BEWILDERMENT

by Richard Powers

Richard Power’s gift is to take monumental cosmic concerns and turn them into sublime human moments. On one level this story is simple and yet it conveys so much: the wonder and awe available to us if we pay attention to the natural world, our conscious and suppressed anxieties about it’s future and the boundlessness of parental love and grief.

A man, a widowed astrobiologist, is doing his best to raise his unusual son on his own. When the boy has yet another meltdown at school, his father takes him away to the Smokey Mountains to study the stars and plant life, and together they dream up life on other planets and remember the boy’s mother. On their return to the city, an opportunity arises to take part in a psychological trial to modify the boy’s behaviour and help him control his emotions. At first it shows great promise, but the father fears how it will change the boy he loves. 

Those who have read Power’s previous Pulitzer winning novel, The Overstory, will understand how powerfully he can focus in on intimate human moments and then swing outwards to give us panoramic perspectives spanning time and space. In Bewilderment he manages the same trick, touching on global warming, interplanetary exploration, animal conservation, the defunding of scientific research and political mayhem. Yet in some ways I found this book more moving, perhaps because of its narrower scope. At its heart, is the love between the boy and his father. Another powerfully moving and thought-provoking book from a master storyteller. 

- Recommended by Kat

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