Bewilderment

By: Richard Powers

Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini

Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins

Publisher's summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2021.

The brand new novel from the Pulitzer prize-winning, booker prize-shortlisted author of The Overstory.

Picked as one of the Best Books of 2021 in the Sunday Times.

Theo Byrne is a promising young astrobiologist who has found a way to search for life on other planets dozens of light years away. He is also the widowed father of a most unusual nine-year-old. His son, Robin, is funny, loving and filled with plans. He thinks and feels deeply, adores animals and can spend hours painting elaborate pictures. He is also on the verge of being expelled from third grade, for smashing his friend's face with a metal thermos.

What can a father do, when the only solution offered to his rare and troubled boy is to put him on psychoactive drugs? What can he say when his boy comes to him wanting an explanation for a world that is clearly in love with its own destruction? The only thing for it is to take the boy to other planets, while all the while fostering his son's desperate campaign to help save this one.

©2021 Richard Powers (P)2021 Penguin Audio

Genuinely intriguing and addictive story!

I couldn't wait for the next chapter after the other. The author took the much needed time to paint this world and transcend the reader to his without rushing or making presumptions. Loved it!

A Ripper Yarn

I loved this book. An intriguing story about a father and his highly sensitive son. Wonderful insights abound, with beautiful writing and piercing observations on the state of the planet’s natural world and our relationship with it. Powerfully narrated. Highly recommended!

Bewildering times and a special father/son story

Powers storytelling gifts delivered the amazing Overstory - this time the tale seems, at first glance, far smaller in scope. It is mainly the story of a father and his son, who's on an autism spectrum. Against the backdrop of an increasingly authoritarian and anti-science government, the scientist father, after the loss of his wife, does his best to give his special child all the love and care he can. The story is thoughtful, philosophical in parts, uplifting occasionally, heartbreaking, too. As a father, it's hard not to be there with the man, to worry with him, to struggle for the right answers and paths. We're living in perilous times, times that need more love and, yes, more science. We've barely scratched the surface on the AI topic, as this novel shows, there wonders ahead - IF we refuse to be ruled by ultra-conservatives who'd like to regress to pre-science times.

Promising more than it delivers

Good idea in the beginning, with many important topics touched upon but treated in a shallow, pretentious way. One dimensional, paper characters and repetitive observations about the world based on a simplistic binary good-bad made it not worth spending time on.