Bewilderment

A Novel

De: Richard Powers

Narrado por: Edoardo Ballerini

An Oprah's Book Club Selection

Shortlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize

Longlisted for the 2021 National Book Award for Fiction

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

I never believed the diagnoses the doctors settled on my son. When a condition gets three different names over as many decades, when it goes from non-existent to the country's most commonly diagnosed childhood disorder in one generation, when two different physicians want to prescribe three different medications, there's something wrong....

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, even while fostering his son's desperate campaign to help save this one.

"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)

©2021 Richard Powers (P)2021 Random House Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

"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)

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

Depressing and overated

I struggled with this book, I wanted to like it, the accolades were all there, the author sounded interesting, but if you use books as a form of escapism, I urge you to steer clear of this one. The characters and reality were too genuine. It is a great book but I did not enjoy it. Does that make sense?

Loved it!

I read a very snarky editorial in the Times, and nearly didn't pick this up. His beautiful, open-hearted interview with Ezra Klein convinced me otherwise.

We are in deep trouble, fellow humans. What are we going to do?

Profoundly Bewildering

I love this story in spite of the fact it “bewildered” me with its beautiful descriptions of all life, both real and imagined. At the same time it leaves me with such deep despair for the earth and all living things, animals and plants, for all we human beings have known and damaged—the story’s depth and beauty saddens and heals at the same time and leaves me in tears. Its questions are profound! Underneath all is a touching story of father and son and loss, with a slice of hope.

Great read

I loved the book the way he described science and thoughts and feelings
BEAUTIFUL Loved it.!

Loved it until the ending

well read and performed. fascinating. I would have been happier with a different ending.

Breathtaking.

A lovely lovely listen. Thank you for creating this masterpiece. I highly recommend it. Yes

Really great

What a sad, beautiful book about impending doom, both planetary and individual. The reader brought the right amount of gravity to the story. This is one I will be thinking about for a long time.

Wonderment

I’m excited to start this for book club this month…I enjoyed the Overstory even though I thought they spent too much time in the tree😜
Update: what can I say that hasn’t been said eloquently about this thought provoking novel…a simple question… why are we going backwards asks the boy and I ask myself this very question every day. Remember the days of awe and wonder when the space missions took off? When Carl Sagan was a “influencer”? We embraced the other and weren’t fearful of differences but broadened our world by exploring the nuisances….read this book and try and look at it through Theo and Robin’s eyes!

Well performed

This is a pleasantly performed Audible. I found the story bland and predictable. It is very similar to Keyes’ Flowers for Algernon.

Wow! What a story!!

That was a powerful story! I absolutely loved the way Powers stretched my imagination and took me to other universes!