The New York Times review of Power’s Booker-shortlisted novel quite aptly summarizes both the plot and the feel of the book by saying: ‘Bewilderment is equal parts earnest opinion page essay (humans + nature = yikes) and middling Netflix science fiction product (boy reconnects with dead mother through high tech).’ Coming into it, I didn’t bear such dismissing thoughts about this really hyped novel; rather, I had picked up this book on the genuine, touching, and trustworthy recommendation of Eric’s (@lonesomereader), and thereby I had high hopes of reading something inspiring here. Sadly though, NYTimes’s review came to second my angry feelings about this book which I finished reading with much dread and irritation.
The novel is about an astrologist whose animal-rights-activist wife has recently passed away in a car crash, and his nine-year-old son Robin, who struggles with some mental health issues, causing him to act severely at times. Although the novel has no parts or chapters, it can, by the reading of it, be divided into two parts. At the beginning, the novel mostly consists of the father-son relationship as they mourn the death of Alyssa and travel to other planets, plenty of which apparently not only exist but are quite accessible to casual visits.
Taking a break from my sarcastic tone, I would say that this part was probably the part of the book that I mostly enjoyed. It touched me, as Eric’s recommendation suggested. Powers, whom I haven’t read before, came off as a brilliant writer, his sentences reached down to the matter and conveyed feelings, thoughts, and observations with both clarity and feel. I would even say I fell in love with the book for a while as I descended deeper into this troublesome father-son relationship, where the father struggled to parent his son who increasingly grew eccentric, angry, and lost control over his emotions. Drowned in the emotions, I even discarded the lack of details in the book about the space-travel, family’s financial income, the improbability of the setting, and so on.
As long as this tension between father-son lasted, the novel felt real and honest and spoke to me on a serious level. However, as the novel transits into the second part with introduction of scientific-tech to treat Robin’s psychological issues, it lost its genuineness and became a ‘Netflix Sci-Fi movie’.
This improbable resolution to the father-son intense relationship took this novel from being something close to the heart to something close to the mind and harsh criticism poured. The friction between the father-son which grabbed the reader’s attention and generated sympathy turned into this gooey, fantastical, overly-sweetened, cringey, and eventually repulsive story where Robin becomes a naïve, ambitious, superficial, and unsympathetic activist; a fictionalized version of Greta Gerwig. What’s worse is his father becoming equally as unreasonable, stoically critical, and cynical about the world’s problem of climate change, ecosystem, cruelty of media, unsupportive policy towards space-exploration and so on. And while I continued reading to hopefully find some refuge in the ending, there the novel completely collapsed on itself as it ended with a death with the intention of appearing tragic.
At the end, Power’s ‘Bewilderment’, despite it overhyped acclaim, fails to be anything it could’ve been: a touching story of father-son relationship, a successful satire on world’s problem and mankind’s aloofness, or a thrilling sci-fi – instead, it becomes this cringey and irritating read as it forces to be a mixture of each element.
Ratings: 3/5 *** November 2, 2021_