The Echo Maker
by Richard Powers
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Book Reviews of The Echo Maker
Book Review: The continuity of the self
Summary: 5 Stars
Every important character in this novel moves or stands beyond a crossroads, where understanding of his/her identity changes radically. A young man has sustained neurological damage from a horrific auto accident and suffers from a rare type of amnesia. His sister has left a satisfying life in the city to return to the claustrophobic small town she grew up in, in order to take care of her brother. A famous psychologist has come to see himself as a fraud in his professional life, and then drifts into an adulterous liaison with another fraud--a hospital nurses' aide who is clearly so over-qualified that she has to be running away from something in her past.
Their stories are woven together in a rich intellectual tapestry of meditations on memory, mind and body, on the workings of ego and opportunism in the medical profession, on self sacrifice and allowing oneself to be exploited, on human greed, rapacity and the destruction of other living things.
It is a mystery as well, revolving around the cause of the auto accident and a haunting anonymous note found at the victim's bedside. The resolution of these matters is the best part of the novel.
And then there are the sandhill cranes, the sounds of them, their remarkable flight, their remarkable genetic memory, described in tender and gorgeous detail.
Richard Powers is a genius, a virtuoso performer, a novelist who is right up there with Joyce and Proust, writers he studied for fun while he was getting a degree in physics and working as a high-level computer programmer. Just about every other sentence has some reference or mental gymnastics in it that I don't 100% understand, but it doesn't matter. It is still so pleasing to watch his mind at work and to contemplate the issues he raises.
Book Review: Still Like to Play Doctor?
Summary: 1 Stars
You will love this book if you are fascinated by cranes, still enjoy playing doctor, or are taking a writing class. The book opens with self-consciously poetic language about cranes, "ribbons of them roll down, slack against the sky. . . the air red with calm." The cranes are symbols, of course, but of what is not clear. At least in one instance a crane stands in for a horny old man trying to dance. Another causes coitus interruptus, but of humans, not cranes. When all is said and done, they symbolize water. But what that means is not entirely clear.
The doctor is not just any old quack but a specialist in Neuroscience. So you get to play with terms like Capgras and whether it can "help arbitrate between two very different paradigms of mind." This possibility is backed up with dozens of anecdotes about brain damaged people that would normally be found in books by Oliver Sacks, who seems to be the model for one of the characters. Fortunately, the cases have very little to do with the plot or the characters, but they do add interest to to an other wise dull story.
For the student of writing, the book is full of metaphors and similes, all worthy of analysis, but few that enhance the book. Arms and legs snake out of a robe like fresh mistakes. He looked like a bleached garden gnome. He rose up in her dreams like grass after a prairie fire. Nostrils quiver at least twice, a nose and neck tendons at least once. Almost every page offers similar oddities that a budding young writer would enjoy playing with.
Cranes, brain jargon, and semi-poetic prose dominate the book. The book's only weaknesses are a sensible plot and characters you care about.
Book Review: Award-winner!
Summary: 5 Stars
I am reading The Prisoner's Dilemma because I wanted to read another of Powers' books. This author's work is probably not for everyone because of its depth, but for me it held the elements key to a winning work: it is thought-provoking, it has visual beauty that is portrayed through the written word, its strong characterizations are marvelous, and it has a message. More than one message is contained in this book and perhaps that can be faulted.
For me, I was less interested in the most obvious, though timely message. I found the more enduring theme of relationships to be the thread that held the plot and the subplots together.
Powers has matured as a writer, and I suspect subtlety to be a part of his continual growth as a writer. He shows off his raw intellect, which I suspect is greater than mine, but I think the best writers tone it down. From Prisoner's Dilemma to Echo Maker I believe I can see his evolution.
I hesitated to read the book knowing that Capgras is an extremely rare condition. He pulls it off to great effect; however he rambles about neurologic phenomenon more than necessary. I skimmed some of these parts. Abstract philosophical digression at times detracted from the flow of the novel. It bogged down in the esoteric at times.
Overall, I found the language breathtaking at times; the writer's intellect daunting; and this is one of the few books I felt enriched by reading. Because he presented a work that left me better than I was before I read the book, I give it my highest rating.
Book Review: Character Study
Summary: 3 Stars
Only the migrating cranes seemed to witness the devastating car accident that caused Mark Schulter to suffer traumatic brain injury. As he comes to, he is unable to recognize his sister, Karin, believing that she has been replaced by a remarkably close lookalike. Karin arranges for Gerald Weber, an Oliver Sacks-like popular neurologist, to observe Mark with the hopes of a cure.
These are the characters in The Echo Maker, an exploration of the brain, the mind, the self, and the mental ties that keep us coherent human beings. Mark suffers from Capgras syndrome, a rare delusion which leads the person to believe that a close relative is replaced by an imposter. His sister, his dog, and even his home are all imposters in his world. His sister, Karin, finds herself drawn back to the small town she thought she had successfully escaped, and makes many of the same mistakes she had in the past. Weber finds that this third book is not critically praised, and begins to question whether any of his work was more meaningful than an exploitative opportunity.
The novel's strengths lie in the character sketches of Mark and Karin. Karin, especially, is a drab, unhappy, passive character, whereas Mark is full of bluster, rage, and energy. Mark fairly leaps off the page. Weber, on the other hand, is a muddle in his mid-life crisis, depression, and self-revulsion. I wondered, wrongly, at times if he was having a stroke. The novel is far more of a character study, but there is a mystery that provides some satisfaction in its resolution.
Book Review: One of the best, most important novels I've read in years
Summary: 5 Stars
I rarely write reviews on Amazon, but I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw that the average review of this book was a measly three stars. This is a compelling story about people in honest-to-God life-or-death conflict, people I found it impossible not to care about. It's gorgeously written, and it deals with issues of paramount importance both for an understanding of our contemporary (endangered) world and for a deeper understanding of our "universal" needs and desires and frailties and values. The functioning and malfunctioning of human brains and the functioning and malfunctioning of the planet's environment are important in this book because they are important to the characters, who find themselves in complex and painful situations that require them to think about things they've never thought about before - which is how good novels get readers to do the same. Readers who object when the nature of a novel's conflict is deeply ethical and perhaps even (God forbid) intellectual will probably not like it. It's a matter of taste, of course. But if you're worried that a novel can't address "important themes" without neglecting plot and character and suspense and emotion, but you're also not turned off or offended when a novel's author and characters are smarter and more thoughtful than most of us can ever hope to be, read this book. If you like to think and to feel, and believe those two experiences sometimes have something to do with each other, read this book. It will challenge you and move you, and you will love it.