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A Novel
by Richard Powers
Book Reviewed by:A heartrending new novel from the Pulitzer Prize–winning and #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Overstory.
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?
BUT WE MIGHT NEVER FIND THEM? We'd set up the scope on the deck, on a clear autumn night, on the edge of one of the last patches of darkness in the eastern U.S. Darkness this good was hard to come by, and so much darkness in one place lit up the sky. We pointed the tube through a gap in the trees above our rented cabin. Robin pulled his eye from the eyepiece—my sad, singular, newly turning nine-year-old, in trouble with this world.
"Exactly right," I said. "We might never find them."
I always tried to tell him the truth, if I knew it and it wasn't lethal. He knew when I lied, anyway.
But they're all over, right? You guys have proved it.
"Well, not exactly proved."
Maybe they're too far away. Too much empty space or something.
His arms pinwheeled as they did when words defeated him. We were closing in on bedtime, which didn't help. I put my hand on his wild auburn mop. Her color—Aly's.
"And what if we never heard a peep from out there? What...
Powers is in full control of his myriad themes and packs a lot into 200-some pages. When I came to the breathtaking final paragraph of Bewilderment, I felt despondent and overwhelmed. I wasn't sure I could forgive Powers for the ending. But as time has passed, the book's feral beauty has stuck with me, and Robin in particular won't leave my mind. His neurodivergence, viewed as a problem by authority figures in the novel, seems to allow him greater communion with other species, and perhaps even with the dead. The pure sense of wonder that Robin embodies is worth imitating...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by Rebecca Foster).
In Richard Powers' Bewilderment, nine-year-old Robin Byrne is distressed at the plight of endangered species and commits to painting as many of them as he can, as well as undertaking one-kid protests outside the Wisconsin statehouse and in the nation's capital. He specifically emulates a character called "Inga Alder," who is clearly based on Greta Thunberg.
Thunberg, a Swedish teenager, has been in the public eye since 2018, when she encouraged students around the world to join her on school strikes, walking out of their classrooms on Fridays to draw attention to the urgency of the climate crisis. Millions participated. Since then, she has met with world leaders and made speeches before the U.S. Congress and the United Nations (UN). Her ...
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