Bewilderment - Rambling Readers

Kalle Kniivilä reviewed Bewilderment by Richard Powers

Accurate and troubling

3 stars

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.

Emily Johnson reviewed Bewilderment by Richard Powers

Touching but needed an autistic editor

3 stars

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 …

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 change, which lol, I’m sorry but autistic people have and will always exist as limb as there are people

Points for the criticism of “folks anxious and scared about climate change, rampant viruses and species extinction aren’t mentally or behaviorally ill” though, which politically we’re already experiencing (especially concerning Covid and Long Covid)

Some may get the feeling that this is a dystopian novel in the sense that its events haven’t come to pass, when in reality much of them already have