Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Bewilderment is not just a story about a father’s struggles with a boy with emotional difficulties. Of course, there is the journey of the boy’s initially successful response to an experimental therapeutic technique followed by his regression when the technique is outlawed. This narrative arc does have the achingly powerful beauty of the consciously invoked Flowers for Algernon. But Bewilderment is more about the predicament of modern America. The wealthiest generation of Americans has a shockingly high proportion of its youth on psychotropic medication. At the same time our society’s refusal to coexist with other parts of the natural world is leading to habitat loss, mass extinction and climate change. For Powers, these two problems are causally linked. To put it into a sentence sounds trite, but Powers writes eloquently about humankind’s loss of connection to nature as what is leading to both problems. The protagonist’s father is himself an astrobiologist searching for marks of life on distant planets. All the while he finds life on this planet increasingly bewildering as the most intelligent species seems more concerned about its own inventions than the real world around us. Powers uses a back and forth between the computer models the father generates of how extraterrestrial life could evolve with observations about his struggles to save his son. In the end, the father wonders whether the various emotional difficulties his son struggles with are just the proper reaction to a disintegrating planet. It’s a powerful depiction of contemporary life in middle class America. While many may find it pessimistic or even depressing, perhaps it is a necessary balance to the overly rosy accounts we often tell ourselves about the greatness of our nation. Recommended to all who love good narratives, are concerned about the state of our planet and are willing to handle a picture of our society that is critical at best.