Fiction Fun! Reads Richard Powers, Bewilderment (2021)
Friday, June 26, Early Discussion from 6:30 p.m., Book Discussion from 7:00 – 8:30 p.m. in the Guild Room.
This novel followed The Overstory, which we’ve read. Here’s how the Booker Prize committee described it: “An astrobiologist thinks of a creative way to help his rare and troubled son in Richard Powers’ deeply moving and brilliantly original novel.” As a New Yorker summary notes, the son “undergoes an experimental neurofeedback therapy that can imprint other people’s emotions—including his mother’s—onto him. Before long, the treatment transforms Robin into an almost oracular figure, a social-media activist devoted to protecting the earth against mankind.”
Bewilderment sustains Powers’ environmental concerns in a strongly emotional work.
