Cover Image: Bewilderment

Bewilderment

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Member Reviews

Our staff loved this title! With beautiful writing and a heart-tugging story, this book is an incredible addition to our shelves.

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This ought to have interested, but I found it an increasing chore to read. I found none of the characters the least bit convincing. Humourless. I regret that I was unable to complete it.

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Bewilderment is not an easy read; it’s a complicated, heavy, ambitious, emotionally intelligent read. It requires critical thinking, patience, and time to reflect on the themes. It is steeped in science, and at times, I lost patience with it, and it took me a long time to get through the story. It is also an extraordinary, tender, insightful story that offers us many questions to ponder about the themes.

Themes

A lot is going on here with the story’s themes, and it is laid out there for us what is at stake. I had some mixed feelings about the way the themes are explored. It feels like Powers provokes a sense of dread in a world buckled down under the weight of the explored themes. On the one hand, that opens up an insightful story; on the other, it feels like instilling fear and making a point.

Head and Heart/Parenting: The story’s heart is the moving, tender love story of a father, Theo, and his bond with his unusual nine-year-old son, Robin, as they navigate grief, uncertainty, and the different ways Robin’s brain works following the death of Robin’s mother.

I loved the complexities of parenting explored as Theo uses his heart to do what he thinks is best for Robin while ignoring and denying what everyone is telling him about Robin’s behavior. Theo shows us the helplessness parents feel when trying to do what is best for their child while providing love and acceptance. His love and acceptance make him blind to the complexities of Robin’s behavior and denial that Robin’s disruptive behavior might need more than he can give him.

Big Pharma

After Robin is labeled with “special needs,” Theo refuses to put him on psychoactive drugs. Theo denies that Robin needs help managing his emotions and is skeptical that doctors’ suggestions are motivated by Big Pharma.

Robin finds the wilderness calming and Theo turns to nature to nurture Robin. After an incident at school, Theo is given an ultimate, find a solution for his behavior, or authorities will intervene. Feeling he out of options Theo agrees to an experimental neurofeedback treatment to regulate Robin’s emotions.

Climate Change/Science denial

The story explores the weight of telling children about our crumbling world while trying to understand why there is denial that climate change is real. Robin wants to continue his Mother’s environmental causes and is fixated and obsessed with climate activism. He draws hundreds pictures of endangered species to raise awareness and sell for charities. He is confused as to why people won’t do anything about the natural world collapsing. Through Robin, we see how the weight of this truth might burden a child.

American Politics

Powers highlights the doom of right-wing authoritarianism and makes some references to Trump without mentioning his name. It all felt a bit too complicated and heavy for me to understand some of his underlying meaning, and I needed it spelled out for me.

Characters: I liked that the story solely focuses on Theo and Robin while the ghost-like presence of Robin’s mother lingers over them. However, while tackling all the themes in the story and their weight, I feel Powers forgets to develop his characters. While I experienced many emotions while reading, I felt for the characters, but I found it hard to feel with them and see how they grew and changed from their conflicts. However, I am not sure that was the story’s point, and I can’t say anymore because of spoilers.

What I loved: The number of questions the story provokes. Questions that show how complex our world is with no real answers and that gave me a lot to think deeply about.

What I didn’t love as much: How heavy the story is and weighed down by the themes and science.

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Bewilderment is the story of a dad and his son as they adjust to life after the mom passes away. With an active imagination and compassion that has no limits, Robin is a sweet nine year old trying to understand the world around him.

Bewilderment is one of those books that you read and then the more you talk to people about it, the better you understand it. This is a short book and yet it has so much packed into it but that is how life is too – there are so many aspects that interact together to make a person’s experiences and memories. The political landscape, the hardships of academic life, coming to terms with the loss of a parent and wife, societal pressures and perceptions all come together in Bewilderment.

Bewilderment does not set out to answer big questions but it does get the reader thinking about every aspect of the story. Every question that I encountered through this book left me feeling bewildered if I focused on it for a while. Perplexed at the state of the world, confused by the choices that people make.

Bewilderment is a beautifully written book. It takes the reader on a journey not only on Earth with Theo and Robin but also let’s un imagine and visit far off planets where life may or may not exist in their unique manner. This is a delicate story about a boy who feels connected to his mother after losing her to a car accident. It’s about a father trying to do the best for his child and recognizing that he has a potential and empathy that can make a difference to the world if we all had the same attributes.

The world that Richard Powers creates is a haunting landscape with the truths of life and the sadness of mortality engrained deep within it. I am sure that if I reread this book, now or anytime in the future, I will understand it even more. This book has already been longlisted for The Booker Prize 2021 so I am not the only one loving its message.

Many thanks to the author for providing me a complimentary copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

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Richard Powers' prose is absolutely exceptional, and is where this novel really shined for me. This was my first time reading Powers, and I don't think it will be my last. I am already looking forward to checking out The Overstory, which many say is the author's best work.

The characters in this story are so unique and well formed that you can't help but want to follow along with their journeys. The exploration of the made up worlds was so lush and vivid that I just got lost in those passages. The threads of this story that I found myself appreciating the most, and where this story really comes to life are the ones of the father and son coming to terms with the death of their wife and mother.

Where this novel fell flat for me, was in the heavy handed nods to Flowers for Algernon, to the point where this felt like a retelling of that story through an updated lens. That being said, I still highly enjoyed getting immersed in the journey of this story, even in it's predictability.

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I have just finished reading Bewilderment by Richard Powers.

The main characters are Theo Byrne an astrobiologist, and his nine-year-old son Robin.

Robin is troubled after the death of his mother and has ongoing issues at school. There is pressure to put the very gifted son on medication.

This is s very touching novel filled with the love of father and son.

Robin is wise beyond his years, and expresses passion for nature, and has great care for the earth.

A very beautiful story, one that I would not normally reach out for, however it is touching and says so much.

Thank you to Goodreads, Author Richard Powers, and Penguin Random House Canada for my advanced copy to read and review.

. #NetGalley

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The narrator of this novel set in the near-future is Theo Byrne, an astrobiologist. Widowed, he is raising his nine-year-old son Robin by himself in Madison, Wisconsin. Robin, variously diagnosed with OCD, Asperger’s, and ADHD, is highly intelligent and sensitive and loves all of nature, though he is socially awkward and has difficulty with anger management. Instead of psychoactive drugs that many are recommending, Theo opts for experimental neurofeedback treatment to help Robin with emotional control.

Robin is a character the reader cannot but fall in love with. He is a young boy “so ingenuous that it rattled his smug classmates.” His astute observations will have you nodding in agreement. For example, while waiting in an airport terminal, Theo and his son face a bank of television monitors while everyone receives text alerts from the President, and Robin comments, “Dad? Know how the training is rewiring my brain? His wave included all the craziness of the concourse. This is what’s wiring everybody else.” He is so attuned to the natural world and the magic of all living things: “He slowed down for the most banal things. An ant mound. A gray squirrel. An oak leaf on the sidewalk with veins as red as licorice.” His mother Alyssa was an animal rights activist, and he has become obsessed with species threatened with extinction, and sets out to do what he can to help the cause. With his father, Robin shares a fascination with the possibilities of life on other planets.

The plot unravels predictably because reference is made to Flowers for Algernon. Anyone familiar with the story by Daniel Keyes will know how this book will end. Bewilderment is, however, more than just a retelling of a classic story. It is a political and environmental commentary.

The United States has a Trumpian president who is obsessed with Twitter: “America, have a look at today’s ECONOMIC numbers! Absolutely INCREDULOUS! Together, we will stop the LIES, SILENCE the nay-sayers, and DEFEAT defeatism!!!” When Robin calls the president a dung beetle, Theo warns him that such criticism can result in a jail sentence. The separation of powers no longer exists because “Congress itself now took orders from the White House, and the appointed judges had fallen in line.” Immigration has been stopped with “a private mercenary force deployed on the southern border.” An election is held but “online conspiracy theories, compromised ballots, and bands of armed poll protesters undermined the integrity of the vote . . . [and] the President declared the entire election invalid. He ordered a repeat.” In the re-election, “another wave of irregularities were declared insignificant and the President was named the winner.” Among so many, one statement especially reminded me so much of the Trump era: “Everything had happened in broad daylight, and against shamelessness, outrage was impotent.”

The country has become anti-science: “the chaos-seeking administration had played to the Human Sanctity Crusade, slapped down the environmental movement, pissed on science.” There is a “Creation Museum and Ark Encounter” because people “had little use for science of any kind.” Funding is cut “from grade schools that taught evolution.” There is no interest in space exploration because “Apparently God had made life on one planet only, and only one country of that planet’s dominant species needed to manage it.”

Climate change has led to a host of problems. The story begins “on a day that had broken yet another all-time heat record by five degrees.” “In the record heat, clusters of lethal bacteria were spreading up and down the Florida coast.” There are other consequences: “Summer floods throughout the Gulf contaminated the drinking water of thirty million people, spreading hepatitis and salmonellosis across the South. Heat stress in the Plains and the West was killing old people. San Bernardino caught fire, and later, Carson City.” “Fresh water from a dissolving Arctic was flooding into the Atlantic, swirling the protective currents like a hand passed through a smoke plume.” There’s a Greta Thunberg character, an autistic fourteen-year-old named Inga Alder, who challenges world leaders to take immediate action for climate change mitigation and whom Robin comes to admire.

Two elements of the book bothered me. I found my interest waning at the many descriptions of possible exoplanets and the types of life forms that might exist on them. I was also disturbed by Robin’s whooping in glee at the sight of a heron catching a big fish and eating it. Though I understand the bird is not exploiting or killing the fish unnecessarily, Robin’s cheering seems excessive. This is the same child who minutes later is frantically tearing down cairns in the stream because they “destroy the homes of everything in the river”? This is the same child who screams at the accidental killing of a squirrel?

The book is heart-warming; the love between Theo and his extraordinary son and the things he does to help Robin are very touching. The book will arouse anger at the damage humankind is inflicting on nonhuman life on the planet. I shared Robin’s shock at a statistic: “Only two percent of all animals are wild? Everything else is factory cows and factory chickens and us?” And the book will break your heart.
I hope sentient life is discovered on other planets, and I hope that that life proves to have done much better looking after its home than we have in caring for Earth.

Bewilderment will leave the reader bewildered at the human race.

Note: I received a digital galley from the publisher via NetGalley.

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Astrobiologist Theo Byrne and his son Robin are mourning the death of Theo’s wife Alyssa. Single parenting a child who is neurodivergent and maintaining a career as an academic while also grieving is hard. Theo and Robin take solace by spending time in nature and in Theo’s stories of life on fictional planets. But life is challenging and school is incredibly difficult until they discover an experimental neurotherapy that can help Robin.

Theo and Robin live in a world which includes an extremist anti-science president, a Scandinavian teenager outspoken about climate change, out-of-control social media, and species disappearing at an alarming rate. Sound familiar?

As in The Overstory, Powers’s prose is lovely, so easy to read and yet so evocative. Like Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun, Bewilderment is both science fiction and yet not science fiction. Through much of it, there is a blurry line between where the science ends and the fiction begins.

My nature-loving heart loved descriptions of camping the Smoky Mountains (which I’ve done). Powers takes time to describe the wonders of nature both large (the universe) and small (see my story today of Spotted Jewelweed which is mentioned in the book). Bewilderment reminded me of an old National Film Board of Canada animated short called “Cosmic Zoom” exploring wonders both big and small.

Early in the narrative, Powers mentions a book that Theo reads with Robin and as soon as I saw the title, I had a terrible sense of foreboding. It was a book I read in high school but still have intense reactions to when I see it. It’s a book that broke me. Bewilderment is, in many ways, an updated retelling of that story.

Bewilderment is not a long book but there’s lots for readers to think about. It is a celebration of science, an indictment of the education system, an ode to the restorative powers of nature, a portrait of grief, a call to action to address climate change, and, more than anything, a testament to the power of the love between parent and child. It’s a powerful, emotional read and well-deserving of its place on both the Booker and National Book Award lists.

Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada and NetGalley for this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

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I've read every one of Richard Powers' books and was very pleased when The Overstory was so widely embraced recently. Bewilderment takes us on a similar journey as Galatea 2.2 did. There's science here, but not in a purely 'what if' way. More so in a 'we are on the brink of this.'
You feel for the characters immediately, which is not an easy task. The present day of the material - a horrible president, a young girl pushing for climate change action - at first, at least for me, was off-putting. I understand why we, as authors, would change the names of real figures. Yet, at the same time, it leaves you feeling that you know this person by another name and, therefore, only get surface glimpse at who they are.
But if you can change your mind on this, see the president as who he was, but also who he is in this book, it makes the experience that much better.
I feel this follows along with the themes and ideas Powers picked up in The Overstory. Although looking back at his library, it is certainly his wheel-house.
This is a smart, entertaining, and vividly imagined novel.

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Where do I start with this book? This is one that is hard for me to review - it was so powerful, left me speechless and had me feeling pretty shaken up at the end.

It was one of those books that was so engrossing and beautifully written that all of a sudden you finish the last page and have to go back multiple times to double check that it was actually the end.

Bewilderment is the story of astrobiologist and widower Theo raising his highly-sensitive, deep-thinking and incredibly special nine-year old son Robin. It's a story of doing anything for the love of a son but also shines a light on what we're doing to our planet and the beauty of our natural world.

This book is both heartwarming and gut-wrenching. It's a tough read. But so worth it.

As a person that honestly has never had much of an interest in space - I can say that thanks to reading this I want to learn more about astronomy. I loved all the references to the planets and astrobiology.

I've decided that I am now definitely a big fan of Richard Powers. This is the second book of his that I've read - the first being Pulitzer Prize-winning The Overstory which I also highly recommend.

Bewilderment will be available this Tuesday, September 21. I highly recommend that you pick it up.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

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This book haunts me. The writing is beautiful, the story is deeply, deeply disturbing, it touches on autism and the proliferation of the diagnosis, climate change, the death of a Mother, social activism and the possible futility of giving your life to a cause. I don't think this book will ever leave me.

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Our staff have mixed opinions on this book. On the one hand, we feel that Powers does a good job of bringing certain issues to life, but in this book it felt a little too forced. There was clearly a strong theme about conventional vs alternative forms of therapy/medicine and what the consequences can be when we aren't open-minded about exploring alternatives. However, the main character (Theo) seemed to be the one who was too close minded and this eventually resulted in a devastating outcome. The descriptions of the landscapes were gorgeous and Powers writing flowed well, but the story overall was quite flat.

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This is the third novel that I’ve read by Richard Powers, the third to have been nominated for the Man Booker Prize, and I’d rank Bewilderment at the bottom of the three. Powers’ last novel, The Overstory, was a high-level piece of Ecofiction; a love letter to trees and forests that went on too long and eventually felt too baggy and pedantic to really wow me. As a follow-up to The Overstory, Bewilderment (another Ecofiction effort) is much more accessible, with a family drama at its heart that would appeal to your average book club — and maybe that’s the point. Maybe Powers decided to bring his — undeniably important — ecowarnings to the mainstream; but if The Overstory muddled the power of its message by being too dense, Bewilderment felt lightweight and predictable, full of narrative choices that eventually grated on me. I’m all for bringing the core message of this book (that the health of the Earth and all of its inhabitants is more important than economics) to the fore, and while it would be impossible for an author to please every reader, this book did not really please me.

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First of all, thank you to Penguin Randomhouse Canada and to Netgalley for the advance copy of this new work by one of my favourite authors of all time! I was beyond excited to learn that Powers had a new work out in September and even more thrilled to get early access to review.

It took me a few weeks to open Bewilderment because Powers’ previous work, The Overstory, is one of my absolute favourite books and I was nervous that I wouldn’t like the new one! I often get like this with writers I absolutely adore, but let me tell you, with Bewilderment I needn’t have worried.

The story follows widower and astrobiologist Theo as he navigates his own grief and the difficulty of raising his neurodivergent son as a single parent. With insights into the past of Theo and Aly’s story, the novel takes place a few years after Aly’s death as her family grapples to understand the circumstances of her passing. Robin, their son, has challenges of his own, as his doctors are unsure of the correct diagnosis for his neurodivergence and are adamant that drugs are the answer, but Theo wonders, can science offer another way?

Complex and brilliant, yet immediately readable, when I started the book I relaxed into the hands of a master of his craft. Powers tackles science-heavy subjects in this work ranging from astrobiology to psychology and neuroscience and ecology and all the surprising interconnections between them. The book is also a reimagining of Daniel Keyes’ story Flowers for Algernon. If this sounds intimidating - it isn’t. Powers distils the most bewildering of topics to moments of absolutely crystal clarity.

Like with The Overstory, reading Bewilderment gave me my favourite experience of fiction, which is inhabiting another life I will never lead with a completeness and emotional connection that made the story feel absolutely real. I also learned more about the wonders of the universe thanks to a writer of such skill that he turned bewilderment into understanding and pure wonder.

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Thanks to Penguin Random House Canada for an ARC provided through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

A deftly moving novel in which Powers expresses with new urgency fears about the mounting depradations to the planet and all its flora and fauna wrought by greedy, blind humanity. In this one Theo, a widowed astrobiologist, is at his wits’ end over how to deal with his exceptional about-to-turn-9 son, Robin. Robin is bright and empathetic and cares deeply about all living creatures, which marks him as a freak at school and subject to bullying. With poor impulse control (he’s received different diagnoses from various medical professionals over the years), Robin has meltdowns and tends to lash out, and now another boy has been injured. The school is pushing hard for a medical solution, but Theo is reluctant to drug his son into docility and desperately reaches out to a university acquaintance for Robin’s inclusion in an experimental biofeedback therapy. Robin’s turnaround is near-miraculous, but the more focused, creative and expressive he becomes, the more he demands to know why no one is doing anything about all the dying animals. You mean people know this is happening and they just let it keep happening? (Told you this was a smart little kid.) Theo, whose policy is to never lie to Robin, is helpless to explain humanity’s indifference to their critically stressed planet. In a tidy bit of thematic meshing, Theo’s profession as an astrobiologist has him exploring the universe for signs of life on unimaginably distant planets.

Powers’s novels have always explored the world through the lens of science, and this is no exception. There’s some mind-boggling stuff here about the cosmos, about the rapidly-expanding knowledge we’re gaining about the universe, the billions of galaxies (each with billions of stars) known to exist. His sights here are also turned to the domestic, that is, the parlous state of affairs here on planet Earth. I was led to marvel at humanity, the exceedingly smart beings that have created the technology capable of doing and allowing us to learn so much, beings that are nevertheless so profoundly stupid as to be on the brink of wrecking everything. Bewilderment, indeed.

The most beautiful achievement of this book, though, is the father-son relationship that forms its beating heart. I’ve rarely read a book that so movingly creates a picture of parental love. Sublime and tender.

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What a beautiful, heart-warming and heart-breaking book. Only Richard Powers could combine examinations of parenting, neurodivergence, grief, environmentalism, astrobiology, and cognitive science into such an engrossing story. I loved it, and I'll be recommending it widely.

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Richard Powers his one of the great of our time!! Truly an amazing writer that can write like no one else and that is also always surprising, reinventing himself, going where we were not expecting him. His new book just prove that yet again, like we need more validation! I recommend this book, but also all of Richard Powers work!

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