Bewilderment
Review of novel by Richard Powers
As in previous Richard Powers’ novels, the lives of the main characters are impacted by advances in diverse scientific fields. This time the fields are astrobiology, ecology, and brain science.
The father (the narrator) is an astrobiologist with promising models and theories about whether and where there is life elsewhere the universe and what it might be like. He is waiting for the launch of a new space telescope that could bring his life’s work to fruition, but that is taken away due to politics.
His son is “different.” He has unusual talents and interests, sensitivities and social problems. His condition might at one time have been called Asperger’s syndrome. He becomes the subject of an experimental therapy, which works remarkably well and then is taken away due to politics.
The mother/wife died a few years before the story starts. She was an advocate for the rights of animals. Her prayer was “May all sentient beings be free from needles suffering.” The experimental therapy connects her son to a replica of her mind.
The main questions/insights that the author toys with while telling the tale of these intimately connected individuals can be summed up as: “Everybody’s inside everyone.” p. 191 and “Which is bigger, outer space or inner?” p. 278.
Other memorable passages include:
“Watching medicine fail my child, I developed a crackpot theory: Life is something we need to stop correcting. My boy was a pocket universe I could never hope to fathom. Every one of us is an experiment, and we don’t even know what the experiment is testing. p. 5
“Life might not need surface water. I might not need water at all. It might not even need a surface… The universe changed from one semester to the next.” p. 47
“My wife was admirable the way I was tall.” p. 91
“… brain science knew that even imagination could change our cells for real.” p. 145
