Bewilderment
A novel
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4.1 • 61 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
OPRAH BOOK CLUB PICK 2021
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2021 BOOKER PRIZE
A heartrending new novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning and #1 New York Times and internationally bestselling author of The Overstory.
Named one of the Most Anticipated Books of 2021 by New York, Chicago Tribune, BookPage, Literary Hub, The Millions, New Statesmen and Times of London
The astrobiologist Theo Byrne searches for life throughout the cosmos while singlehandedly raising his unusual nine-year-old son, Robin, following the death of his wife. Robin is funny, loving, and filled with plans. He thinks and feels deeply, and can spend hours painting elaborate pictures of the endangered animals he loves. He is also about to be expelled from third grade for smashing his friend in the face.
What can a father do, when the only solution offered to his troubled son is to put him on psychoactive drugs? What can he say when his boy comes to him wanting an explanation for a world that is clearly in love with its own destruction?
With its soaring descriptions of the natural world, its tantalizing visions 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, imperilled planet?
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Powers gives us a gorgeous novel centered on the relationship between a father and son and universal themes of love and grief. After his wife dies, Theo—an astrobiologist and newly single father—sets off on an incredible journey, navigating uncharted territory with his sensitive, apprehensive son, Robin. Theo draws on their shared passion for the cosmos to come up with dazzling bedtime stories full of descriptions of dreamed-up landscapes. Meanwhile, the grieving Robin becomes increasingly disturbed and violent, and experimental neurofeedback therapy may be his only hope. Powers takes us on an unforgettable journey, offering wise insights into the surfaces of fascinating new planets and the beautiful, complex topography of family relationships. Bewilderment is a deeply intimate tale that pierces the heart and ignites the imagination.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Pulitzer winner Powers (The Overstory) offers up a marvelous story of experimental neurotherapy and speculations about alien life. Astrophysicist Theo Byrne simulates worlds outside Earth's solar system as part of lobbying efforts for a new spaceborne telescope. As a single parent in Madison, Wis., his work takes a back seat—his wife, Aly, mother of their nine-year-old, Robin, died two years earlier. Theo shares his fictional descriptions of life on exoplanets with Robin in the form of bedtime stories, and they bond over a Trumpian administration's hostility to scientific research. Theo allows Robin to protest neglect of endangered species at the state capitol, despite Robin's volatile behavior. He's been diagnosed with Asperger's, OCD, and ADHD, and Theo refuses to give him psychoactive medication ("Life is something we need to stop correcting," goes Theo's new "crackpot theory"). More cutting-edge is the neurofeedback program run by an old friend of Aly's, who trains Robin to model his emotions from a record saved of Aly's brain activity. It works, for a while—the tragic, bittersweet plot has some parallels to Flowers to Algernon. The planetary descriptions grow a bit repetitive and don't gain narrative traction, but in the end, Powers transforms the wrenching story into something sublime. Though it's not his masterpiece, it shows the work of a master.
Customer Reviews
Stir it up!
interesting and a bit scary in that it’s close to todays’ reality!
Bewilderment
This is one of the most moving books I have ever read. It has captured all of my concerns about how the earth is dying around us and we don’t see that every living thing has a part to play in our wonderful life on earth . Oh how I wish that all human beings could be like Robbie and Aly.
I fear it’s too late. There are just too few people who can embrace the wonder of our world to save it. I hope I’m wrong.
How much longer can we trash and burn our planet, abuse millions of sentient being for our own use and destroy ecosystems that have taken eons to develop?
Perhaps we could all have access to the technology that Robbie and his Dad were able to use and by osmosis develop the empathy that Aly possessed. Perhaps as our understanding of how we fit in the vastness of the cosmos grows and as we encounter other life forms on other planets that differ from our own we will appreciate our incredible luck at being here.
This book gives us some hope.