Oct 4

Oct 4 Bewilderment

Author: Richard Powers
Publisher: W.W. Norton
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

Cover Description

A heartrending new novel from the Pulitzer Prize–winning and #1 New York Times best-selling 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?

TL;DR Review

Bewilderment is a gorgeously written, heartbreaking, highly consumable novel. I didn’t think it was perfect, but I definitely did enjoy it.

For you if: You like sentimental literary fiction, themes about climate change

Full Review

Bewilderment was one of the most anticipated books of 2021, and it has been both shortlisted for the Booker Prize and longlisted for the National Book Award. I haven’t read The Overstory (yet), so this was my first Powers, but I’m here now! I didn’t think this book was perfect but I definitely enjoyed it a lot.

The story is set in an eerie (I might say slightly dystopian) near-future United States. It’s about a man named Theo and his son, Robin, who does not have a diagnosis but is certainly neurodivergent. Theo’s wife recently died, and he’s doing his best to juggle his work in astrobiology and single parenthood. Eventually he agrees to allow Robin to try a new type of cognitive therapy that involves him learning the emotional patterns of his optimistic mother’s mapped mind. Robin also becomes increasingly obsessed with environmental activism.

So, first things first: This book is absolutely beautifully written, heartbreaking, with gorgeous prose. It’s very sentimental. Its vignettes/short chapters propelled me to inhale it in a single evening, one night when I just needed to shut out my own world and get lost in a story.

One thing that left me a bit unsettled, though, was Theo’s attitude toward seeking treatment for Robin, which I found surprising given the heavy focus on science, environmentalism, and biology. We’re obviously biased, given that it’s written in Theo’s first person (yes, of course Robin is just misunderstood!!), and I understand proceeding with caution when it comes to medication and kids, but when your child’s school is threatening to call CPS because he’s struggling so much and you refuse to get him diagnosed (“No doctor can diagnose my son as well as I can”) — AND the fact that Robin completely despaired of his return to his “former self” when the experimental treatment had to pause? I’m just not sure. It felt strange and a little preachy for the book to take such a tough stance that way in light of all the other themes.

One other thing: There is a reference toward the beginning of the book that I know told a lot of readers exactly how the story was going to end. I didn’t know the work being referenced, myself. But I’ve heard competing thoughts on whether that soft spoiling was additive or detrimental to others’ experiences.

Ultimately, though, I really enjoyed this one. I know a lot of people were surprised it didn’t get shortlisted for the National Book Award, but that feels okay for me. It was shortlisted for the Booker, which I think tracks better anyway.