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A review by readsewknit
Bewilderment by Richard Powers
4.5
A book club friend loaned me her copy of this book and spoke highly of BEWILDERMENT. It took me a couple months to read, due to my slow track record with physical books during this season.
A widowed father is raising a twice-exceptional son who struggles with school. Robin is a bright, curious child, and it's heartbreaking to see his arc as he joins a research project. Richard Powers has us consider a provocative question through these pages: ought we to intervene and try to "improve" upon folks, particularly when our environment shows how poorly we can behave when given power?
I'm drawn to slow, thoughtful prose, and BEWILDERMENT was an ethereal read. I was enchanted nearly from the beginning, as we learn the origin of the son's name, harkening back to what could have been an awkward exchange on an early date but was instead transformed into a beautiful insight into the delight of the mundane when alongside someone you care for ("Whenever we were doing anything together -- reading the paper or brushing our teeth or doing the taxes or taking out the trash. Whatever blah or boring thing we were taking for granted. We'd trade a look, read each other's minds, and one of us would blurt out, 'The robin is my favorite bird!'").
There's something profound when different books cross so markedly with each other in similar but unique ways: this title mentions FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON (which I'd recently listened to for the first time); it was interesting to read this after MIGRATIONS, which had a similar near-future setting of a bleak environment with no shortage of extinctions); I also watched several episodes of THE THREE-BODY PROBLEM (a search for life on other planets and the consequences that may result). The interplay these all have with each other adds a new dynamic to the experience.
A widowed father is raising a twice-exceptional son who struggles with school. Robin is a bright, curious child, and it's heartbreaking to see his arc as he joins a research project. Richard Powers has us consider a provocative question through these pages: ought we to intervene and try to "improve" upon folks, particularly when our environment shows how poorly we can behave when given power?
I'm drawn to slow, thoughtful prose, and BEWILDERMENT was an ethereal read. I was enchanted nearly from the beginning, as we learn the origin of the son's name, harkening back to what could have been an awkward exchange on an early date but was instead transformed into a beautiful insight into the delight of the mundane when alongside someone you care for ("Whenever we were doing anything together -- reading the paper or brushing our teeth or doing the taxes or taking out the trash. Whatever blah or boring thing we were taking for granted. We'd trade a look, read each other's minds, and one of us would blurt out, 'The robin is my favorite bird!'").
There's something profound when different books cross so markedly with each other in similar but unique ways: this title mentions FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON (which I'd recently listened to for the first time); it was interesting to read this after MIGRATIONS, which had a similar near-future setting of a bleak environment with no shortage of extinctions); I also watched several episodes of THE THREE-BODY PROBLEM (a search for life on other planets and the consequences that may result). The interplay these all have with each other adds a new dynamic to the experience.