Bewilderment: A Novel

by Richard Powers

Overview

AN OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB SELECTION
An Instant New York Times Bestseller
Shortlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize
Longlisted for the 2021 National Book Award for Fiction
Longlisted for the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction

A heartrending new novel from the Pulitzer Prize–winning and #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Overstory.

The astrobiologist Theo Byrne searches for life throughout the cosmos while single-handedly raising his unusual nine-year-old, Robin, following the death of his wife. Robin is a warm, kind boy who spends hours painting elaborate pictures of endangered animals. He’s also about to be expelled from third grade for smashing his friend in the face. As his son grows more troubled, Theo hopes to keep him off psychoactive drugs. He learns of an experimental neurofeedback treatment to bolster Robin’s emotional control, one that involves training the boy on the recorded patterns of his mother’s brain…

With its soaring descriptions of the natural world, its tantalizing vision of life beyond, and its account of a father and son’s ferocious love, Bewilderment marks Richard Powers’s most intimate and moving novel. At its heart lies the question: How can we tell our children the truth about this beautiful, imperiled planet?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393881158
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	09/21/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	21,472
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Richard Powers is the author of thirteen novels, including The Overstory and Orfeo, and the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Award. He lives in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains.

Hometown:

Urbana, Illinois

Date of Birth:

June 18, 1957

Place of Birth:

Evanston, Illinois

Education:

M.A., University of Illinois, 1979

Editorial Reviews

"An unabashed tearjerker.... The most moving and inspiring of all Powers’s books."

The New Republic - Gish Jen

"A moving depiction of filial love, as father and son confront a world of ‘invisible suffering on unimaginable scales."

The New Yorker

"The tenderness between father and son seem[s] so real and heartfelt that the novel becomes its own empathy machine. What’s more powerful, though, is how the emotions Bewilderment evokes expand far beyond the bond of father and son to embrace the living world."

Minneapolis Star Tribune - Ellen Atkins

"In Bewilderment, [Powers's] mastery strikes a new vein.…it raises goosebumps and breaks our hearts."

The Brooklyn Rail - John Domini

"Richard Powers is one of our country’s greatest living writers. He composes some of the most beautiful sentences I’ve ever read. I’m in awe of his talent."

Oprah Winfrey

"[A]stounding.…a must-read novel.…It’s urgent and profound and takes readers on a unique journey that will leave them questioning what we’re doing to the only planet we have."

Associated Press - Rob Merrill

"One of America’s most ambitious and imaginative novelists.... In a year of unprecedented worldwide drought, fire, and flooding, [Bewilderment] couldn’t be timelier.... Whether concerning family or nature, this heart-rending tale warns us to take nothing for granted."

Boston Globe - Alexander C. Kafka

"Extraordinary.…Powers’s insightful, often poetic prose draws us at once more deeply toward the infinitude of the imagination and more vigorously toward the urgencies of the real and familiar stakes rattling our persons and our planet."

Tracy K. Smith

"Powers [has] an emotional core to everything he writes, and this sets him apart from nearly everyone."

Air Mail - David Yaffe

"[P]oignant…Bewilderment is a cri de coeur.…this is a hauntingly intimate story set within the privacy of one family trapped in the penumbra of mourning."

Washington Post - Ron Charles

"Bewilderment is a big book about what matters most.…a brilliant, engrossing, and ultimately heartbreaking book."

Seattle Times - David Laskin

"Powers succeeds in engaging both head and heart. And through its central story of bereavement, this novel of parenting and the environment becomes a multifaceted exploration of mortality."

The Economist

"A heartrending tale of loss.…Powers continues to raise bold questions about the state of our world and the cumulative effects of our mistakes."

NPR - Heller McAlpin

"Achingly current and wise."

Washington Post - Bethanne Patrick

"Intimate.…Powers is an essential member of the pantheon of writers who are using fiction to address climate change."

Los Angeles Times - Carolyn Kellogg

"You could think of it as ‘The Innerstory’: It is about how and whether we see the world we inhabit.... It is enchanting, and it is devastating."

The Ezra Klein Show - Ezra Klein

"[Powers] wants to challenge our innate anthropocentrism, both in literature and how we live."

New York Times - Alexandra Alter

"Remarkable.... Bewilderment channels both the cosmic sublime and that of the vast American outdoors, resting confidently in a lineage with Thoreau and Whitman, Dillard and Kerouac."

The Guardian - Rob Doyle

"As in The Overstory, Powers seamlessly yet indelibly melds science and humanity, hope and despair."

St. Louis Post-Dispatch - Dale Singer

"Nothing short of transportive."

Newsweek

"Immersive and astonishing.…Powers captures the tragedy of a species that could, but perhaps won’t, become a lasting part of a cosmic menagerie. But in this absorbing and effortlessly readable tale he seems to have also found uplifting poetry in our despair."

Nautilus - Caleb Scharf