Operation Wandering Soul

by Richard Powers

Highly imaginative and emotionally powerful, this stunning novel about childhood innocence amidst the nightmarish disease and deterioration at the heart of modern Los Angeles was nominated for a National Book Award. "Like the stories read to children, this intensely caring novel can help prevent the nightmare it describes."--USA Today.

Genres: Fiction, Novels, American, 20th Century, Literary Fiction, Literature, Audiobook

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Richard Powers has published thirteen novels. He is a MacArthur Fellow and received the National Book Award. His book The Overstory won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. He lives in the Great Smoky Mountains.

Librarian note: There is more than one author with this name in the Goodreads database.

Reviews

[Hugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have decidedly mixed feelings about this one, and four stars may be too generous - as so often with Powers it is full of ideas and references - indeed it would have taken more than twice as long to read if I had looked up all of the unfamiliar words, events and scientific elements that Powers discusses. For me the biggest problem is that the plot, such as it is, is so full of digressions and so dominated by it's central character's increasingly frazzled state of mind that it becomes very difficult to follow.

Dr Ricky Kraft is a overworked young surgeon working at a paediatric hospital in "Angel City" (presumably Los Angeles). He starts an affair with Linda, a younger nurse, who attempts to heal her young charges with storytelling - these stories form frequent digressions. One of the patients is Joy, a brilliant Asian immigrant whose leg is being attacked by an aggressive cancer. Another is Nico, who is aging very fast, but who becomes a leader to the other child patients in his escapist schemes. Powers also takes inspiration from Peter Pan, the Children's Crusade and the Pied Paper legend, as well as drawing from his own childhood experiences in Thailand (another city of angels in a land of the free).

So an interesting and stimulating read, but one that I eventually found rather frustrating, if only because it exposed my limitations as a reader.

[Joy D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Operation Wandering Soul is a densely written novel that explores childhood, suffering, and the human capacity for both cruelty and compassion. The storyline follows Dr. Richard Kraft, a burned-out surgeon working at a public hospital in Los Angeles, who treats desperately ill and injured children. The narrative is interspersed with historical accounts of real events about children in peril and observations on classic children’s stories.

The prose reflects the author’s erudition and linguistic facility. Powers’ descriptions of the hospital's pediatric ward are particularly affecting. He excels at depicting both the physical and emotional toll of suffering. Throughout the novel, storytelling serves as a coping mechanism and an escape. Stories are used to comfort the patients, blurring the line between fantasy and reality to shield the children from their grim prognoses.

The downside lies in its accessibility (or inaccessibility). Intellectual density sometimes creates distance and makes it challenging for readers to fully connect. I presume that this complexity is intentional and reflects how we tend to distance ourselves from painful truths. I enjoy Powers’ playfulness with language, but it occasionally seems overly complex here.

This is not my favorite of Powers’ works but it serves as a good example of his distinctive literary style. It is intellectually stimulating, thematically ambitious, and concerned with how science, art, and human consciousness interact. It is a demanding read that requires patience, but it pays off in its insights into the ways we confront (or fail to confront) the suffering of children. It is hard to say I “enjoyed” this book, especially since many of the children are terminally ill, but I admire the intent and found it worthwhile.

[Neil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Operation Wandering Soul mostly takes place in Carver Hospital in “Angel City”. Here, Richard Kraft is a surgeon in the paediatric ward. He is overwhelmed by his work load and often runs on autopilot. He is also, for reasons we come to discover during the book, overwhelmed by the suffering of the children in his care. He meets a therapist called Linda Espera and between them they look to treat a group of children who have damaged bodies and souls.

This is not a cheerful book to read. It is dark and, in all honesty, even speaking as a confirmed Powers fan, it is over-written. Meg Wolitzer wrote:

This book is not easy to love. It isn't seductive, and its characters don't spring quickly to life. Instead, Mr. Powers offers a devastating phantasmagoria of words and images. He stuns us with his vast reserve of knowledge. He doesn't take us by the hand and gently lead us through his universe. Instead, we come kicking and screaming into his vivid and horrific world.

And I think that is a fair summary.

In my review of Powers’ novel published before this one (The Gold Bug Variations), I wrote that I thought Powers had turned all the dials up to eleven when he wrote. But somehow, in that book he gets away with it. Here, he has turned the dials even further, broken some of them, and, at the same time, turned his attention to a much darker topic as we see Kraft’s mind gradually undone by his inability to cure the children. For a while, Linda brings hope in the form of therapy through fiction and through drama, but even that is eventually undone. At the end, we are unsure how much is reality and how much is hallucination. And then there’s a brief coda that puts a new spin on the whole book.

The narrative is interrupted several times by tellings of well-known stories or events that involve groups of children. We read about the evacuation of children from London in WWII. We read a take on Peter Pan, the 16th century Anabaptist uprising which used children from the street to carry valuables to safety, the Children’s Crusade, the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

It is very, very clever. Powers plays with language. His description of television news headlines as ”sight-bite Zeitgeist” is memorable. It takes a brave man to include the phrase …they reach Dijon, where they muster… in his book. There are more words that I don’t know the definition of in this book than in any I have read recently (I had to stop looking them up as it was interrupting my reading too much - you can make a guess at what most of them must mean). In further word play, “Richard Kraft” is close to “Richard Powers” (kraft is German for “force”). This is something Powers will do more explicitly in his next novel (Galatea 2.2) which is about a man called Richard Powers who has written novels with the same names as those I have recently read by Richard Powers. If you see what I mean. And whilst projecting forward through Powers’ (at this point) future novels, the child Joy with her refusal to be disheartened by her illness and its consequences could well be a prototype of Thassa in the upcoming “Generosity: An Enhancement”, and there is mention of a banyan tree which goes on to play a role in Powers’ twelfth novel (The Overstory).

But, in the end, even I have to admit that perhaps this is a book to admire rather than to love. If you like Richard Powers, you should read it, but it perhaps one for completists only. I have reduced my rating from 4 to 3 stars as I have to acknowledge that it is all a bit too much!

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ORIGINAL REVIEW
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UPDATE (a few days after completing the book): Despite what it says below, I have just noticed that I have given more 4 star reviews to Mr Powers than I have 5 stars. In my head, I have given nearly all his books 5 stars, so maybe I need to back and adjust the ratings on here. Or maybe this one should be 3 stars, but that would not be right considering I debated 5 stars for this one, too.

Everything I have come to expect from Mr Powers is here and more. Maybe just a bit too much more, which is why only 4 stars when I normally give his books 5. It is a challenging read. I've seen Powers compared to Pynchon and, of the seven of his books I've read, this is the one that most fits that: long complicated sentences, snippets of songs thrown in, a sort of stream of consciousness that is best read by letting it wash over you (and, as I think is often the case with Pynchon, best read out loud, although, to spare my wife, I didn't actually do that).

This is one of the most intense books I have ever read. In some ways, it's almost a companion novel to the one he wrote before this (The Gold Bug Variations). In Gold Bug, Powers investigates DNA and the origins of life and he leaves you wondering how, given everything that can go wrong, life ever actually happens and works properly. In OWS, he has a surgeon and nurse treating children where everything has gone wrong, either genetically or through the mistreatment the world has dished out to them. It is a nightmare scenario that is presented and it's not an easy read.

The writing is, as always with Powers, incredible. There's a sense that he has been back over every sentence numerous times looking for ways to make it more unusual, more arresting, more thought-provoking. If anything, it's a bit too much in this book. To be fair, I'd need to read it again (about 20 times) to give a clear view on that, though.

A powerful, intense story full of powerful and intense sentences and paragraphs.

[Simon Robs · Rating 4 out of 5]

"OWS" was a psychological warfare tactic employed to disrupt the enemy during the Vietnam War and Richard Powers adopted it for a title to his book about the plight of children worldwide and across time, a topic sadly relevant today as ever. Just this morning headlines include a story of widespread child trafficking ring busted up and the gripping details exposed. Child abuse most agree is the lowest form of inhumanity, but then how can we rid the world of this bane once and for all? Well, a novel can speak to and show fault, even display hope, but the work is ours. Adults?

RP is a gifted novelist that is no doubt, his vast array of topics are deployed in search of truth and redemption and so he is an evangelist of sorts. He seeks an enlightened emergent humanity in spite of our seemingly intransigence - can we evolve beyond the bonds of cruelty, foster fellowship and basic honest decency that starts with raising children worldwide in a respectful way so that this earth may go on being. Pie and sky my cynic side says but I want to dream otherwise and books like "OWS" stimulate hope turned to passionate do something, anything, right.

This book packs a lot in its 350 pages, it bounces and moves myth, medium and measure to task relating its message - some and several reviewers complain too difficult to comprehend - that's what careful, skilled reading AND rereading are for! If he, as those say, was "gilding the lily" so's what! You think it's child's play to call humanity to task. Peter Pan and the Pied Piper both instruct and plead your suspending doubt just enough to see the crack in this world's veneer and like Buddha sitting under Bodhi open to a vision of realization if suffer we must let it be deserving to our latent nature of belonging to what is deep good in us. Amen.

[Kevin Adams · Rating 5 out of 5]

Way more eye opening reading this for a second time as a parent. Richard Powers is one of the greats.

[David]

To read this book is to voluntarily open yourself to unanesthetized soul surgery. To not read this book is an act of despicable cowardice. Your choice. Some people don't like it. Fair enough. It is not in any way "easy." To me, it is one of the most important novels to emerge in the U.S. 90s. I find the pain in the narrative gets ever more intense as the years go by. When I first encountered it in the 1990s, I was able to see the optimism. The optimism, of course, is still there but the pain is increasingly intense. This may relate to the fact that when I first read it, I was not a parent. It gets harder, bleaker, and more necessary with every reread. I remind myself the two of the first students who read it in a class of mine were people using wheelchairs, and they both loved it because of the way children's illness was taken seriously--even if it's a depressing outlook.

[Craig Werner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Operation Wandering Soul, named after a bizarre psychological warfare operation during the Vietnam war era--the U.S. broadcast the voices of "deceased ancestors" over villages--is probably Powers' most difficult, but also deeply rewarding novels. The thematic center is the ongoing violence against children that is such a horrifically "normal" part of modern life. The foreground setting is a pediatrics ward in a hospital in a poor area of Los Angeles, where the young doctor on rotation encounters an unforgettable cast of young patients, including one who is aging at a rapidly accelerated clip. Powers intersperses historical chapters focusing on the evacuation of English children to the countryside during World War II, the childrens' crusade, and a "realistic" portray of the Pied Piper fable.

The result is a novel suspended between realism, fable, documentary, and psychological analysis. The tension between genres can be challening, but the best way to think of the book is probably as a kind of Hieronymous Bosch painting come to life.

At a moment when the lives of children across the world--Gaza most obviously--seem to have no value in the calculus of geopolitics, the book has taken on a new and compelling power.

Prior to re-reading--I'm making my way through Powers' novels consecutively, which is a real joy--I would have placed OWS near the bottom of a very strong list of books. Now I'm tending to move it up substantially.

[Sara · Rating 1 out of 5]

There are very few books that I will not finish once I've started them. Operation Wandering Soul was very nearly one of them.

I really can't say that I enjoyed this book much at all. If, like me, you are big on novels with clearly cut, linear plot lines, then OWS is definitely not for you. At any given moment, I had no idea what was going on; there's no real stream of consciousness or anything that traditionally defines most fiction.

In spite of all that, I still feel that this is actually a really good book. Richard Powers is obviously a highly intelligent author -- perhaps a bit TOO intelligent for me, personally, but I have no doubt that there are many who can actually follow his train of thought. Even I could pick up on some of what Powers' seems to be trying to say with the story; there were times when I ALMOST had it, and I could feel how profound the whole idea behind everything is...and then I'd lose it.

At any rate, I'm glad I finished OWS, but I highly doubt that I will ever attempt another novel by this author.

[Holly · Rating 1 out of 5]

Opaque to the point of oblivion. There were many moments when I was a hummingbird's flutter from throwing the book across the room. A torture to read. It almost read as if the author had something to prove; why else write an entire book with so little actual plot and character development? I think Powers is amazing, a brilliant writer, a treasure. His novels force the reader to focus on humanity as a whole rather than the narrower, individualistic focus of traditional novels. However, we can find hope in the individual human story often missing from the global human story. There is beauty in the individual; as a mass, we are a disaster.

High level message/theme: Earth and everything on it is doomed; humans have destroyed everything beyond recognition. Death for all would be a blessing. An example is on page 165: "the species is clinically psychotic. Pathetic, deranged, intrinsically, irreversibly mercury-poisoned by nature, by birth." History, current events - take your pick; examples abound regarding the absolute cesspool that is humanity. Nothing is sacred, not even our children in the face of so much destruction. Whole pages-long rambling adjective-weighted sections were written about the dismal LA traffic, the health care system, the state of the environment, the various ways children are dying in our toxic world spoiled by human greed ...

Themes:
--Operation Wandering Soul was a propaganda technique used during the Vietnam War, taking advantage of the Vietnamese belief that souls cannot rest until the body is buried in their homeland.
--The stories about how children overcome juxtaposed against the current reality - Pied Piper, Peter Pan, the evacuation of London of its children in WWI

It was incredibly dark and negative. Only read this book from an optimistic POV so you have somewhere to go before you hit the bottom. My favorite parts were the mostly familiar children's stories like the Pied Piper (written through Powers' lens) - these seemed to offer some ray of hope, some 1% chance of happily ever after. Even in these familiar stories, however, the children are harmed - where do the children go in the Pied Piper story? One possibility is a heaven-like place, but Powers hints otherwise - isn't it naïve to assume that the piper would kill all the rats but spare all the children? And during WWI, when they evacuated the children, did all end up in the hands of good people? Of course not. After doing some online research, some literary critics state Powers' purpose is an effort to challenge the idea of narrative. As Linda and Kraft slowly realize, telling these dying inner city children the traditional fairy tales where the bad guy loses and the good guy is triumphant is a load of garbage. Narrative is a lie. And the reader (who Powers addresses w/ a pop quiz - hello, reader/writer, meet one another) is participating in a narrative...that is also a lie.

[Geoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

With this review of Operation Wandering Soul, I also recommend all of Richard Powers' novels. His novels range across the spectrum of United States taken on industry and cancer (Gain) and so much more. Operation Wandering Soul delivers a frentic kalideoscopical narrative that maps the US incursions into Southeast Asia on the bodies of indigent children in a futuristic Los Angeles Hospital. Kraft, a pediatric surgeon, suffers from nostalgia (or PTSD) struggles to save a group of cancer/disease ridden children while the children try to save themselves. The first 50 or so pages were daunting - but once the rhythms of the novel catch hold you will be amazed that this first rate novelists is not better known.

[Stewart Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is easily the darkest and least accessible Powers novel I've read yet, and I'm not entirely sure whether to admire it or be confounded by it.

His work is always overtly autobiographical, which is what makes this one's bleakness hard to swallow. It's a story of children dying, literally and figuratively, and it lacks any of the hope that usually comes with the author's usual territory. Galatea 2.2, which tackles the deterioration of a loving relationship, was written directly after this book, so I have to wonder: was this written while that marriage crumbled? Is that why it feels so apocalyptic? (If I remember correctly, Powers actually references Operation Wandering Soul in Galatea. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I recall him describing it as a failure of sorts, or at least a reflection of some deep personal ugliness.)

But for all it's horror, it really is quite beautiful. I find myself constantly in awe of Powers for his ability to extract such gorgeous prose from such a methodical, scientific mind. When this novel flies, it soars, and there are sections that I feel are among his best (or at least among the best of what I've read from him so far). However, among some of his highest highs come a few new lows. To me, this novel's biggest flaw was its failure to bring all of its pieces together - too many moving parts, etc. But maybe that's just a symptom of grand ambition?

Not sure what I'm saying, because I'm still reeling a bit. Powers remains at the top of my list after this one - he hasn't written anything less than fascinating.

[Simon Stegall · Rating 3 out of 5]

A story about a doctor who works in pediatric surgery and grows steadily more horrified by the anguish he witnesses daily. About as depressing as you're thinking.

Waffling between 3 and 4 stars. Given how much the theme- the suffering of children- asks from you, I call this book good, but definitely not great. Page after page contain shards of agony, beautifully described and masterfully shoved into the reader's heart; but page after page is also held down by Power's incessant wordplay, which rarely, at least in my opinion, justifies itself. There are moments of real effect in the book: Power's retelling of the Pied Piper of Hamelin tale, for instance, is simply the best single chapter of any book I've read in a long time. But ultimately, though this book is definitely "good," and maybe at moments "great," its verbal acrobatics are ridiculous at least once a page. So, I recommend this if you love allusions, puns, pediatrics, or obsessive, eyelids-taped-open meditations on suffering. It is a worthwhile read for those things.

[Patrick Hanlon · Rating 5 out of 5]

In a novel that strikes Powers' closest resemblance and may even pay homage to Don DeLillo, Operation Wandering Soul is a compelling read that is brilliant but red in claw. The writing is vividly oral throughout and the author's command of the language is compelling he describes a bleak vision of the United States and the world over all as it is seen illustrated by the hard case of the patients in a rundown pediatric ward in Los Angeles. The narration flexes throughout as the perspective changes from chapter to chapter and the book fills with report cards, reflections on the evolution of the Peter Pan story, treatises on past targeting of children in societies over the millennia and the manias of millenial/end-of days thinking as they have persisted over time. Each word is ideally placed and revelatory. This may not be as restrained and elegant as The Overstory, Bewilderment or Echo Maker, but the wallop that it packs is testament that Powers is the best writer you don't know yet or the most intelligent, open-minded and convincing novelist you do know.

[Sam · Rating 3 out of 5]

There was a a lot of promise in this novel about a pediatric surgeon but Powers seemed to lose control in the second half and obfuscated the prose to the degree that the emotional impact of the book was nullified and the pleasure I was experiencing was lost. Perhaps those looking for a challenge would like it more.

[Elizabeth · Rating 1 out of 5]

There is no in between with Richard Powers’ books either they’re great or they suck. This one sucked. I could not finish it and I was on a desert island. It was my only book. Good thing I returned to civilization.

[Dustin the wind Crazy little brown owl · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn't get much from this book. Elaborate wording on storytelling, social order, social commentary. Probably the only thing that kept me going was the audiobook narration by Kirby Heyborne - even so, it was more background noise, a familiar voice than engaging. Operation Wandering Soul is my least favorite of the ten Richard Powers novels I've read so far. My first and still favorite was The Overstory.

Related Works: Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Peter Pan

[Denise Benoit · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fair

[John Hash · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story opens in a city of angels where automobile traffic congenially flows within the perimeters of multiple lanes with drivers occupying every open space in the concrete canals without walls, and where Dr. Richard Kraft's descriptive impression of it ensued. This exhibition sparked an immediate immersion into the cynicism that only released its grip periodically throughout the book.

As the scantly nominal commuter transits into the helix apportioned to the parking garage (where he sometimes drives to relieve stress) of his work station in the city's charitable children's hospital, his selfless dedication as a surgeon in the emergency wards transpires to be his life station, spending what time he isn't repairing flesh wounds is spent in his on-call cell adorned with memorabilia typically found in people's homes.

The cynicism deepens more than accelerates, as it targets a culture of forsaken childhood. However, his disdain holds for the culprits in negligent and psychopathic abuse rampant among derelict parents and street gangs is held in silence, but articulated in the relationship that develops with a nurse whose therapeutic approach in averting hopelessness and self pity among her charges includes tickling them. The children look to this Nurse Espera and Dr. Kraft for their story-telling; hers aimed at enriching their imagination to distract them from the confinement, and his to distract them from their physical maladies. Together they manage to facilitate the creative self expression of a small cadre in the ward at the behest of Nicolino, a newcomer victimized by Hutchinson-Gilford disease who has physically aged into his early sixties within ten years of his life. Nico's crafty and world-wise ways propelled him to a self-appointed leader upon his arrival and his take-charge demeanor pushed Nurse Espera into pushing Dr. Kraft to 'go-see-do' things like ballroom dancing and other field activities to enhance their experience of living in a neverland as lost children that inadvertently established sense of group identity among the young cohorts.

I had read a couple of other books by Richard Powers that exposed his impressive knowledge bases in the fields of medicine and natural science, wherein poignant themes emerged in his masterful verbiage; so I was prepared to encounter the challenging task of maintaining a grip on reading this one, but was nearly shaken loose in the first one-hundred pages. This doubtful pause reminded me of the way a progressive rock artist introduced hi solo concept album with a torrent of cacophonous electronic clatter, as if to weed all but the serious listeners out. I found this book to be an arduous undertaking, not so much due to the technical ins and outs of science, but rather the author's cultural tie-ins of histories, religions, geographies, and philosophies pertinent to the precarious state of childhood throughout the world over time. In these cases, the narrative would often mellow for easier reading. I read much of the book aloud, and while doing so came across a passage where oral reading was mentioned in the text. Reading this way forced me to slow down. Then I realized that much of the prose was poetic. Also, more than halfway through, as Nicolino kept pushing the envelope on the possibility of making life for himself and the other children mean something, carried me through the highly imaginative children's crusade.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Non fatevi ingannare dalla quarta di copertina rassicurante: in realtà si tratta di un libro incentrato sui massacri e i soprusi perpetrati ai danni dei bambini nella storia (o nelle favole e leggende rilette in chiave estrema e prevaricatrice), spesso rappresentato secondo il punto di vista di un medico di pronto soccorso in crisi e privato del sonno che mescola fatti e visioni, il tutto condito da un linguaggio forbito e complesso (Powers scrive molto bene, ma spesso ci marcia troppo) che ti costringe per pagine a intuire il senso più che a comprenderlo, senza nemmeno un grande aiuto dall'edizione della Nave di Teseo, che mette una nota ogni 10 realmente necessarie (per dire, ti spiega cos'è uno snuff movie ma lascia alla tua cultura (o a google) chiarire i riferimenti buttati lì tra le righe a titoli di testi della mitologia indiana o alla dottrina Monroe).
Per carità, Powers non è mai stato uno scrittore "facile", però ai tempi di "Il tempo di una canzone" lo sforzo alla fine era appagante, mentre in questo caso alla fine quel che resta è soprattutto la fatica.

***1/2

[JDK1962]

No star rating, I read the ebook equivalent of only 10-15 pages. Given that I've read and loved other books by Richard Powers, I'm going to assume it's just me and my state of mind, but I got nowhere with this. The book opens with the main character driving to work, and before we get anything to care about, we're off into dense forest of words around California traffic. I spent a week, reading a page or two, then setting it aside for a day or three, then trying again, then setting it aside again, because I didn't care--at all--about what I was reading.

[Cindy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a tough, emotionally draining novel about a surgical resident doing his best to repair people, often children, in a near-future Los Angeles. The unrelenting, overwhelming exposure to man’s brutality, abuse, and neglect has devastating effects on the surgeon. The power of story is central to the novel, and the author refers to dozens of children’s books not by name but with brief descriptions of characters or plots.

[Laura · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was unable to follow this book, I felt like I couldn't follow a single train of thought. At times, I reread the same paragraphs over again to try and make sense of them. I tried reading this book twice, just to give it a fair shot. I figured the first time I just wasn't in the right headspace for a book like this, but now that I read it again, I find myself with the same opinion. I did not like this book at all.

Maybe it's for you, maybe you'll love it. It simply wasn't for me.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

David Foster Wallace vouched for this book, so I read it. It was wonderful. Prose like an artillery barrage of mystery, taking life and looking at it from angles you had never considered before. Got me through my son's surgeries.

[Sharon · Rating 3 out of 5]

No. Just no. This book is harsh and depressing. Powers is dazzling, as usual, in his use of language. But everything I’ve read so far (40 pages) tells me that I will be exhausted and sad when I finish this book. So finish it I will not. Good for some, but not for me. I’m just a little sorry.

[Carol Painter · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was way too sad...just too much even for me. I cannot help but wonder what this book did to his own psyche...I'm devastated...and I could not read every word as I have done with all his other books.

[Marina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazingly written... possibly the most INTENSE beautiful book I've ever read. It's very dark, but balanced with neutral philosophy that shocked me and left me staring blankly only able to say "damn."

[Dawn]

DNF. I really enjoyed The Overstory, but I could not get into this book. Life is short, lots of books out there, I had to put it down.

[JAMES M · Rating 4 out of 5]

You had best warm up with Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, keep rolling into Ulysses

This is some SERIOUS stream of consciousness. I loved it. But then, I love it when I can explicate a couple of paragraphs in Finnegans Wake, too,.
This is a really great tale about what a surgeon's mind goes through and particularly in response to mass shootings, situations where survivors are questionable. How does he live through it? The mind has to be able to multitask its thinking, to follow multiple streams simultaneously. Some of this stuff is really uncomfortable, some of it is pretty nice. This novel is WAY easier to digest than The Overstory, which I think is still like one of my top 3 books (Chesapeake and Design with Nature. Faulkner and McHarg. Pretty much interchangeable. If you want to get way out on a limb go for Dune ...).

You have to read this book just so you can say you have read it, and when you finish it you will find the Children of the Planet Earth have rewarded you.

[Kathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Powers is a gifted writer and an absolute genius, but his writing too often goes way over my head. I enjoy a challenge but some of Powers’ digressions were so abstract and obtuse, it frustrated more than stimulated my intellectual appetite. I found myself wishing for the plot, the whole plot, and nothing but the plot! All the other digressions became mere distractions as the book slogged along. It’s difficult for me to abandon a book mid-read, but I had to abandon this one. If Powers would use his remarkable intellectual ability for storytelling instead of literary showmanship, the book would have been much more enjoyable.

[Joshua · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a re-read — I’ve returned to this earlier Richard Powers novel many times over the years and it never fails to affect me. Is it over-written? Perhaps, but only in response to a modern condition that is overwhelming in its hopelessness but for the stories we tell to make sense of it to children. Not ashamed to say that I always cry at the end. Thirty years ago I cried as the young adult still close enough to childhood to taste what gets left behind. Today, I cry as the parent at the obscene vulnerability of everything I love. A magnificent work of fiction that delivers a catharsis that feels tailor-made for me. Your mileage may vary.