Echo Maker

This is my fourth Richard Powers book in as many weeks. When the Austin paper reviewed The Echo Maker prior to its release, I was intrigued and drawn to this author with an immediate urgency to read him. First I read the beautiful and opera-like The Time of our Singing and followed with the tender Galatea 2.2, two very different stories that demonstrate Powers' narrative alacrity. (Now add to that The Gold Bug Variations, which I plan on reviewing as an equally powerful novel. )Then I read The Echo Maker.Read the first few pages of the book. If you are not hooked, then this is not your type of literature. I was so swept up by his magnificently poetic description of the sandhill crane migration on the Platte River in Nebraska that I was compelled to study more about these birds on my own. The cranes are both a reflection of the story's concern of species preservation and are also allegorical, metaphorical. Powers' generous mind and renaissance intelligence weaves the story of the crane migration into issues of neuroscience and neuro-cognition as it soars into the mystery thriller plot of the story.This is a Pulitzer-worthy novel, perhpas too intelligent for what passes as Pulitzer these days. It is easily one of the best contemporary novels I have ever read, along with his books The Gold Bug Variations, Galatea 2.2, and The Time of our Singing. Add to that Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace; Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy; One Hundred years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez; The Counterlife, by Philip Roth; White Teeth, by Zadie Smith; Ada, or Ador, by Vladimir Nabokov; The Severed Head (or anything by this author), by Iris Murdoch; and Harlot's Ghost, by Norman Mailer.I am so driven to tell others to read this beautiful story that although I can not give the description it deserves, I must persuade readers to purchase it. It is a combination of naturalist concerns(the preservation of the cranes and the physical descriptions), neuro-science, dysfunctional family (with utter compassion and insight) and suspense thriller. Although there is an ethereal glow that swirls in every page, there is a definite, concrete and suspenseful plot. Powers has been compared to DeLillo; I agree only surfacely. Both are linguistically erudite and have dense meaning packed between words and thoughts, but DeLillo is more elliptical and ambiguous, while Powers has concrete fasteners to keep the plot driven. Additionally, he has more heart, the heart of Marcel Proust. It would be difficult to make a film of any of DeLillo's books I've read, but Powers has an immediacy, a muscular story that would transfer well to cinema (where of course they could ruin it if they made it too linear).The Editorial reviews reveal enough of the outline of the story; my intention is to tell readers just how profound is the experience of reading this novel. I was literally and literarily transported while reading and was engaged deeply by the third sentence. I am an RN that works in a neuro-psychiatric treatment center on an adolescent ward, so I usually avoid the subject matter in novels and look for different experiences; however, this story transcends the subject matter. Powers takes an aerial view of the life of an individual, the loneliness and solitude, while the characters strive to bridge the gap and explore the gap of connectedness. There is not one false note or sliver of self-consciousness in this exquisitely constructed story. Pathos without any treacly sentiment, startling science written poetically, and ancient rhythms humming all over. Powers has an amazing grasp of the utter incomprehensibility of time, and as in his previous novels, time is a major theme. I could read this story for the passages about time(and the cranes and the imagery) alone. However, there is a solid suspense mystery thriller, also, that keeps you on the edge even while you fall in love with the writing itself and go back and read passages just for its beauty.Mark Schluter suffers a closed-head injury after his truck veers off the road. He is then the first diagnosed case of Capgras syndrome sustained from injury rather than psychiatric etiology. Powers uses Capgras syndrome (the neurological disorder causing inability to recognize those closest to him while perceiving others accurately) to explore philosophical issues of memory, human fragility, and the vague recognition of the human brain. He delves into consciousness, reciprocity, the two-way valve between the head and the heart of the self, and the division between the human and the natural world. Powers' theme is dualism--familiar vs defamiliarization, and how that echoes in our perceptions of self and our relationship with our family and our environment, both personal and ecological.Mark feels exiled from his sister Karin, whom he no longer recognizes, and Karin in turn feels exiled from her brother, shattered at the way this disease symbolizes her separateness from her own self and the world around her.Powers' explorations of neurology and ecology render a chilly warmth to the story. His heart pumps clearly throughout the pages, and he bridges the (DeLillo)authorial distance by making accessible the burning concerns of everyman. The coldness of Nebraska and his virtuosity in geological and georgaphical descriptions is heated by the eerie passion of the story, the tenderness of the characters and the haunting allegorical presence of the cranes.This book has circulated through my dreams on several occasions; The Echo Maker certainly lives up to its title. Also, the characters are well drawn and sympathetic, and you care deeply about what happens to them. Interestingly, although the author's main protagonist in Galatea 2.2 was named Richard Powers, I felt him undulating enigmatically in this novel even more so than the former.There is something so powerful and reverberating and epic about The Echo Maker that you want to embrace the author. It is sublime, soulful, exalting, eternal, and yet grounded and accessible.

This is my first Richard Powers' novel (and it won't be my last). I picked it up because I've been wanting to read more recent American fiction (post-911). This book won the National Book Award in 2006 (contrary to what The New Yorker review states on the book's Amazon.com page) and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. I won't go into the plot; that's covered nicely on the book's Amazon.com or Goodreads pages. (At the Amazon page, click "See all Editorial Reviews" to expand that section.)Let me say first how impressed I am with Mr. Powers' skill as a writer. As a poet and novelist, I can say that his word craft is superb. So is his ability to mix into his fictional world elements of other genres. Reading certain passages of The Echo Maker reminded me of reading Moby-Dick; here, Powers weaves in zoology (the cranes) and neurophysiology (Dr. Weber). In parts it was a very pleasurable and fascinating read. It tackles some of our most foundational questions: Who am I? And, How (and why) do I know who I say that I am? What he's done with the English language in this fiction is near poetic and, in moments, near epic.The danger of this beautiful prose, though, is that you become entranced by it, both as a reader and as a writer. At times I was left wondering: where is the story here? who are these characters? At times while reading I felt like the brain-damaged Mark: "He just rode those sentences, their boxcar rhythm" (p. 50). It felt like that for me as I was reading, sometimes, and I wondered if Mr. Powers was winking at his readers there. I read this novel in several sittings, just riding the beautiful rhythms Mr. Powers laid out. It was a pretty journey, and I saw some fantastic scenery along the way, but the destination was not all it was cracked up to be. As the lady once remarked: "There is no there there."Also, the novel sagged a bit under its own weight, and in the final hundred pages it felt repetitious. I did not find Karin, the sister, to be very believable. She just didn't feel right to me as a fully believable person. And I think this is only because Mr. Powers is a man, and he's writing a woman. That's a very difficult (if not impossible) thing to do, I think. Kudos to him for trying; it just doesn't work for me.The story line jumps from character to character, intertwining, and sometimes feels like it's wandering a bit. The gorgeous writing pulled me along more than the development of the story or the development of the characters. Always in the story background, periodically bubbling up, is the mystery of who wrote the note (and why), and will Mark "heal"? The ending was a little bit of a letdown, just because the force and strength of what preceded it was so great. It was satisfying enough.I can see why "the critics" enjoyed this book and heaped so much praise on it. Mr. Powers is "a writer's writer." The Echo Maker is filled with prose that is deep and rich and compelling; it stands among the finest fiction I've ever read. The story will make you think about what it really means to be "you", and who exactly those other "you's" around you are, or are not. Come along for the beautiful and unique ride, to feel the "boxcar rhythm" of the tracks Mr. Powers has set down for you. In the end, you just might find a different "you" waiting.

I always jump on a new Richard Powers novel as soon as it comes out in paper. However this time I was a bit anxious because `The Echo Maker' had won the 2006 National Book Award. If you want to see what I mean, go to the NBA's Web site ([...]) and see how many of the past winners you've read, enjoyed, or even heard of. For some reason the NBA normally goes to some incredibly boring jeremiad on the angst of being a middle class white man in America. While `The Echo Maker' is thankfully not that, it is my least favorite of all of Mr. Power's novels.I'm not sure why literary critics like books like this. The plot is interesting and weaves, in Mr. Powers' normal fashion, elements of life, science, and philosophy in an articulate manner. However in his past books I always had the feeling that Mr. Powers really had a gut understanding of the science and was able to reflect on it in such a way as to make us see the relevance to everyday lives; this is not the case with `The Echo Maker.' You more or less get the feeling that the science, neurophysiology in this case, was a `cut and paste' from Web sites. Also at least some of the information about Sandhill Cranes, an important part of the plot, was either out of date or misinformed.Having said all this I still recommend this book for many reasons. Richard Powers is in my opinion, one of the very best novelists writing in America today. His work is solid and will stand the test of time. Why his much superior previous works were not given the attention of this one I attribute more to the strange tastes of the literati than to Powers' talent. Obviously some Amazon readers really liked this book and one review said the important thing to me; if this is the first Richard Powers' book you read it will likely make you want to read more.

Ma sœur a adoré ce livre, reçu très rapidement comme toujours avec Amazon.Choix énorme et bonne qualité.

Ich war extrem überrascht, wie schnell und tief mich Handlung, Stil und Inhalt gefesselt hat, ein kluges, zutiefst menschliches Buch, das auch noch Humor hat! Dies hier wird vermutlich einer meiner 20 Lieblingsromane! LESEN. Bin gespannt auf die anderen Romane dieses Autors! Mehr davon!

The book is an awesome read. It will change our perceptions of self and identity in the context of a brain damage. It's also a thriller.

Powers leaves a compelling tail encompassing many different threats. Great storytelling.A writer’s author. No one can weave words the way this guy can.

very interesting about history and birdiary and lots of stuff I knew nowt about..but don't ask me to recall it now..this Richard was recommended by Margaret Atwood in her Burning Questions essays