Bewilderment

Outer space and inner space are finely explored in this entrancing novel by Richard Powers. Theo, an astrobiologist, and his young son Robin are struggling to cope with both personal and universal challenges. Their current day world is gasping from environmental calamities and reeling under political upheaval. Theo questions his parenting of his uniquely sensitive, highly intelligent child, and Robin tries to make sense of a world that is hurtful and damaging. They envision life on other planets as an escape from their stresses and reflect on other worlds and life “out there”. Attempting to help Robin deal with outbursts and mental triggers, Theo enrolls him in an experimental therapy that yields astounding results for both father and child, changing their lives to the core. The deep bond between father and son resonates throughout the novel. Powers has created characters that are simultaneously unique and familiar, and his perceptive and fascinating writing makes this novel an enriching read the reader won’t soon forget.

In Bewilderment Richard Powers brings to life the pre-apocalyptic novel--a genre that has been written before but never with such depth and such insight.

For fans of Richard Powers, this is a curveball. His last book, the Pulitzer-winning The Overstory was epic in depth and in breadth, knitting together 8 character arcs to ingrain in readers' minds a view of the world as trees may experience it.

In his new book, Powers focuses on two characters, a father and a son, wrestling with the loss of a mother and wife. The father, an astro-biologist who searches for habitable planets, tries to help his son by describing the conditions on new worlds.

But death stalks the son, Robin. His mother has died; Mother Earth is dying (in this pre apocalypse). He cannot cope with the stress, the neighbors have noticed, and the Department of Children's Services may need to step in.

Science provides a new therapy, letting Robin interact with AI to get his thought processes under control--AI which had previously scanned his mother's brain and had scanned many of its patterns. The therapy proves successful, bringing celebrity and scrutiny.

As a pre-apocalyptic novel, Powers has set the novel in the near future. Climate disasters, a livestock pandemic. Politicians defunding and distrusting science. A president refusing to accept the results of an election. Many aren't headlines today, many are.

As I read the book and found myself drawn into the lives of the Byrnes (a climate pun?) family, another novel came to mind, a bedrock of post-apocalyptic fiction published 14 years ago. I'm writing about Cormac McCarthy's The Road. The world-building, the development of the relationship, the insight, and the tragedy--even the shorter length of Powers's novel paralleled the impact that The Road had on me.

Readers will read and enjoy Bewilderment for many years to come. Whether or not the pre-apocalyptic scenarios described in the book can be avoided by mankind on this planet.

Special thanks to NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy of this remarkable book.

Awe is the best word I can find to describe my reaction to Richard Powers' latest novel. I am in awe. Bewilderment explores the inner and outer worlds of a father and son who must deal with the heart-wrenching loss of their wife/mother as well as the son's behavioral control issues while seeing the planet and the universe of which it is a very small part unravel. Set in the near pre-apocalyptic future, Bewilderment takes the reader on an extraordinary journey, raising big issues such as the meaning of life - in all its forms and everywhere, what it means to try to control behavior through emerging techniques that infuse a person with the enthusiasm of someone no longer living and then what it means to take it away, the role of big science, the role and responsibility of governments to fund big science, and the deterioration of democracy as we have known it. Bewilderment will, in fact, not leave the reader bewildered but rather more prepared to examine and act upon these questions and others that it raises. If Bewilderment does not find a place in our canon, such as 1984 has, then I will, indeed, be bewildered. Highly recommended.

There is so much to this exceptional novel that not only met my high expectations but exceeded them. Primarily this is very much an eco novel that explores the world we live in and what’s beyond. Theo and his son Robin are trying to navigate the world after a tragic loss. They both exhibit a strong connection to nature both earth and beyond in a way that made fascinating reading. There were many elements in this one I knew I would enjoy but even the AI that comes into play was a pleasure to read and something I don’t usually enjoy. Overall I would definitely recommend this book and very much look forward to its release. Thank you to the publisher for providing me with this drc available through netgalley.

Written with the same masterful touch as The Overstory, Bewilderment is so poignant that at times I found it difficult to take a deep breath. Heartbreaking, infuriating and sad sad sad, with an all-too-crucial message.

“‘Which do you think is bigger? Outer space . . . ? Or inner?’”

Richard Powers once again proves his talent as a contemporary fiction writer (I think I liked this one more than The Overstory). Our narrator, Theo, is an astrobiologist searching for life on other planets. He is also a single parent to nine-year-old Robin, who struggles with behavioral issues and shares the same vibrant passion for nature as his late mother. A promising new neurofeedback treatment has the potential to help Robin achieve greater emotional control; simultaneously, the tumultuous political scene and troubling evidence of climate change threatens to undo him.

The synopsis of the book intrigued me from the start. Theo and Robin have been through a lot, and are both deeply flawed but lovable characters that lean on each other, need each other deeply. It was interesting to watch Theo’s relationship to Robin change as the treatment changed his behavior; Robin was feeling and acting more stable than ever before, but Theo didn’t recognize his own son anymore. He was jealous that Robin shared a connection with his wife through the neurofeedback treatment that he would never experience. The evolution of Theo’s inner dialogue and feelings toward his son was highly compelling.

Another unique and thought-provoking piece of this book was the way Robin was perceived by other characters. Many of them found Robin to be overly dramatic, highly volatile, and just too extreme in his reactions to the plight of wildlife and nature as a result of human activity. However, one comes to realize that his responses to the increasingly rapid destruction of the natural world are, in fact, quite reasonable. The people that carry on with their lives as though nothing is wrong are the irrational ones, as it is only a matter of time until the earth as we know it (and eventually, the earth itself) is no longer.

Powers has a way of evoking the natural world in his writing that just leaves the reader in absolute awe, weaving science into his stories with incredible grace. With its contemporary setting, poetic style, and heartbreaking but hopeful ending, this book is sure to leave a deep impression on its readers. Bewilderment could not be more aptly named.

A good book can take us on a journey. Perhaps it is a journey outward, into the wider world and what lies beyond. Or maybe inward, an exploration of psyche and emotion and personal truth. A book that can do both with thought, precision and heart, however? That’s not just a good book – it’s a great one.

“Bewilderment,” the latest book from Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Richard Powers, definitely meets the criteria for the latter. A thoughtful deconstruction of the relationship between fathers and sons set against the backdrop of a troubled time and place that is a slightly skewed reflection of our own, it’s a story that manages to strike the perfect balance between looking out to the stars and into the soul.

Deftly plotted and constructed from the sorts of sentences that only Powers can craft, this is a book that is unafraid to explore the many forms that goodbye can take.

Theo Byrne is an astrobiologist. His life’s work is theorizing about what life might exist out there among the stars, considering the myriad possibilities of extraterrestrial existence. He’s also a single father to nine-year-old Robin, a brilliant and sensitive boy who struggles to engage with the world in the ways in which everyone expects. Both father and son are somewhat adrift, each failing in his own way to deal with the death of the woman they both loved – Theo’s wife and Robin’s mother.

But fascination with other worlds can’t hide the problems with this one. There are the issues writ large – a country devolving into police state tactics and economic chaos behind an unhinged authoritarian president, a climate whose changes are rapidly accelerating, a destabilization of the educational sector – but there are also more personal issues. Robin’s outbursts lead to incidents, which lead to school administrators questioning Theo’s fitness and not-so-gently pushing for pharmaceutical interventions.

Theo doesn’t want to medicate Robin. He sees Robin’s brilliance even as he struggles with the boy’s difficulties. Robin draws elaborate pictures of endangered species and seeks to find ways to follow in his late mother’s animal rights activist footsteps. He wants to hear the tales his father spins about the endless potential possibilities of life out there. But Robin’s outbursts become more and more difficult to manage.

When a university colleague suggests that Robin might be a candidate for an experimental process called decoded neurofeedback – a process intended to help remap the centers of the brain using neurological “maps” of others – Theo is somewhat skeptical. However, he is also desperate, and allows his son to begin the treatments.

What follows is nothing short of miraculous. Slowly but surely, the process retrains Robin’s brain, allowing the boy a much higher degree of self-control and far more emotional empathy than he’d ever displayed before. Theo is grateful, seeing his son finally break through and outwardly become more like the boy he always was inside.

And yet … is he still the same Robin? That question looms large, even as other aspects of life, both personal and in the wider world, threaten to collapse around them.

“Bewilderment” is a thoughtful and mesmeric tale, one that seeks to plumb the depths of the human condition while also casting hopeful inquiries out into the cosmos. The idea that life – any life – is precious is one that permeates a lot of Powers’ work, but the dichotomy he lays bare here is as effective an exploration of that idea as any he’s yet produced.

Theo is a fascinating protagonist. He’s a person who is consumed by a desire to understand, yet those things he most fiercely wishes to fully grok – the life outside Earth’s ken and the life inside his son’s psyche – remain outside of his reach. It’s all theory, whether he’s extrapolating extraterrestrial existence or simply trying to predict Robin’s next meltdown. And all the while, the ebb and flow of the tides of his grief, his constant awareness of what has been lost, tugging at him.

The world Powers has built around Theo and Robin is compelling in its own right. It’s not quite our world, but it bears more than a superficial resemblance; it’s a bleak and troubling place whose societal foundation is crumbling in ways that feel awfully plausible, a parallel America not as far removed from ours as we might wish it to be. The speculative nature of the work might lead to elicited comparisons; the classic Daniel Keyes short story “Flowers for Algernon” is name-checked multiple times, but there are plenty of allusions and influences at work that are considerably less overt.

And of course, Powers’ own thematic touchstones are present, continuing precepts and concepts with regard to man’s relationship to nature and the environment. “Bewilderment” really digs deep into the idea that no matter how hard man tries to exert his dominion over nature – whether it be the sweeping depths of the greater cosmos or the granular intimacy of the human brain – he will inevitably be faced with the hard truth that victory is not forthcoming.

But how can man accept that truth? And how can he pass that truth on to those who come behind?

“Bewilderment” is a story both large and small, a tale of what it means to connect. It is a thoughtful and haunting book, one that will resonate with the reader; it argues that rather than wage war with the world, we should make our peace with it. Novels like this one echo, their ideas and plots reverberating through our heads and hearts long after the final page is turned.