Review of “The Echo Maker” by Richard Powers
I finished this book, THE ECHO MAKER, last night. As I was throughout the reading of this National Book Award winner, I am still not sure whether I liked it or not. But I was strangely compelled to keep reading, almost to the point of aggravation that I couldn’t even consider stopping until I was finished. This is not like me. Usually if I don’t like a book I have absolutely no problem putting it down. It was as if this book had some strange kind of power over me, if nothing else than to see it through to the end.
THE ECHO MAKER is a book of the mind. Maybe that is part of what fascinated me and a the same time repelled me. But I think my big problem was the writing itself. Though Richard Powers has told a really interesting story about a man who is brain damaged after a car wreck and acquires Capgrast Syndrome, a malady that makes him deny that his sister is really his sister, his writing is often confusing, scattered, missing some element of continuity that I prefer. Anyway, as I said, the story itself is fascinating. A former scientist of neurology is called in the consult on the brain damaged man’s case. But Dr. Weber is having some mental issues of his own. He has enjoyed years of fame for his writing on bizarre cases of brain damage. But when he gets a bad review that calls him an opportunist, then travels to Nebraska to meet Mark, the man who has Capgrast, and meets a woman who threatens his blissful 30 year marriage, Dr. Weber begins to question the mind of all of us.
The book never really went anywhere. It was more a study upon human nature and how strange we are, our brains and what they are capable of. That was part of the reason I kept reading, actually, probably the main reason. I am always trying to figure out what makes myself and everyone else tick.
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