Bewilderment

 by Richard Powers

This is the latest book by Powers.  It is one of the books on the Booker list this year.

I read Powers previous book Overstory, which won the Pulitzer Prize.  As I recall, I did not like it.  I did not like the characters and I think I was in disbelief that one of the characters would turn in one or some members of the group.

This book is about an single-parent Astrophysicist.  The man's child has some un-diagnosed disorder, autisim, ADHD.  The man's wife was a high energy activist who died of cancer.  Both the man and his son remember her and miss her terribly.  The boy wants to see videos of his mother making presentations in front of government committees.  He seems desperate to stay connected to her.

The boy has frequent, sometimes violent meltdowns.  As the book opens the father and son are on a camping trip.   The boy has been taken out of school because he attacked another boy.  The father and son like looking at the stars and the father makes up stories about what life is like on some real/make-believe stars.  These planets have various lifeforms, many quite different than life on earth.  This is the father's work in real life, speculating on potential life forms in the universe.

Prior to the wife/mother's death the man and his wife are invited to take part in a scientific experiment being run by a former friend/lover of the wife.  They each are put in a booth and told to think about some emotions and their brain activity is monitored.  The woman is able to watch the images of her husband's brain activity and vice versa.

The father is really having difficulty handling his son and trying to decide if the son needs to be medicated.  In desperation he goes to the Doctor who did the experiments on him and his wife asking for professional advice about his son.  The Doctor explains they are now using the equipment to treat people to help them learn to manage their emotions.  He asks the man if his son would like to be a test subject.

The man agrees.  The therapy seems to help the boy almost immediately.  He becomes calmer.  He talks about having "people" in the machine who help him. As part of the process the boy is exposed to his mother's brain activity from the experiment she participated in.  The boy is really pleased to be connected with his mother.

The man and the boy are reading the book Flowers for Algernon about about and a mentally disabled man (Charlie) who are made smarter... so you know what is coming....  This seemed a bit lame.

In the story there is a horrific president (like Trump).  This president is intent on destroying funding on science activities. 

The only reference to Bewilderment is on Page 238 "That first Tuesday in November, online conspiracy theories, compromised ballots, and bands of armed polled protesters undermined the integrity of the vote....I wondered how I might explain the crisis to an anthropologist from Proxima Centaurti  In this place, with such a species, trapped in such technologies, even a simple head count grew impossible. Only pure bewilderment kept us from civil war"

Definition: Bewilderment: a feeling of being perplexed and confused

 The father actually speaks before a committee in support of programs he is working on but funding for a planned project is cut.  The Doctor who is working with them man's son tells him his lab has also lost its funding so he can no longer treat the boy.  The boy starts to deteriorate, his curiosity, energy declines.  

Eventually the father and the boy go camping again.  During the night the boy leaves the tent and goes out into the river. The father finds him half frozen in the current and is unable to save him.

I just read a review of the book in the New York times that says it is sentimental and not as complex as Overstory.  I think I agree.  The contrast -- the father being an astrophysicist and his speculations/storytelling about other worlds and his inability to find a way for his son to a way to happily exist in the natural, non-tech induced world was a bit of an obvious construct.

For me Powers again asked us to look at what we are asked to consider what we are doing to our planet.  While the story may have been weak I enjoyed it more/disliked it less than The Overstory.