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A review by almartin
Orfeo by Richard Powers
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.