Bewilderment

A Novel

by

Hardcover, 304 pages

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

ISBN:
978-0-393-88114-1
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(5 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?

8 editions

reviewed Bewilderment by Richard Powers

Accurate and troubling

We are in the USA with a president very similar to Trump 2 and the world is going down the drain. It's a Ponzi scheme planet, as the protagonist describes it. A very accurate and plausible near future, well written and thought provoking. Greta Thunberg is in the book though, Swiss in this iteration of the universe. I would give the book a strong 5, but for one thing: the underlying premise that medication for mental problems is a Bad Thing and should be avoided at all costs, while other ways of altering brain chemistry could save the world. Maybe this is needed to make the story work, but I still find it troubling.

reviewed Bewilderment by Richard Powers

Touching but needed an autistic editor

Gorgeously written and heartfelt, up until the point of a major flaw, which is the inability to reconcile autism biases and ableist tropes.

The son is pretty aware that the dad also has autism but the dad repeatedly denies his son’s condition and doesn’t get him any autistic community support — you can tell the dad is projecting his autistic tendencies on his son, as the dad is often passive and unfeeling in his grief yet accuses his emotionally explosive and very feeling son of doing this

This could’ve been a great autistic parent coming to realize they’re autistic and helping their kid separate natural trauma from grief for climate change and personal loss from autistic issues, but it fell through (please hire autistic editors like me! We can help)

Overwhelming this book left off vibing that autistic people (kids especially) won’t be able to cope with or survive climate …

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