My Goodreads and Amazon review of Bewilderment by Richard Powers (Rating 4) – A Wild Ride Through Earth and Cosmos. Bewilderment by Richard Powers is a novel about loss — the loss of a parent, the feared loss of a child, the loss of earth’s ecosystem, the loss of an opportunity to explore distant realms. The title connotes confusion but is also an old term for returning to the wild. Grieving the death of his wife, an astrophysicist and father of a nine-year-old boy with over-diagnosed mental health problems tries to save his gifted but sensitive son without resorting to chemical treatments. Together they explore the wilds of nature, and the imagined wilds of far-off planets where life assumes many different forms. Powers poses parallel heartbreaking questions: Can a father avert the loss of his beloved child? Can humanity avert the loss of our earth? Mistakes are made. Some involve a brain-altering technology that Powers invents, not always convincingly. Others, wholly believable, evoke a parent’s desperate attempts to keep his unique but fragile child. As a fiction writer myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), one who prizes character development, I especially admire the authenticity of the father’s roller coaster emotions. Readers too are in for a wild and be-wildered ride through earth and cosmos.
An imaginative yet down-to-earth novel
Why writers read: “To read is to voyage through time.” – Carl Sagan
