Seeking therapy for a hurting world (Madison, Wisconsin; set over one year before the 2021 Presidential election, light years on other planets): Like a space rocket, Bewilderment soars and plunges.

Orbiting between a world that sees only black or white to one bursting in color, at a critical time when our children and planet Earth are in crisis, when political millions distrust science, and space travel is no longer the exclusive right of NASA, Pulitzer-Prize winning author of The Overstory Richard Powers has written an achingly beautiful novel in a poet’s voice.

Among the many questions asked, one that moves us like never before is: “Wouldn’t you like to see an epidemic of infectious well-being?”

After feeling so “exhausted” from writing The Overstory, Powers – he read 1,200 books to write it – he wasn’t sure he’d write anymore. Thankfully, Powers has carried trees into his impassioned thirteenth novel, along with his knowledge of threatened and endangered species, emerging approaches in brain therapy, astronomy and the stuff of science-fiction.

The novel is a literary “empathy machine” similar to the experimental therapy he describes in the super-advanced MRI/AI brain machinery – Decoded Neurofeedback – depicted in the novel. His purpose is a call-to-arms for thinking creatively and innovatively on reconnecting our increasingly socially and emotionally broken youth who, ironically, are the ones who’ve become world advocates for urgently caring for the environment. If you’re thinking of Greta Thunberg, she does make an appearance in fictionalized Inga Alder.

Bewilderment centers on a nuclear family of three, all in different ways are environmental advocates. The child – who says the least (highlighted in italics) but affects us the most – is Robin. His father Theo describes him as “my sad, singular, newly turning nine-year-old, in trouble with this world”; the novel ends when Robbie is ten.

Named after his mother Aly’s “favorite bird,” an avid birdwatcher, she and Theo went birdwatching on their first date in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, where the author moved to having spent so much time researching there to write The Overstory. Father and son are both grieving Aly’s death. You may want to know how long ago she died when the story begins; when you find out on page 97 you’ll realize it doesn’t matter when it comes to grief. (How she died, you’ll learn too.) Theo didn’t just love and “admire” her, he “revered her.” Her life force lives within father and son.

Theo is an astrobiologist and professor at the University of Madison-Wisconsin studying whether there’s any evidence of life forms on other planets. He uses his vast knowledge and wild imagination about the universe to tell fantastical stories to calm Robbie down because, when we meet the third-grader, he’s having meltdowns, altercations at school and was suspended. Robbie is neurodiverse: his brain is wired differently, lacking constructive ways to self-control, while being acutely sensitive to the world around him. His mother instilled some of that in him as an animal rights lawyer and fierce activist for all living creatures. Her mantra: “MAY ALL BEINGS BE FREE FROM SUFFERING.”

The term neurodiversity first appeared on this blog in a review of A Room Called Earth. Far less stigmatizing, it refers to children (and adults) diagnosed on the “spectrum” like Robbie. Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is the current diagnostic term for a number of disorders such as Asperger’s Syndrome, Autism, and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Robbie has been diagnosed with all three. When his second pediatrician wants to medicate him, Theo’s response is:

“I wanted to tell the man that everyone alive on this fluke little planet was on the spectrum. That’s what a spectrum is. I wanted to tell the man that life is a spectrum disorder, where each of us vibrated at some unique frequency in the continuous rainbow. Then I wanted to punch him. I suppose there’s a name for that, too.” 

In a “Note from the Author” that appears in the advanced reader copy, Powers asks and proposes if a different kind of “emotional therapy” would make “a difference” in helping people whose brains function divergently. Decoded Neurofeedback has roots that go back at least to 2011 when researchers at Boston University and in Japan conducted sophisticated biofeedback using MRIs and AI. Theo, Robbie, and Aly earlier all consented to the tracking of their brain activities in an entertaining way at Dr. Currier’s lab, located at Theo’s university campus a few miles from their home. Robbie is deemed an excellent candidate; Theo is open-minded so he lets his son go further by using this high-tech, very expensive approach to retrain his social brain – promising, exciting, and controversial. Robbie takes to it far greater than even Theo could have imagined.

Robbie also loves to draw, giving “him a little peace.” He’s also a big reader, so the library “shelves were a total candy shop.” Early on in the novel, Theo pulls Robbie out of school, a bold decision considering how poorly he’s doing, but in light of how his teachers, administrators, classmates and their parents humiliate, bully, and punish him and grades that don’t reflect his high intelligence, we approve. Theo tells us he’s frightened of parenting Robbie not knowing what might put him over the edge, yet he’s acutely aware of how calming Nature came be for his son “attuned to life.” He takes Robbie on a one-week camping trip to the Great Smokies, with its “six different kinds of forest” – “more tree species than in all of Europe.” When Robbie declares, “I feel I belong here,” Theo knows he’s made the right choice.

Among Robbie’s “six going on sixty” comments, he says:

“The great horned owl’s conservation rating is ‘Least Concern.’ How stupid is that? Like: unless they’re all dead, we shouldn’t be concerned?”

You’ll also meet a slew of threatened or endangered species. Here’s three – the Karner blue butterfly, Dusty gopher frog, and giant anole lizard (credits: Stockvault/Pixabay [CC0], Flickr/USFWS Headquarters [CC BY 2.0], Flickr/Martin de Lusenet [CC BY 2.0]):

“While finishing my previous novel, The Overstory,” Powers wrote in his note to readers, “I kept reading accounts of the toll our growing environmental catastrophe is taking on the young. A new word, solastalgia, seemed to take hold overnight. I began to see how we are raising a generation of troubled kids born homesick for a place they never knew. And we adults are relying more and more on a single response for treating the epidemic ravaging our children’s mental health: medication.”

Theo’s first-person voice is visionary when it’s about life on other planets. If the astronomy prose goes over your head like it did mine, you’ll get a gist of it because of how it affects Robbie, a wondrous boy you’ll want to hug and cheer.

Sixteen years ago, Robert Louv called for a back-to-nature movement in his pioneering book, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. It seems the Richards are onto something.

Prepare for a ride into “inner space” and outer space. Remember it comes with risks.

Lorraine

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