our environment, and more on the national side. All of this becomes unbearably painful in such a short book and there's not even a lack of resolution, but a lack of belief that healing is possible. The book is interspersed with scenes of Theo and Robin visiting different planets, and contemplating how changes in orbits, proximity to other bodies, size, atmosphere, and so on would impact life on those planets is intriguing. My impression is Pow...

Just read this book. It goes places that most likely exist somewhere and that we’ll never see. It examines relationships, meaning, and challenges one lives, and to reflect on the natures and nurtures that bring them forward in our own place and time. So thoughtful on so many levels.

I don’t usually read science fiction, but I’m grateful this book called to me. The writing is beautiful and the concepts enchanting. I’m actually a bit stunned after finishing and the story will stay with me for some time haunting my thoughts. Just wonderful!