Outstanding, tense and at times emotional. Now shortlisted for the Booker Prize, which doesn’t surprise me, this book is amazing. Richard Powers does it again. Superb.

What a book,

I love reading books that focus on relationships between people and this is something special.

The way the story is written around the father and son bond is beautiful. The way the father overcomes the sons issues and deals with both of their grief is lovely.

Heartwarming with Cormac McCarthy vibes.

I am so grateful I was able to read this book early, it’s a strong contender for best book I’ve read this year!

The character work was incredible! The father figure was possibly the most relatable character I’ve ever read.

The writing was just STUNNING! The prose is exquisite and some of the lines in this will stick with me forever!

A very interesting plot with heavy emphasis on family dynamics and environmental issues.

I have one big issue with the book though, it spoils the entirety of the book Flowers For Algernon, it’s clear this book is heavily influenced by Flowers For Algernon but I think there should be some kind of warning in case anyone wants to read the classic and doesn’t want to be spoiled. This didn’t spoil my enjoyment of the book as I’d already read Flowers For Algernon but it’s a pet peeve when a book spoils another book.

Overall I couldn’t rate this book anything other than 5 stars and I’ve already recommended it to most people I know who read.

If you read this book you will not regret it and you’ll be changed for the better!

Book: Bewilderment
Author: Richard Powers
Publisher: Random House UK, Cornerstone
Publication Date: 21 September 2021
Review Date: 14 September 2021 on Goodreads (5 stars)

Many thanks to NetGalley and Cornerstone for an advance copy

Power of imagination

I had chosen only one other of the 2021 Booker Longlist besides Klara & the Sun (still sitting in my local library since the end of June when NSW went into lockdown). That book is Bewilderment and with only three weeks until publication I was ecstatic to receive this from NetGalley.

Theo is an astrobiologist grieving the death of his wife whilst raising their nine-year-old son Robin (named after his mother's favourite bird) who is struggling with school life. Robin wants only to explore nature and to desperately hold onto all the ideals of his mother.

Watching medicine fail my child, I developed a crackpot theory:
Life is something we need to stop correcting.
My boy was a pocket universe I could never hope to fathom.
Every one of us is an experiment, and we don't even know what the experiment is testing.
My wife would have known how to talk to the doctors.
Nobody's perfect, she liked to say. But, man, we all fall short so beautifully.

He gets into strife at school and, rather than being medicated, Theo enrols him in a neurological study using coloured dots and musical pitches so Robin could learn to put himself into the same emotional state that his mother once generated.

Brain science knew that even imagination could change our cells for real.

Theo also takes Robin on imaginary journeys to other planets and does all he can to help his son's campaign to help save this one.

Climate change, eco-extinction and politics are dominant, along with Theo's work discovering new planets, and the nature of consciousness.

This book was incredibly emotional and enlightening and I have highlighted many many sections.

Well-being is like a virus.
One self-assured person at home in this world can infect dozens of others.
Wouldn't you like to see an epidemic of infectious well-being?

And this after they had played Wildlife bingo, Robin's new favourite game

How do you know all this stuff, anyway?
Hey, I am a biologist, aren't I?
Ass...trobiologist.
Whoa, mister. You just missed getting a time-out for the rest of your eighth year on Earth.
I was just joking, Dad.
Me, too.

I so enjoyed this book showing the intimate bond between father and son while never being weighed down by any of the heavier stuff. I must go and read Orfeo and The Overstory which have been on my TBR for years.

This is a quite remarkable book – original, thought-provoking and moving, full of interesting ideas and concepts, urgent and very topical. Theo Byrne is an astrobiologist, who has found a method to search for life on other planets. He is the father of 9-year-old Robin, a clever child, inquisitive and passionate, but slightly outside the mainstream, perhaps on the “spectrum”. Both are grieving the loss of their wife and mother, whose recent death has upended their lives. They are also haunted by the destruction of the planet which they observe all around them, and Robin in particular is deeply troubled by this. Theo is offered the chance for his son to be part of a new experimental neurofeedback treatment and he agrees. The change in the boy is astonishing, although with frequent references to Flowers for Algernon (read it if you don’t know it) the reader is right to be suspicious of this new therapy. There were certain threads of the narrative which I didn’t enjoy so much – Theo makes up stories for Robin about other planets and I found this too repetitive – but overall it’s a really compelling story of the relationship between father and son set against our current climate catastrophe.

An uncomfortable and pretty depressing read about the current state of the world, albeit set slightly in the future. Richard Powers had interesting things to say about those people who see what's going on too clearly, and are unable to hide behind the things most of us distract ourselves with (in this case a child). Definite worth reading - intelligent, prescient and compassionate,

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2021
Aaah, this is a tough one: I have to admit that I found this novel incredibly affecting and emotionally disturbing, but I'm not sure whether Powers intended readers to accept the actions of the main character, Theo, uncritically - if so (and that's how many seem to have interpreted the book), that's a problem. The story is told from Theo's point of view, a grieving astrobiologist who recently lost his wife and who is now trying to raise his (at the beginning) seven-year-old son Robin by himself. Robin is deeply traumatized because he has lost his mother and then, shortly after, his dog, he shows severe behavioral problems, but finds purpose in following in his mother's footsteps: She was a lawyer for an NGO aiming to protect the environment. Now Robin wants to help endangered animals, and the state of the natural world becomes new fuel for his depression...

So after The Overstory, Powers is back at ecofiction, but he gives it a new, painful twist: He shows us a young boy who does not have a defence mechanism to deal with the impending environmental catastrophe- and the author basically asks: Isn't he, like Greta Thunberg (who is autistic and features in a very thin disguise), the sane one, aren't the people who perceive his behavior as a problem emotionally stunted and denying reality? There is also an important storyline that introduces a new neuroscientific training method to learn empathy, there is a Donald-Trump-character trying to destroy scientific research that challenges his beliefs, there is lots of astrophysics and astrobiology, hiking, birding, camping. But it all comes together pretty nicely - the dense story is well-paced and well-composed.

But I think it's important to note that Theo is right when he says that his parenting abilities are flawed (like everyone's are to some degree, btw); e.g., the politician at the Capitol is right that he should connect Robin with other children/teenagers who fight for the environment, and he is also unfairly sceptical regading the intentions of childcare professionals: Would they really all go into the field if they generally perceived troubled children as administrative problems that need to be on psychoactive drugs? Granted, I think I would be terrified if a medical professional told me that my child needs medication for their mental health, and I would feel helpless because I would take into consideration that I maybe NOT the best person to judge this (unlike Theo), but would I assume that everyone is out there to harm my child to make their own lives easier? No.

So I have to give this four stars because it really, really rattled me, which is what literature should do, but it's also sometimes a little simplistic and, dare I say, manipulative as it very effectively connects the loss of the mother to the loss of mother nature: The huge impact this move achives glosses over the more questionable parts. Nevertheless, I greatly enjoyed reading this little pageturner.

Who am i to argue with the Booker Prize judges? And why would I want to? Everything and everyone and everywhere in this story is either dead or dying. The chapters of imagined life forms on other planets are a welcome diversion from a family and an earthly world hurtling toward destruction. "I wondered how I might explain the crisis to an anthropologist from Proxima Centauri... Only pure bewilderment kept us from civil war." The problem with writing about ecocide is that there can be no happy ending. (Although the last page is a last ditch effort to do just that.) Beautifully written, amazingly imagined, thoroughly researched, and unremittingly bleak.

Robin is a special boy who struggles with the intensity of his emotions, especially after the death of his mother. A violent altercation at school, between Robin and a classmate, leads to the principal giving Robins father an ultimatum. Unwilling to put his young son on psychotropic drugs he seeks an alternative solution from a neuroscientist friend of the family. So Robin becomes involved in a trial that helps him learn to control his emotions through interactive training with AI brain scans, it all goes well . . . until Robins mother gets involved.

I had a feeling from the start that this would be a tricky one to follow, the best way I can think of describing it is like Jazz, individually the story elements are a confusing cacophony, but brought together they make something beautiful. It also brings to light the stark reality of the younger generations concerns with the state of our planet.

Bewilderment by Richard Powers is a powerful novel set in America at an unspecified time and follows the relationship between widowed father, Theo Byrne and his 9-year-old son Robin. Robin lost his mother at 7 years old and ever since Theo has been trying his very best to parent this unique child alone. When we first meet these characters, Robin has been suspended from school following a violent outbreak and Theo is desperately searching for another way to manage his son without resorting to putting him on psychoactive drugs, despite the warnings from the school. Theo is an astrobiologist and focuses Robin’s interest on the other life-supporting planets he is modelling in his work, visiting each of them together in conversations. Finally, Theo discovers a ground-breaking therapy for Robin which completely changes the course of their lives and relationship forever. Their story is set against a turbulent political and environmental background, one which is not unlike our own both recently and in the challenges we will continue to face into the future.

This is the first of Richard Powers books I have read, I was drawn in by the intriguing synopsis and thoroughly enjoyed this book. The characters were incredibly well written and could feel the internal struggle Theo faced when protecting his son and trying to do his best for him. This story is beautiful and powerful, it explores societal norms and raises important environmental issues. I loved Robin as a character, he is enthusiastic and profound, feels deeply and is completely innocent to the horrors of the world. I was completely drawn into their lives and as the story reaches its conclusion, I dreaded what I suspected the outcome would be for Theo and Robin, yet I was compelled to keep reading. A timely and valuable book. Thanks to NetGalley and Random House UK, Cornerstone for the opportunity to read a digital copy for review.

"Oh, this planet was a good one. And we, too, were good, as good as the burn of the sun and the rain’s sting and the smell of living soil, the all-over song of endless solutions signing the air of a changing world that by every calculation ought never to have been."

Bewilderment is the book that will make your mind run in a circle with thoughts. I was not at all interested in this book at first but the moment I have spotted astrobiology in the blurb, I am a goner. It was the dream of baby Jayasri to be an astrobiologist and work in NASA. But when I saw the amount of physics I have to deal with in high school, I bid goodbye to that dream. Oh well, at least all the random facts I collected even after my farewell to the dream helped me understand this book.

At the core, we have a father and son who are struggling to cope with the loss of Aly. Aly, an animal rights activist who dies in a car accident, is a constant part of the lives of Theo and Robin. As Theo doesn't want to medicate Robin with drugs, he opts for a neural feedback therapy that uses fMRI and brain mapping. After this therapy, we do see visible changes in Robin but what will happen when the treatment is interrupted?

This book reminded me a lot of Weather by Jenny Offill. I forgot much of the plot of that book, but the same claustrophobic political atmosphere can be observed here too. Set in a near-future society, Powers through Robin is asking us to think about what are we doing to our planet? Using the Fermi paradox as a device, Powers explores what is the point of hope when everything seems hopeless? To pace visibly distressed Robin, Theo creates alternative universes using his models. What first starts as a refreshing activity, soon turns into a feverish prayer to find hope that life can be found even in uninhabitable places.

Through Robin's eyes, we see the devastating state of our earth, which made me question what are we going to leave for our next generation. I can't help but observe a Sisyphean quality in the book. The book starts and nearly ends at the same point as a boulder pushed through the mountain. And it made me realize that the life we make between the ups and downs is what matters. The goal is not important but the journey and the impact we make in the journey is what makes one's life meaningful, isn't it?

The second part of the book is surprisingly political. Yes! The scientific jargon was there but the tension created by politics and politicians was so palpable. I couldn't help but compare the political situation in the book with our current situation. It felt surreal to even think about it. Also, I cannot ignore the philosophical undertone in these political scenarios that made me go down a thought spiral. Yet another example of how politicians use their powers to do anything. They don't care about what or who is affected. The greed for power that often affects the common man is not visible because let's face it, the common man was not the concern.

I am amazed by the sheer brilliance of science in this book. Neuroscience has always been my favourite field to explore and astrobiology is an equally interesting field. Combine these with politics and a dash of philosophical undertone, this book is a perfect blend for speculation lovers. It has everything. Myth, metaphysics, evolution, ecocide and love. The love this family share is so sweet to read. I was a crying mess as I read this. From the first chapter till the last, it made me constantly think of my daddy and the times we worked in our garden. I cried, cried, cried and cried some more as I finished the last chapter. And like I previously said, I cannot ignore the Sisyphean quality the story takes. But then again, people leave, people, die but life goes on always. There's a sliver of sunshine even in the darkness after all.

In three words, this book is 'compact, but planetary'.

I would like to thank the publisher for granting me a copy to review.

This is my second read from the Booker Prize Longlist and it did nothing to quell my fears that such books might be above my level of intelligence!

In fact I would go so far as to say this might be the most complex and intelligent book I have ever read. During and immediately upon finishing I was confused, bombarded with information and not all of it at first glance appeared to connect.

I knew I had enjoyed so much of it but I was painfully aware that enjoyment was based only at a superficial level and there was so much I hadn’t appreciated or understood. Ironically, I was one of those oblivious sleepwalkers Robin was fighting so hard to make take notice!

Then, over the weekend something amazing started to happen, connections started to form, realisations materialised and the fog of confusion has started to slowly dissolve.

Now with the benefit of distance away from the complex detail I see this for what it is…a call to arms by Powers. It is an eloquent rant of what he believes is wrong with this world and is urging the reader to wake up and see the beauty of world through his eyes and protect it. What Powers attempts to cover is ambitiously impressive in scope, attempting to describe it to my husband had me stumbling and yet somehow he managed to package it all up in a story about a father and son. A tender and emotional story at that, their evolving relationship was easily my favourite part.

This is a book that makes you think, question and reevaluate the world we live in and one I am still processing, no doubt if I was to write this again in a few days or weeks my understanding may have changed again.

Thank you to @netgalley @penguinrandomhouse for the opportunity to read this unique novel ❤️

A book of unequivocal mastery. My first Richard Powers novel and it will not be the last. From the outset I was captured, a book that took me both emotionally and intellectually, a book that will remain for many months to come. A book that was read on a Kindle, and had more highlights than bookmarks!

A perfect blend of science, environmental catastrophe and the portrayal of the most profoundly affecting relationship between a father and his son that I have ever read .

Theo Byrne is an astrobiologist who after the tragic loss of his wife is left to raise their unusual son Robin. An earnest and kind hearted 9 year old boy, who struggles with the constraints of school, who cares passionately about the animals in danger of extinction and will sit and paint pictures of them meticulously for hours. A boy who faces being kicked out of school if there isn't an intervention of some kind.

Theo, a grieving father, is in the enviable position of both knowledge and circumstance, where he has the ability to take the decision that he wants to find an alternative solution for his son. one that avoids psychoactive drugs and the path of conformity, he believes that his son should be able to develop and grow at his own pace and have the freedom to explore who he is.

With a mix of science fiction and fact, Powers takes us on a journey; one that will have us looking to the stars and travelling to far away planets in the solar system, considering the possibility of life and considering concepts such as the Fermi Paradox as we watch Theo and Robin explore what could be; imagination fueled by extrapolated data.
"So the universe is either pregnant everywhere or barren. If I could tell you which, beyond doubt, would it change your study habits?"
This same journey will have us looking to ourselves, to the power of the human brain and what could be achieved and conquered with resources and intelligent direction. Here we are enlightened with the eight core emotional states in Plutchik's typology, they act as a starting point to what becomes an alternative therapy for Robin; Decoded Neurofeedback changes him in ways that drugs could never hope to.

Constantly puzzled by where fact ended and fiction began, I was enthralled by the wonderous possibility of it all, mesmerized by its scope.

But all of this is just the icing on the cake; at the heart of this tenderly urgent book, is the intimate story of a bold father and his unerring love for his son. The strength it takes to parent alone, while your world has been ripped apart and you are struggling to see how you are supposed to function, without that one person who helped to make sense of the world. The courage it takes to stand up against the complacent and the desensitized populous when your family does not fit the mould; when your son shows compassion and empathy without ego or pride; it asks the question: How can we tell our children the truth about this beautiful imperiled planet?

I loved it! What will I take away with me? A renewed appreciation of the natural world around me, a heightened sense of how precious it is and how it needs to be protected, urgently.
What I will also take away is the joy that there are many, many more Richard Powers books that I have yet to discover.

Thank you #netgalley #randomhouse and #hutchheinemann for this ARC in return for an honest review.

Bewilderment is an interesting book compiling multiple genre strands to entice the reader. The pure passion and connection to the natural world is beautifully drawn with intoxicating descriptions of the wilderness of America. This primal relationship is then balanced by the human relationship between the father and son - Theo and Robin - as they find a route through life following the death of Aly (wife/mother). The emotional damage caused to the fragile psyche of Robin by his bereavement coupled seems to manifest itself in the physical destruction of the natural world around him. To comfort his son Theo creates other possibilities on new celestial planets where a clean slate exists.
Robin's disconnect to the human world, is explored by Powers as his character undergoes experimental treatment (cerebral manipulation) to explore the interconnectedness of all life and the untapped possibilities of the world as yet understood.
At times the book suffers from its own ambitions, becoming disjointed, but overall Bewilderment is a book to recommend and will certainly encourage many a discussion. It offers more than the recent glut of environmental literature that has hits shelves recently and will undoubtedly linger in the memory long after completion due to its devastating climax.

I’m going to preface my review by saying that The Overstory by Richard Powers was my Wow!! book for 2019, because I think that may have coloured my expectations going into Bewilderment.
When I think of the story from a bit of distance I think it is fantastic. But when I break it down into components I find myself remembering things that were irking me as I read.
The first thing was the use of italics for Robin’s speech without any use of speech marks. This was quite distracting for me for a short while because I was trying to figure out why only Robin’s dialogue was written this way. Was he dead? Was he a figment of Theo’s imagination? Was Theo remembering past conversations with Robin? And so on. Perhaps I read too many mysteries because until it was clarified that Robin existed and this was just a particular writing quirk employed by the author I was busy speculating on the meaning behind it. This feeling of distraction early on interfered with me bonding with Robin’s character, who was actually a sweet, caring, sensitive soul.
[WARNING: THIS WHOLE PARAGRAPH IS A SPOILER!!!] The second thing, which became a huge issue for me, was the discussion of Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes early in the book. Immediately I knew how the book was going to go. I was hoping the author would at the very least keep things ambiguous until near the end if he was going to follow that route, but he didn’t so I missed out on the elements of anticipation and suspense while reading. If I could change one thing about this entire book it would be that Flowers For Algernon had not been mentioned at all. Yes, those who have read that book would have picked up on the similarity – but not until much, much further on in the book.
The above probably makes it sound as though I didn’t enjoy the book. I did. A lot. I think it was quite brilliantly done. Some of the more scientific nitty gritty went over my head, but I didn’t feel that it was information I needed to be able to enjoy or understand what was happening. I could feel Robin’s bewilderment and frustration over the environmental destruction being wrought on the planet, and Theo’s helplessness to provide Robin with the answers he needed and his despair and fear as he fought to retain control over the management of his son’s condition as he thought best.
It was sad and devastating story, but ultimately left me unmoved.

Richard Powers is a writer who tugs you into his narrative so that you daren't pull yourself away - I read this in two sittings in a weekend, tied so strongly to the characters.

This is the story of Robin and his dad Theo: Robbie is a troubled child, perhaps somewhere on the neurodiverse spectrum, and the trials that he finds life delivers him are awkward and destructive; Theo is an astrobiologist whose work concentrates on looking for potential signs of life elsewhere in the universe. Together Robbie and Theo must navigate life after the death of Theo's wife and Robbie's mother.

Both characters are tangible in so many ways - the traumas that Robin experiences in life are real, and so are his fascinations with the intricacies of the environment; he cares deeply about the destruction of the planet. Theo is a dad trying to manage work alongside caring for his son. Eventually engaging with an experimental MRI programme, things change for the two, yet the end reveals a sad unravelling which will stay with you long after you put the book down.

Sad, funny and real, this is such a good story.

Astrobiologist Theo Byrne spends his time looking for life on other planets but is most concerned about the welfare of his nine-year-old son, Robin. Since Theo’s wife and Robin’s mother, Alyssa, died two years ago, Robin has struggled at school and with life in general, and Theo has come under increasing pressure to accept a psychological diagnosis for his son and put him on meditation. Instead, Theo turns to an experimental treatment being pioneered by one of his colleagues, ‘Decoded Neurofeedback’, which guides ‘trainees’ to mimic the brain states of ‘targets’ who have deliberately elicited particular emotions in themselves while their brains were scanned with fMRI. Because Alyssa participated in an earlier phase of the experiment, Robin can be matched to his mother’s euphoric brain patterns – a process which puts him into a state of beatific calm. Having been constantly screaming at the pain of living in a dying world, Robin now embraces the beauty of endangered species and becomes a viral news story. At the same time, Theo witnesses the world beginning to unravel. Bewilderment, Richard Powers’s thirteenth novel, is uneasily set between our present and a slightly different version of it, giving the book a speculative twist while not allowing us to feel safely distant from the America it describes:

That first Tuesday in November, online conspiracy theories, compromised ballots, and bands of armed poll protesters undermined the integrity of the vote in six different battleground states. The country slid into three days of chaos. On Saturday, the President declared the entire election invalid. He ordered a repeat, claiming it would require at least three more months to secure and implement.

As readers of Powers’s previous novel, the brilliant The Overstory, will know, Powers has a bleak view of our environmental future, and Bewilderment is, if possible, even darker than its predecessor. However, it’s also lit up by the stories about other planets, other peoples and other extinctions and rebirths that Theo tells Robin, and by Robin himself, who seems to symbolically switch between two ways of responding to our current predicament: mourning what we have lost or embracing it before it’s gone. If there’s a fault in this novel, it’s that Powers occasionally gives into the temptation to end paragraphs with a too-easy, too-sentimental line; but in general, he keeps impressively far away from sentimentality for a book about a ‘special’ child. A beautiful, if discomforting read. 4.5 stars.

This is an intellectually and emotionally challenging look at life on Earth through the microcosm of Theo Byrne, an astrobiologist, and his young son, Robin.
The author paints a chilling and provocative picture of the near future with Code Red Air zones, and clusters of lethal bacteria spreading up and down the Florida coast in record heat.
A father's love for his troubled son permeates every single page and watching over them both is the ghost of the boy's mother, Alyssa.
There are small triumphs and big tragedies, and Richard Powers makes one face some serious questions about the planet on which we live. The empathy is all engrossing and the science incredibly frightening.

Bewilderment is the lyrical story of a widowed father Theo and his sensitive, artistic, neurodiverse son Robin. They are both learning to cope on this planet with the loss of vivacious environmental-campaigner mother Alyssa, while imagining (and in the case of astrobiologist Theo) looking for extraterrestrial life in far away star systems.

Robbie isn’t coping well at school and, in an effort to avoid prescription medications, Theo starts homeschooling him and enrols him on some experimental neuro-feedback therapy in a family friend’s lab. This has unexpected results, both positive and negative, which have radical effects on the small family unit.

The novel tackles the eternal question of “why are humans such jerk-faces?” and explores why compassion is a dangerous trait to possess. A great thought-provoking read, definitely deserving its place on the Booker longlist. Powers has written a number of critically acclaimed books - I think it’s time for me to read some more of them!

Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for providing a review copy in exchange for honest feedback.

A beautiful story of parenthood, of the lengths we will go to to protect our children, while at the same time feeling their future slip out of our grasp as the environment crashes around us. The writing is hauntingly powerful and made me stop in my tracks many times. I would recommend this to anyone who appreciates great writing and storytelling.