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A review by the_bitchy_booker
Bewilderment by Richard Powers
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
There is a moment, at the very end of this novel, where you don't know if Robin is alive or dead. It will break you into a million pieces, and I wish the story had ended there so I could hang forever between hope and grief.
Robin is an unique 9 year old boy whose father takes him stargazing in the woods to give him a break from school, a beginning that changes everything. Sensitive to the destruction of the environment, politics, the news, the insults of his classmates, Robin struggles with violent outbursts and an inability to focus, and sees everything in his own unique way. Having rejected formal diagnoses and medication, his father agrees to an experimental neural feedback training regimen to try and stave off the authorities.
Using at first standard inputs, and then a brain imprint of the experience of ecstasy from his deceased mother, Robin begins to change, finds joy, peace, focus, tranquility in himself and his world.
The novel mixes current reality with an alternate-history twist, science fiction technology with real science, lush descriptions of the natural world with fantastical otherworlds held in the possibility between science and the imagination. Within it all is the life of a boy with whom you become impossibly invested.
The experimental neural feedback program is halted because of politics, and Robin begins a slow slide back into who he was, this time burdened with the memory of who he was and who he could have been.
He and his father return to the woods of their first trip in a last reprieve before trying standard medication and this trip, once again, changes everything.
A stunning study in grief, loss, beauty, despair, possibility, hope, and life.
TW for death of a spouse, parent, and child.
Tangential LGBTQ2A+ representation.
Robin is an unique 9 year old boy whose father takes him stargazing in the woods to give him a break from school, a beginning that changes everything. Sensitive to the destruction of the environment, politics, the news, the insults of his classmates, Robin struggles with violent outbursts and an inability to focus, and sees everything in his own unique way. Having rejected formal diagnoses and medication, his father agrees to an experimental neural feedback training regimen to try and stave off the authorities.
Using at first standard inputs, and then a brain imprint of the experience of ecstasy from his deceased mother, Robin begins to change, finds joy, peace, focus, tranquility in himself and his world.
The novel mixes current reality with an alternate-history twist, science fiction technology with real science, lush descriptions of the natural world with fantastical otherworlds held in the possibility between science and the imagination. Within it all is the life of a boy with whom you become impossibly invested.
The experimental neural feedback program is halted because of politics, and Robin begins a slow slide back into who he was, this time burdened with the memory of who he was and who he could have been.
He and his father return to the woods of their first trip in a last reprieve before trying standard medication and this trip, once again, changes everything.
A stunning study in grief, loss, beauty, despair, possibility, hope, and life.
TW for death of a spouse, parent, and child.
Tangential LGBTQ2A+ representation.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death
Moderate: Death of parent