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amycrea's review against another edition
3.0
My rating of this varies throughout the book. There are some spots I'd rank 5 stars. Powers is an incredible writer. This tale of an elderly man, avant-garde composer and chemistry enthusiast, who finds himself the subject of a Homeland Security-type search after his attempts to discover music in bacteria are misinterpreted, has some hypnotic moments and wonderful characters. It also has some intensely long, deep segments about composing, which were waaaaaaay over my head. Powers also not only used one of my pet peeves--no quotation marks--he upped the ante by having all dialogue in italics. Which served no purpose that I can see.
Still, I'm glad I read it, as the parts that I would have ranked 5 stars were well worth the read.
Still, I'm glad I read it, as the parts that I would have ranked 5 stars were well worth the read.
anitawerner81's review against another edition
2.0
I don't know what to think of this book. I did not really like it but at the same time I wanted to finish and know what the ending was all about. At the end I feel that I really didn't get it! Very good writing maybe just not for me.
aleffert's review
3.0
Definitely lesser Powers. Some of the passages really sing, but as a story it's nothing. The protagonist sucks. I don't just mean he's a bad person though he is, but he's also boring. In theory he's obsessed, and this book is interested in artistic obsession, in the pursuit of the genuinely new, a topic dear to my heart. But then he'll go like two decades just kind of dicking around doing nothing. If he were less incompetent he wouldn't have had to make such dumb life choices that were supposed to be dramatic. I suppose you could look at it as a tragedy, but I don't think that's how it played. This also results in a skipping stone of a narrative that's hard to hold onto.
Also, I've heard a lot of avant-garde music and I'm sorry like I know avant-garde people get excited about it, but wow it didn't help me care
Also, I've heard a lot of avant-garde music and I'm sorry like I know avant-garde people get excited about it, but wow it didn't help me care
balletbookworm's review against another edition
3.0
I like the ideas in this book, all the thoughts of a life and regrets and creations rolled into a few days on the run but a) I seriously do not have enough information/experience in mid to late 20th century classical composition to even start to understand the things Els is talking about (I top out at Shostakovich) and b) there's a really annoying perspective shift from limited 3rd to 3rd omnicient to 2nd about 10 pages from the end that is really unnecessary
pearloz's review
4.0
Great book, some of the jargon was over my head but not enough to take away from how well written it was. Solid book.
honorsenglishdropout's review
3.0
"For years, he's struggled to write something thorny and formidable, as if difficulty alone ensured lasting admiration. Now he sees that what the world really needs is a lullaby simple enough to coax a two-year-old to lay down her frantic adventure each night for another eight hours."
tron's review against another edition
5.0
Powers seems to be one of a handful of writers who can capture in words what music feels like. Plus, this book celebrates the avant-grade classical like no other fiction I've read (Pynchon comes close). A great book with lots of brain and soul.
almartin's review against another edition
4.0
four stars for members in good standing of the Powers fan club; three stars for inquiring members of the general public.
which is to say: if you are familiar and sympathetic to recurring themes explored in Powers's works (classical composers; time; DNA; the resonances between each of the aforementioned) you will find Orfeo poetic, elegantly structured, and generally charming; if this is your first exposure to Powers, the rhapsodic descriptions of particular movements and scores that pepper Orfeo will be...trying, at times.
all of this is a little sad, I think. despite the fact that whole portions of this novel positively *sing*, doing their Important Novel thing (following the arc of a life lived; recording aspirations; cataloguing regrets) Orfeo probably isn't going to get much attention anywhere off the CP Snow beat. this is objectively a shame - I can't think of many other writers so adept at writing the long emotional arcs of families (see In the Time of Our Singing) - but because of repeated idiosyncratic choices re: narrative firmament (college science labs) and biographical backstory (a music-loving biologist in every pot), Powers becomes too easy to typecast.
it makes one wonder what Powers could accomplish if he ventured further afield - he is so brilliantly adept at developing multiple narrative lines that (like a well-crafted musical score score) develop and reinterpret a phrase before rising to a beautiful resolution. beautiful storytelling here, to be sure, but the territory that Orfeo plows is ultimately too familiar to be brilliant.
which is to say: if you are familiar and sympathetic to recurring themes explored in Powers's works (classical composers; time; DNA; the resonances between each of the aforementioned) you will find Orfeo poetic, elegantly structured, and generally charming; if this is your first exposure to Powers, the rhapsodic descriptions of particular movements and scores that pepper Orfeo will be...trying, at times.
all of this is a little sad, I think. despite the fact that whole portions of this novel positively *sing*, doing their Important Novel thing (following the arc of a life lived; recording aspirations; cataloguing regrets) Orfeo probably isn't going to get much attention anywhere off the CP Snow beat. this is objectively a shame - I can't think of many other writers so adept at writing the long emotional arcs of families (see In the Time of Our Singing) - but because of repeated idiosyncratic choices re: narrative firmament (college science labs) and biographical backstory (a music-loving biologist in every pot), Powers becomes too easy to typecast.
it makes one wonder what Powers could accomplish if he ventured further afield - he is so brilliantly adept at developing multiple narrative lines that (like a well-crafted musical score score) develop and reinterpret a phrase before rising to a beautiful resolution. beautiful storytelling here, to be sure, but the territory that Orfeo plows is ultimately too familiar to be brilliant.