Bewilderment
Ratings66
Average rating4
What an incredible journey. This will stick with me for a long time.
I'm now re-centered in the universe as my own planet orbiting along with other human planets, each of their inner worlds forever unknowable to me. The running theme of human connection intertwined with cosmic connection works so well for the story and the insight it offers.
As a new father surviving a global pandemic and late-stage capitalism, Theo's position is eerily relatable to my own. Any parent reading this will know all too well the struggle to find the balance between protecting your kids, imparting your wisdom, and letting them gain their own.
The Overstory sparked an urge to learn more about trees and fungus. Now I suppose I'll go brush up on exoplanets and the Webb telescope and hold out hope that our flawed monkey brains are good enough pass through the Great Filter.
Pros: very pretty writing style; great to see literature interact well with multiple types of science; the tie-in with Flowers for Algernon is great; captures a sense of enchantment with creation that many scientists feel; made me think a lot about how hard parenting is; identifies some of the best questions to be asked about the anthropocene (what's the right balance of caring about the world's systemic problems vs living your daily life in contentment? How can you be honest about what the species is doing to planet earth and its future without being a nihilist? etc)
Cons: some (but not all) of the political commentary feels out of left field and heavy-handed; small stretches of the story shone, but the broader narrative didn't really come together (actually, I had a similar problem with a few other pretty books written during the pandemic like Sea of Tranquility by Emily Mandel and Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr; maybe it's more a product of the era than the author)
This could have been beautiful but felt overly sentimental and weirdly anti-science and anti- mental health treatment. As a therapist this just wasn't it for me. As a scientist, the main character should have known better.
Bewilderment was Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2021. Richard Powers won a Pulitzer Prize in 2019 but this is the first book I've read by him.
Bewilderment tells us the story of Theo, an astrobiologist and recent widower father of Robin, 9 years old neurodivergent kid. Robin is having problems at school and Theo is advised to medicate him in order to control his impulses.
In order to avoid medication, Theo enrols Robbie in an experimental treatment that teaches and trains the brain to reach and manage different emotional states.
This is a touching and powerful story about love, family, grief and acceptance, about innocence, the challenges of parenting, science, our damage to the environment and inevitability. Bewilderment is beautifully written and left me an emotional wreck.
My heart is still overloaded.
“That's the ruling story on our planet. We live suspended between love and ego. Maybe it's different in other galaxies. But I doubt it.”
This book is a beautiful build oscillating between awe and horror, leading into a heart-wrenching crescendo. If you wove together Everything is Illuminated, Flowers for Algernon, and Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities (except with imagined planets), you would get this book. It's very topical, but will clearly transcend; I could see it being taught in schools someday.
Beautiful. Sad. Hits very close to home. Similar to Overstory, but shorter. Still devastating. But some of Robin reminds me of me.
3.5?
Powers writing is beautiful. This story is smaller and sadder than The Overstory, though just as powerfully written.
This book has me filled with conflicting thoughts.
First off, I haven't read Powers since Galatea 2.2, which I read in college. I remember my core takeaway from Galatea 2.2 was that Powers was a skilled wordsmith who perhaps suffered from a problem of over-inflated ego to create a book that inward and self-congratulatory. Even the photo of himself in the back of the book etched itself into my mind as “ugh, this guy.”
So when Overstory got heaped with praise, I didn't bother. Now this one happened, and I gave ole Richard Powers another chance.
I'm glad I did. Richard Powers of 1995 is a different Richard Powers than 2021, although he's still using that same black-and-white photo from ages ago. I get it, my Goodreads profile photo is from 2012. We all freeze our view of ourselves in our mind at some fixed point where we looked a certain way, I suppose.
This book had a lot of heart to it and yes, a Richard Powers book gave me potent emotions, which was something. Listening to an interview he did a few weeks ago with Ezra Klein (oh lord) it was clear this Richard Powers was more introspective of the one from the past that I delved into and reaffirmed my personal beliefs on. Throughout ‘Bewilderment' we're treated to the character Theo, who's clearly a stand-in for Powers, which hey, I get it. Anyway, Theo has a son, Robin, who's neurodivergent. Theo, a scientist himself, dislikes the idea of his son on mind-altering drugs, although increased incidents at school are leading them to a path with very few options.
I'm gonna stop here and just say, if spoilers bother you, there's plenty from here out.
Ah, until a doctor pal of Theo's deceased wife emerges to talk about this therapy system he's created, an iteration on something both Theo and Aly had strapped themselves into before to scan their brains. This could do the trick and solve Robin's problems by allowing him to do tasks within this machine alongside the brain scan of his mother.
Powers is still playing with the idea of technology and how it cohabitates the planet with us, for better or for worse. Theo himself is working to simulate what life on other planets could look like, with his bets on a satellite imaging system in the age of, well, let's just say it, Trump. Robin goes into this therapy and goes from having violent outbursts about how we're ruining the world, an attempt to both emulate and pay tribute to Greta Thunberg (who is in the book under a different name), who mellows out a bit and tries to find his own ways to impact the world. Only, his secret therapy isn't a secret for too long when the good doctor decides the world needs this technology, or... he needs money through licensing agreements.
Robin becomes an internet sensation because of his feel-good story and Theo feels guilt for allowing his son to become a spectacle, even if Robin sees this as a way to get a message out to more people. The conservative gov't cuts off funding to both the therapy program, puts the doctor under investigation, then cuts off funding for Theo's eyes-in-the-sky. Robin starts slipping and, ultimately, things go terribly wrong, leaving Theo alone, with his only hope being this therapy in a stripped-down version of the good doctor's office alongside scans of his deceased wife and son.
This story is... well, look. It's difficult to be an American writer of certain sensibilities without synthesizing what's been happening in the United States into your work. The COVID pandemic wasn't present, but cows contracting a neurological disorder that was set to wipe them out happened, crops were dying, it was all in the same vein of our slow-burning late stage capitalism-fueled apocalypse. As I said, this was a much more human Powers, and the story was touching, but when I start digging beneath the surface for thematic elements, a lot of it is still stuck in the past.
This book was an Oprah's Book Club book, which doesn't surprise me. It embodies modern liberal ideals and, from a comfortable distance, criticizes modern society while eschewing any sort of solution or blame. In the interview with Klein, the subject of capitalism came up many times, with Klein hemming and hawing with “I'm not an anticapitalist” nonsense based on his own brand of free market neoliberalism, while Powers seemed comfortable criticizing capitalism. Still, a lot of his views are informed from “unplugging” from his home in Silicon Valley and moving to the Smokies, where he reconnected with nature. The problem is... that's from a place of privilege that few of us can do. We can visit whatever nature we can find in our area, but uprooting and moving into the woods isn't feasible for most.
The critical eye towards technology and media is right there, with no better example than his cell phone. Theo's phone plays a prominent role throughout the story, from doomscrolling news feeds to emergency SMS messages from the president about nonsense right down to playing a pivotal role in the book's finale. Theo's phone couldn't save them. On their fated walk down to a river that Robin's deceased mother loved, Theo discovered about his telescope project being kaput via a text message chain. Then, when he needed service to call for help, it wasn't there.
Theo's continued existence is, in part, from his refusal to abandon technology and fully embrace the world like his wife and son did. The message being sent is rather grim, though, as both of them died in perhaps misguided attempts to defend or protect nature, no matter the cost. All while, Theo continues to live on, a firm believer in the ideals espoused by the people he loves, but not enough to give his life for them. His only way forward is to once again embrace technology to remember his family.
While there are obvious issues of modern society on display, a lot like modern liberalism, Powers cannot find a solution outside of “trust science” and “don't be a bad guy.” The book seems like it's on the verge of saying more than that, but ultimately ends with a message that anyone attempting positive change ends up eaten alive, while the rest of us are left pinning our hopes on incrementalist centrists.
Oh, and why do I read Goodreads reviews? I saw a few claiming this book felt “antivax” because he didn't want to give his kid psychoactive drugs and I just... why?!
I enjoyed this book a lot, though, and Powers remains an immensely skilled writer who I now have to return to later on.
Richard Powers absconded to the old growth forests of Tennessee which prompted the fantastic, Pulitzer Prize winning Overstory. Bewilderment feels like a continuation of that book.
Instead of eco-warriors, Powers resorts to the cliched trope of neurodivergent child who speaks plainly of the impending climate crisis, who sees the loss of biodiversity with stark clarity and asks “Why is it so hard for people to see what's happening?
It's easy to screw this up and in less capable hands (or through the eyes of more cynical readers) it's going to come off as cloying and sentimental. And yet I loved the fierce love Theo Byrne has for his 9 year old son Robin, and how lost he feels without his wife to help navigate his erratic rages. How doctors seek to quell his behaviour with drugs, how pediatricians are keen to place Robin on a spectrum.
“I wanted to tell the man that everyone alive on this fluke little planet was on the spectrum. That's what a spectrum is. I wanted to tell the man that life itself is a spectrum disorder, where each of us vibrated at some unique frequency in the continuous rainbow.”
It's that sort of language that Powers invokes that you can either hang with or roll your eyes right into the back of your head. I thought he earned that and that Theo perfectly embodies how much you can love your child and fear, everyday, that you're doing something that's going to ruin them. What it is to wrestle with being a parent in the midst of a climate crisis and the slowly looming end of the world.
That is the chewy centre of the book and rest is confection. I found the imagined extrasolar planets meandering but pretty diversions and the Decoded Neurofeedback a handy plot device to better centre Robin for the sake of moving the story forward and creating the arc of the narrative. PS. totally did not know that rock cairns were a bad thing.
Full review forthcoming in New York Journal of Books.
https://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/bewilderment-novel
Richard Powers' new novel is a retelling of Flowers Of Algernon for the early 21st century (and to be fair, Powers dies explicitly tip his hat to Daniel Keyes' classic early on). It continues the ecological themes of The Overstory but adds a strong element of human drama as a widowed father struggles to cope with raising a son who comes with his own set of challenges, against a backdrop of the US (tbh, for all the protesting at doomed ecology that suffuses this book, the world outside North America might as well not exist) sliding into dystopian fascism. It's a quick read, but a memorable one, with a central character that sticks in the mind.
The time is now, with the events pushed just slightly from what they are (or, at least, let's hope these have been slightly pushed from what they are). America is in deep trouble. The natural world is in deep trouble. Theo works to try to find life on other planets and his job is in deep trouble. Worst of all, our main characters, a dad (Theo) and his son (Robin), are in deep trouble: Robin snaps, falls apart, at a word misspoken, an action poorly taken, and he is in deep trouble; and Theo is lost as a parent, and he is in deep trouble.
(Caution: Some spoilers in the next paragraph.)
Along comes a miracle cure for Robin, and it arises from a strange yet oddly appropriate source. As Robin cools and, before our eyes, minute by minute, becomes a better person, so does Theo cool and become a better person, and, likewise, so does America and the natural world and everything else cool and become better.
(Warning: Lavish gushing slopping through the next paragraph.)
I adore Richard Powers, I prize him, I idolize him. I know nothing about science, and I don't want to know anything about science, but Powers is brilliant with it, and he shares it on every page, and I'm spellbound. More than that, he writes about Important Things that leave your brain buzzing and sparking, and he never makes you feel the Important Things are beyond you even though you really don't understand even a smidgen of what he's talking about.
I can't wait to talk about this book with others who have read it. I will be pushing this book on everyone I meet, I'm afraid.