General info: Novel, published in 2006
Storytelling: 6 – I have wanted to read this book for awhile but always seemed to set it aside to pick up more adventurous and sexy books. The content (Midwestern people struggling with identity after a head injury…wah wah) isn’t exactly exciting to me. However, I’m a sucker for books that are National Book Award winners, and I loved Powers’ The Time of Our Singing, so after hearing me whine about how I wanted to read it, my boyfriend finally just bought this book for me. I think he was getting sick of hearing about it.
Anyway, I went into this book really ready to love it. It was a deep, poetic tome, intended to make me think long and hard about how I know who I really am. I was ready for the challenge. Long story short, Mark, a typical young man from middle-of-nowhere America who loves beef and motors, gets in a horrific car crash and sustains an awful head injury. His sister, Karin, who’s desperately tried her whole live to distance herself from their home town in Nebraska, rushes to his aide, only to realize he doesn’t recognize her and insists she’s a cheap look-alike sent to spy on him. Karin melts down and reaches out to a famous neurologist, Gerald Weber (who I imagine is closely modeled after Oliver Sacks) , who travels to Nebraska a number of times to research the case. They’re all trying to piece together the events of Mark’s accident, come to terms with their own issues, and spend a lot of time discussing and admiring the sandhill cranes that settle in Nebraska during their yearly migration.
Now, Powers gets a lot of points for crafting a significant book based on a small cast of characters dealing with one large catastrophic event. This is a unique attempt and I always appreciate that. I also appreciated the smaller cast of side characters who felt like a breath of fresh air at times. However, there isn’t much notable plot, mostly because I think Richard Powers is secretly a poet at heart and veers off course into wordy tangents a lot. These are gorgeous, but they’re not really telling a story so much. I did feel that this book dragged a lot, and I felt that many portions of it did not feel realistic. Powers’ story felt forced and pretentious much of the time, and although it was so intense, I felt that it really lacked passion. I feel like Powers read a few books on the brain, tacked some science together, and then spun out a plot one afternoon while high on himself and a little too caffeinated on tea.
Furthermore, the novel read like a thriller and stayed mysterious throughout, only to end with a completely unsatisfying conclusion. I was frustrated and disappointed with the ending when they finally uncover who wrote the mystery note, and several elements of the book did not seem to mix together well or ever resolve. And although I know that head trauma patients do suddenly heal without explanation, Powers spent roughly a paragraph going over Mark’s sudden recovery. This felt tacked on and forced. I never really got an idea of what he was aiming at by writing this story.
Writing: 8 – Richard Powers is a poetic genius. I can’t argue that at all. There are several passages of this book that I wanted to rip out and paste to my bathroom wall, just to read in the morning and sigh deeply. There are some especially beautiful parts while Mark is struggling to regain consciousness in the soup of his addled brain (you’d have to read it to know what I’m talking about), and throughout the book Powers writes about the sand hill cranes and the nature of all creatures with an astounding beauty. I absolutely love, love how he writes and uses the birds in this book. His best writing is in reference to nature, which I give him a thumbs up for.
Powers also incorporates witty and exceptional quips in parts of the plot that zing with verve. His use of analogy is especially fun, and these moments usually came during somewhat boring moments in the plot. Sometimes these got a little bizarre (which is why I think Powers was caffeinated while writing this…or drunk), but hey, whatever. I’m ok with things being a little quirky.
However, as I mentioned before, Powers goes off on crazy tangents all over the place. He tries to delve into the minds of his three main characters and make them complex and interesting, but it comes off as a cheap attempt to make these three pretty unlikable people more human. This made the writing uncomfortable and strange, and it quickly made me lose the magical feeling I got from the melodious passages just pages before. Ergo, Powers loses a few points.
Characters: 6 – As I just said, I was not a fan of any of the three main characters. Mark came off as an obnoxious and immature caricature of every young uneducated man in Middle America. Karin was a completely louse of a person who spent most of the novel crying, pitying herself, and having absolutely no sense of humor (actually, none of this book had a sense of humor). And Weber comes across as an ok intellectual guy going through a bit of a career crisis. This is all fine, but why should I care? This book is dealing with a deeply emotional and painful time, so I wanted to feel for these characters and grieve and struggle with them, but I kept finding myself unimpressed.
Most likely, Powers intended this book as a poetic character study, but if an author is intending this, he needs to really attempt to connect with his readers. Gee whiz. We need to identify with all or some of the characters in order to naturally connect with the story, and I should have been a knockout case for identifying with Karin (eldest child, struggling to disconnect herself from her Midwestern roots, etc.) But alas, I just found her pretty blah. Ergo, Powers loses a few points.
Best part: Well, to be honest, I mostly just liked all of the gorgeous bird prose/poetry. As far as best part of the storyline, I’d have to say any interaction with Mark’s two goony best friends from high school or Weber’s uber smart wife. They made me smile and brought this book life.
Recommend to: Bohemian and flighty female English majors.
Reminded me of: A little bit of Mark Helprin’s Winter's Tale, which dragged a bit too but redeemed itself with gorgeous passages
How I would murder the main character: Well, not in a car accident…I’d probably get them to overdose on some of Mark’s Ecstasy and then force them to endure a midwinter night on the Nebraska plains.
Sexy parts: Karin comes back into town and starts to shack up with Daniel, the town bleeding-heart hippie who used to be Mark’s best friend. They obviously get it on, which I’m sure Karin cries straight through, because that’s all she ever does. She also starts to somewhat emotionally cheat on him with her toxic high school boyfriend. This should all be intriguingly scandalous, but I just got so bored.
To sum it up: A beautiful poem to nature and identity wrapped up in an unconvincing and confusing plot.
Overall: 7
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