Spirited Book Club discusses Bewilderment, a heartrending novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning and #1 New York Times best-selling author, Richard Powers. The online club is FREE, register here.
An Instant New York Times Bestseller
A New York Times Notable Book of 2021
Shortlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize and Longlisted for the 2021 National Book Award for Fiction
A Best Book/Best Novel of 2021 at NPR, Newsweek, The Boston Globe, Audible, Goodreads, Christian Science Monitor, Library Journal, Garden & Gun Magazine, and many more
Book Overview
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?
Reviews for Bewilderment
“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
“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, New York Times Book Review (cover review)
“Although it is a novel, it is one of the most sacred texts I have read in a long time.” ― Sheri Brown, Spirited Book Club
“Achingly current and wise.” ― Bethanne Patrick, Washington Post
“[A] taut ecological parable…. A touching novel that offers a vital message with uncommon sympathy and intelligence.” —Kirkus (starred review)
FIRST BOOK CLUB MEETING for March 10: Read the first half or more...
FIRST BOOK CLUB MEETING for March 24: Read the last half
++Book discussion facilitated by Sheri Brown
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About Richard Powers
Richard Powers (born June 18, 1957) is an American novelist whose works explore the effects of modern science and technology. His novel The Echo Maker won the 2006 National Book Award for Fiction. He has also won many other awards over the course of his career, including a MacArthur Fellowship. As of 2021, Powers has published thirteen novels and has taught at the University of Illinois and Stanford University. He won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Overstory.