The Echo Maker
by Richard Powers
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Book Reviews of The Echo Maker
Book Review: Glad I read it.
Summary: 4 Stars
Honestly I pushed through this book as it was a book group pick but I really enjoyed it overall. It didn't take long before I was hooked. The suspenseful elements kept my attention and I didn't want to put the book down. I liked the use of different perspectives to tell the story, a good reminder to all of us that everyone brings a different view to the table. And none of the characters was "perfect", but they all seemed real.
I thought the woman who read the audio book was excellent. The different voices she did, especially for Mark, really added to the story. And I thought Mark's comments were witty and entertaining. His 40 different ways of referring to the fake Karin (K2, Kopy Karin, etc) added to my enjoyment. I'm sorry so many people didn't enjoy it. To each his/her own.
Book Review: Best novel I have read in the last five years
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a stunning novel: beautifully written, brilliant, and a page-turner. At the center of this novel is Mark, a character who suffers a traumatic brain injury that leaves him with Capgras syndrome, a disease that makes him think his real sister is an imposter, even though he recognizes that she looks like his sister. As the novel unfolds, Capgras syndrome becomes a metaphor for humanity, about our need to have selves that are little more than self-delusions, and about our need to love others but only on the condition that they can be known in the ways we need to know them. There are only a handful of living writers who have both this kind of intelligence and artistry: Rohinton Mistry, Chang-Rae Lee, Gloria Naylor, and Julia Alvarez.Book Review: How does a mind erect everything else?
Summary: 4 Stars
I empathize greatly with the character of Dr. Weber - who realizes the fragility of the elaborate web of knowledge and learning that the has constructed in his career as a scientist. Powers has Weber ask and then explore some searching questions: "How does a brain erect a mind, and how does am ind erect everything else? Do we have free will? What is the self, and where are the neurological correlates of consciousness?" I believe these questions are at the heart of The Echomaker - and of Richard Powers. As Weber says later in the book: "It is only when I tell you things that I understand them myself." I would stronly recommend this book, it is the best I have read from Richard Powers since The Goldbug Variations.Book Review: Intriguing Novel
Summary: 4 Stars
I really knew little about Kearney, Nebraska or about the cranes that migrate through Nebraska yearly but the author wove those geographical ideas into this novel about capgras syndrome (that I knew nothing about)and educated me as well as entertained me. I liked the prose that described the cranes and their dance-like movements. I liked the descriptions of the characters. I really do not enjoy reading profanity in books and this one has much more than I would have enjoyed but if characters such as he describes speaks in such a manner then I suppose there is a place for it. I think this book would make a good movie so I hope Hollywood takes notice of it too.Book Review: Science and the language of poetry combined
Summary: 5 Stars
It was the beauty of Powers' prose that first pulled me in. He has the eye and heart of a poet. His images, especially about the sand hill cranes, made me reread passages just to breathe in the words. I have never lived on the vast prairie but he brought that natural world alive for me, well entwined with the humans who inhabit it. I loved the challenges of love that this book presents -loving despite illness, despite false steps and deep injury. I also loved the woven neuroscience and ecology that flowed seamlessly through the human story - that is the human story. This is a book I will read again.