Bewilderment

A Novel

Hardcover, 304 pages

Published Sept. 21, 2021 by W. W. Norton & Company.

ISBN:
978-0-393-88114-1
Copied ISBN!

View on OpenLibrary

4 stars (3 reviews)

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?

6 editions

crushing

4 stars

An intimate parental dive into the wonder of the natural world and urge to activism in the face of our wide-eyed trance walk to species destruction. This felt narrower and less rounded than The Overstory, which may be fitting to cataclysm, and the traumas and some obvious referents may irk (mostly they didn't interfere here). The middle half's beauty justified it all for me.

avatar for pascal

rated it

4 stars