Generosity: An Enhancement

by Richard Powers

The National Book Award-winning author of The Echo Maker proves yet again that "no writer of our time dreams on a grander scale or more knowingly captures the zeitgeist." ( The Dallas Morning News ).

What will happen to life when science identifies the genetic basis of happiness? Who will own the patent? Do we dare revise our own temperaments? Funny, fast, and magical, Generosity celebrates both science and the freed imagination. In his most exuberant book yet, Richard Powers asks us to consider the big questions facing humankind as we begin to rewrite our own existence.

A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, Book Club, Literature, Novels, Literary Fiction, Contemporary

336 pages, Paperback

First published September 29, 2009

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

[Marc · Rating 3 out of 5]

Behind every book that I have read so far by Powers there’s a current scientific or existential debate (sometimes several ones). And that is also the case here. The story takes place in Chicago and revolves around a 23-year-old Algerian migrant woman, Thassa, who seems to be in a permanent state of happiness and ignites everyone with it. Russell, a failed writer with lots of personal issues, has her as one of his students in his evening class “creative non-fiction writing”. He immediately becomes intrigued by her and because of his clumsiness, her "happiness jackpot" becomes a public matter and everyone tries to get her secret. "Happy people must know something that no one else does. Some key to being alive , obscure and hard- won , almost out of reach". There's even a hunt on her egg-cells.

Powers also introduces a Steve Jobs-like bio-genetic guru (““We cured smallpox,” he says. “We eradicated polio. We can hunt down and wipe out misery . There’s no reason why every one of us can’t be equals to our ideal. I don’t believe in God, but I do believe that it’s humanity’s job to bring God about") , a dubious popular science journalist and even a talk show star who looks suspiciously like Oprah Winfrey. In between, the story is interspersed with real and speculative developments in bio-genetics, the old debate between nature and nurture, and Powers elaborately shows his anger about the hypocritical business world, the fake news in the media and the malice of people on the worldwide web. He's right, of course, but if you ask me, he stresses it all a little too much. The writing style too has a condensed turbo flavour at just too many places, with an abundance of literary references; sometimes Powers is really showing off.

Fortunately there is the enticing, naive ànd wise Thassa, the migrant with the "happiness gene"; fortunately also there is Russell, the failed writer, and especially his lady friend, the psychologist Candace (I loved her character very much), who make up for the weak parts of the story: they give it a certain tension and a more personal aspect. Because of the theme (can genetics make humanity better?), this is definitely an interesting book, worth reading, and occasionally it captivates through wonderful passages, but as a story it shows too many weaknesses to be a topper. Still 3 stars!

[Clif Hostetler · Rating 4 out of 5]

The secret of happiness is to be born happy (i.e. right genes). With genetic engineering this can be made to order. This gives a new dimension to our God given right of the "pursuit of happiness." This novel is structured to examine this prospective future from multiple perspectives.

This novel explores what and how people would respond to a person who was genetically predisposed to having an off-the-charts level of extreme well-being. The book examines the pursuit of happiness using genetic engineering, mood enhancement drugs, psychology, religion, computer games, love and sex. Along the way the novel explores such heavy issues as freewill versus biological determinism, positive psychology and social cognition biases. The book takes on the air of a future-looking morality play with a hint of satire and occasional touch of subtile humor.

The book is creatively written, almost too creatively. The omniscient narrator occasionally switches to first person voice as if he's speaking of his writing experience while the reader is reading. No warning is given to the reader of these changes in voice, and it can be disorienting to the reader. Also, there are occasional skips from the current story to a time two years into the future. This time jump makes sense in the end, and it helps build anticipation. But the abruptness of these switches is a bit startling for the reader.

The end has a twist that makes reading all the way to the end worth the effort. I can't say more without being a spoiler. There is a lot of good discussion material here. The book would be a good selection for a book discussion group.

The following description of the book is from PageADay's "1,000 Books to Read Before You Die" calendar for 2020:

It is Richard Powers' gift as a novelist not only to engage difficult ideas like those he deals with in this book—genomics, genetic engineering and related issues of ethics, intellectual property, human nature—but to do so in a way that is both playful and transporting,. Generosity is the story of a creative writing instructor, a therapist, a geneticist, a television broadcaster, and an Algerian Woman named Thassadit Amzwar, who is possessed of what comes to be called "the happiness gene." You may find yourself turning the last page with a feeling of exhilarating pleasure that gives an inkling of the natural state of the book's heroine.

Note to members of Vital Conversations group:
I wrote this review over nine years ago and was reminded of the book again when it showed up on my PageADay calendar. Soon thereafter the December 2020 V.C. meeting occurred during which we were invited to recommend books for the coming year of 2021. Since I had generally good memories of the novel I suggested it be considered.

While reading the book a second time in preparation for our August meeting I was reminded why my review included the statement, "The book is creatively written, almost too creatively." I wish my second reading had occurred earlier so I could have offered a brief warning about its complex literary style. Nevertheless, I hope you found it to be a rewarding read.

[Hugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am working my way through Powers' novels as an occasional project, and I now have three more to go, so I may well finish the set in the next year or so.

For me, although this one has an interesting premise and some powerful moments, it didn't coalesce as well as his best work. The starting point is the idea of a human who is predestined by her genes to permanent happiness, and its personification Thassa rather reminded me of Prince Myshkin in Dostoevsky's The Idiot. The plot is punctuated by meta-fictional interludes in which Powers describes his own difficulties in constructing the story, and as in Galatea 2.2 he rather falls in love with his own creation.

We meet Thassa in a creative non-fiction writing class at a Chicago university. She describes her own story, growing up in war-torn Algeria, and the losses of both of her parents, and her striking cheerfulness in the face of this adversity interests Russell Stone, who is running the class as a temporary job.

Much of the story explores what happens when such a story gets into the public domain, how it is exploited and how Thassa's life becomes impossible, and this is probably its most impressive aspect.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Picked this up in the airport bookstore, and on the plane recalled that I DO like reading! So yeah, Pregnant Widow? Gate at the Stairs? That newish McEwan? I was beginning to think it was me, but it's not. It's just them, actually. I can still enjoy books. (Whew.)

It would be unconscionably perverse for me to waste any further limited precious moments of my too-short life on Solar, when I could be reading this awesome book instead. Sense of duty to finish, you are neatly dispatched! Thanks, Mr. Powers. You make me so happy.
----------

So Richard Powers appears to have undergone some experimental form of gene therapy (or else possibly just had someone hit him in the head with a two-by-four) whereby he has traded in some measure of his wildly intimidating, aspergery brilliance for a dose of human empathy. This is a sweeter, nicer, simpler-minded Richard Powers who I really do believe now does love his characters, where in the past I wondered if he couldn't help looking down on them a bit for not knowing everything the way he obviously does.

The problem is that I still didn't love his characters nearly as much as he did, nor did I love them nearly as much as I loved him. I think a problem this guy might have is that Richard Powers's narrative voice is about twelve thousand times more compelling and great than any of the characters he ever creates. This may be why, of the three books of his that I've read, I only truly loved the one written in the first person. Whenever I start getting a bit bored with the people in Generosity, I'd be whipped back in and amazed by some authorial address. (Left my copy at work, but I'll add in some astoundingly great quotations later as an example of how this guy can really WRITE, holy hell, he can WRITE. [Or okay, maybe not really WRITE, but really TALK INTO HIS COMPUTER, as the case may be.]) The stuff this guy regularly busts out with is incredible, these sentences that are so funny, and so true, and so sad, and so intense, that it really knocks the wind out of me, and just leaves me reeling. I mean, he can just make these pronouncements about huge concepts like love, or the world, or history, time, humanity, writing, science, etc. that no one should get away with -- they're too big -- but he totally can.

I think he's less adept at the nuts and bolts of novel-writing -- character development, plot, etc. -- and I'm pretty sure he knows this about himself. Generosity is one of those somewhat deconstructed, seams-showing kind of novels where the author is hovering, agonizing a bit about the impossibility and artificiality of the story he's telling. That sounds a bit irritating, but it worked very well here. What didn't work for me was the characters, and also the fact that I don't find the basic subject particularly interesting. I mean, a lot of that's just personal. I don't find the idea of a genetic basis for mood very threatening or exciting, and I'm just in general not as moved by the whole future of genetics and bioethics as I guess maybe I should be. It doesn't naturally capture my imagination, and this book didn't make me care about those things any more than I did when I started.

The basic setup of this book is that it's about a sort of sad-sack writing teacher (one of two characters that felt solid and interesting to me, the other one being the TV journalist) in Chicago. He's got an Algerian refugee in his class who is impossibly generous and happy, despite having experienced a very traumatic life, and the plot unfolds from there. One of the problems with this book is that the girl's supposed to be so wonderful that everyone she comes in contact with loves her, but that's a really hard character to write without making her annoying. It's sort of like trying to have Helen of Troy in a movie. Impossibly beautiful characters work well in books, because the readers can just imagine them, but impossibly wonderful, generous, lovable ones are a lot harder, and she didn't work for me here. For awhile at the beginning I thought the point was going to be that the girl was all doped up on some new psychotropic drug, and I kind of liked that, but then when she wasn't, I got a bit bored and felt mostly annoyed or underwhelmed. There's a magnificent bit where he illustrates how happy and generous Thassa is by describing the film that she's made, and I really loved that part, but just describing her words and actions kind of made her seem perky and annoying, not magical or genetically freakishly wonderful. Of course, it's possible that I'm just a crabby bitch or missed the point here or something. I didn't really understand the ending, so maybe I missed something I was supposed to understand. There were quite a few things in this book, especially in the last quarter, where I was like, "What?" Like (sorry, spoiler alert) one character's brother having been struck by lightning. What? Why? Huh? Maybe this was just all over my head, as I did feel confused by some stuff toward the end.

I dunno, I didn't really feel that Powers was able to get enough tension going here so that I cared what happened. There was a conflict midway through with one character's career and personal relationships that drove a lot of the events but just seemed manufactured and boring to me. Ultimately, the immense excitement I felt at the beginning did not last, and I didn't wind up loving this book. However, I did love a lot of it, and I believe Richard Powers is a fabulous writer. He doesn't make the greatest characters, which I know's supposed to be important, but his narrative voice is so awesome and -- hahaha! -- powerful that it's not as big a deal as it normally would be. Yay Richard Powers! You're not perfect, but I love you! Maybe someday they can do something with his genes and manufacture the perfect writer who has all of his special talents and none of his flaws. I'd totally read that, but until then I guess I'm stuck with this version, and that's fine. I'm gonna read Galatea 2.2 next, since that seems to be the one everyone loves so much.

[Krok Zero · Rating 5 out of 5]

So, this is pretty fuggin' fantastic. My first Powers--I've always resisted, thinking of him as literature's Bill Nye the Science Guy or something. And maybe he is. And maybe that's not such a bad thing.

Some might complain that there's too much stuff packed into this novel's relatively slim, 295-page frame. We've got five (or six) major characters. There's Russell, the depressive writer/editor/teacher; Candace, the therapist and Russell's love interest; Thassa, the young Algerian woman in Russell's class who captivates every other character and sets the plot in motion with her seemingly preternatural glow of happiness; Thomas, the hotshot scientist specializing in genetic research who takes a (too?) keen interest in Thassa's case; and Tonia, the TV journalist who doesn't exactly have a clear reason for being in the book except to be a foil for the scientist, with whom she engages in a series of televised interviews. And lurking behind them all is Mr. Disembodied Authorial Presence (henceforth Mr. DAP), a metafictional narrator. (More on him later.) But boy, there are goodies on every dense page. An aesthetic and intellectual feast, this novel.

Generosity is at its most compelling when it focuses on the Russell-Thassa-Candace triangle. The other two are pretty much plot/theme devices rather than fleshed-out characters, but Powers knows this (Mr. DAP lets us know he knows it, at one point), and it's a sin I had little trouble forgiving. If character-as-mouthpiece has been a stumbling block for you in the past, it might trip you up here w/r/t Thomas and Tonia--but that's only if Powers fails to hypnotize you with the stylish richness of his prose and the nonstop deluge of his complicated ideas. Which he won't. The scientist represents a possible future in which happiness, as well as any other human trait, is a malleable and marketable commodity. He isn't exactly the villain of the piece--I don't think Powers cares enough about him as a character for that--but he could be. If Russell were the narrator instead of Mr. DAP, Thomas the "transhumanist" would be pretty near mustache-twirling in his villainy.

Lemme address Mr. DAP. At first I was thinking, okay, this is just kind of a goofy (but well-done) metafiction trick of the kind we're all pretty well familiar with--commenting on the characters and the action as "he" "creates" them. But it actually does have some thematic relevance. See, the issue of "the happiness gene" (essentially this book's MacGuffin) raises questions about free will and determinism (Powers studiously avoids these terms, maybe because they're too obvious), nature vs. nature, and the like. If our entire personality, and thus our choices and actions, is coded in our genetic make-up, then how can we be the authors of our own lives? Mr. DAP is trying to be the author of a group of fictional lives--fiction being, theoretically, a way for us to exercise some absolute control over someone's destiny, even if haven't any over our own. But the joke here is that Mr. DAP can't even sustain authorship of these fake lives. He becomes more of an observer than an author--at one point, Thassa says something in Arabic and Mr. DAP mentions that he translated it "later." And there are other instances like that, and various references to Mr. DAP passively watching the characters do things. Even in fiction, agency is slippery.

Powers also wants this to be a Way We Live Now novel, and it's there that he runs into a wee bit of awkwardness with constant references to the virtual life of the internet. (A paragraph about a character's Facebook page contains the unfortunate sentence, "Her pokes exploded.") Powers isn't exactly the writing staff of 30 Rock when it comes to being glib about stuff like this, but he does have a strong grasp of how information exchange has changed so dramatically in the past decade, and he integrates that into the plot quite plausibly. There's even an Oprah analogue ("Oona"--weirdly, also the name of a character from Jonathan Lethem's Chronic City), and the paragraph describing her importance is maybe the best thing I've ever read about Oprah. Powers is a frighteningly smart dude, and he's very much in touch with contemporary culture. And he wants us to know it. Pretty refreshing, actually, with so many intellectuals of a certain age hiding with tail betwixt legs at the mere thought of engaging with our modern mores and info-overload. There's no looking backward for Powers.

And the great thing is that there's nothing clinical about this. It's a very emotional book, both despite and because of the science. Thassa is such a great character--at first she seems like a fantasy, someone you have to suspend your disbelief to buy as real, but Powers slowly cracks the shell, and by the outstanding third act...well, let me quote David Cross's parody of James Lipton: "And no one was left unmoved!" Powers shares Bill Nye's gift for making science palatable to the layperson, but Bill Nye never made me cry. I'll be reading more Powers, hopefully soon.

[Jonathan K (Max Outlier) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written years before winning the Pulitzer for "The Overstory" Powers displays a different style of narrative with this book whose theme raises the question, "Is happiness genetic, learned, or something else?"

We first meet Russell Stone, an award winning journalist who takes a job teaching creative writing at a night school. Among the students is Thassa, a twenties Algerian girl whose happiness knows no bounds. A class of miscreants and oddballs, her ebullience wins the nickname, Generosity. Stone finds her writing intriguing as she does his, and an unusual friendship blooms. When Tonia Schiff, an investigative TV reporter hears a rumor, Thassa is invited to her show to discuss her predilection with the renown genetic pioneer and founder of Truecyte, Thomas Kurton. Fascinated by her behavior, she's invited to his company for testing.

Perplexed by Thassa, Stone consults with Candace Weld, the school's psychologist. What follows is the most unlikely of friendships which over time, deepens. Engaging, informative and well paced, the story moves the reader deeper into the inquiry with each chapter as word of the 'happiness gene' spreads globally. But when Thassa gain celebrity status, the emotional impact takes its toll.

Powers approaches all his stories with third person POV, which when added to his encyclopedic knowledge, characters of depth and plot makes for an evocative, informative experience. Powers has made it to my top twenty list of authors due to his meticulous care of storytelling, masterful skill at character development and themes that educate, inspire and raise questions. Highly recommended for those who seek 'something different'.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Generosity is my fourth Richard Powers novel and it just confirms my admiration for this author. To put it simply: The guy is a genius. How someone can pull off such a multi-layered narrative, write about genetics and make it look so easy. Oh and there’s some fourth wall breaking too.

The novel is divided into different plotlines. One concerns a teacher, called Russell Stone, who comes across Algerian refugee, Thassa. It seems that Thassa is always happy despite her circumstances, moreover her happiness is infectious and anyone who comes across her path feels the same way.

We then switch to a geneticist who is trying to find the happiness gene so that he can use it to manipulate the DNA of the human race. He sees Thassa as a perfect subject and pursues her. The problems start when Thassa starts feeling the pressure of being the happiest person alive and begins to make certain decisions.

There’s also a psychologist , a documentary director and the narrator who gives the reader snippets of his feelings towards each character’s life situation. There are times when things go a bit meta and the narrator talks about how to write a novel. All are connected to Thassa.

Generosity can be seen as a commentary on how science has the possibility to change the future but can also be destructive when it ignores the fact that science’s test subjects have feelings. The book also criticises internet behaviour and media manipulation. There’s also the question of ethical standards in a professions. Should a teacher care about their pupils? should a psychologist go beyond the couch when their patients need more help?

Generosity is a fantastic novel, sometimes Powers anxiety about progress mirrors Don Delillo’s but I think Powers does it better, and adds an intellectual edge. At this point I also would recommend generosity (it’s the nickname Thassa’s class give her but there’s also the word gene in the title so it’s an elaborate pun) as a good place to start for someone who has never read this forward thinking, brainy author.

[K.D. Absolutely · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book could have been a big hit for me if I had not first read Eric Weiner's 2008 book, The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World. That and this book both floated the idea that there is the so-called "happiness gene" in our DNA make up in the same fashion that there said to be a homosexual gene, a cancer gene and other anomalies that found to have been probably caused by gene abnormalities.

It tells the story of a young Algerian woman Thassadit "Thassa" Amzwar who comes to Chicago from her war-torn country. She surprises everyone that despite the hardships that she has experienced in fleeing her country, she has a exuberant personality and a peaceful happy disposition. In the school, she attends the Creative Non-Fiction (this is new to me) class of professor Russell Stone. Intrigued, Stone researches on Algeria and skims through popular happiness manuals (he should have encountered Weiner's book along the way). Joining him later was the geneticist Thomas Kurton, whose research leads him to announce the genetic makeup for happiness.

What follows is how Thassa's life interweaves with the two men including Stone's girlfriend Candace Weld who also gets interested with her. This also includes the circus that follows men the finding that our disposition for happiness could be traced in our genetic makeup. The title "Generosity" is Thassa's name in the fictional book/play that is based on her life.

As I said if I did not read a book prior to this, I could have given this more than 2 stars. Aside from that revelation, Powers (my first book by him) is surprisingly a good writer. His prose is funny, fast and straight to the point. It's good that even if this book talks about genetics a lot, it did not a lot of jargons that could have turn this book into a total bore.

Not really a bad book. It was just eclipsed by an earlier more comprehensive book with the same theme. So, this is just an OK book.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is probably the most accessible of his books that I've read, not overly technical but certainly not patronizing. But for those who appreciate Powers' tendency towards erudite digressions on any imaginable high-brow subject, you may feel that this book is somewhat lacking in that department; it even reads at times like he is making a deliberate effort to rein himself in and to focus on the momentum of the plot. This is interesting because one strand of the plot is a sort of meta-narrative on the nature of fiction, a counterpoint metaphor to the central question of the main storyline, which is: Can we, as a species, create or rewrite our nature/destiny? And should we?

Despite the relatively quick pacing, there is no shortage of ideas. The insinuations are profound, and the questions he asks us to ponder are deep and complicated, at once intellectually stimulating and viscerally disturbing. This book is best when read slowly. There are so many ideas, allusions, clues and metaphors packed into single paragraphs that you will be most rewarded by reading carefully and taking nothing for granted. On a sentence level, Powers sometimes condenses to the point of aphorism, something that I found generally pleasing but occasionally cloying.

I don't think Powers is completely successful in his effort to illustrate what it is exactly that makes Thassa so remarkable. Sure, she's a very likable, vibrant, and cheerful character, but it's hard to appreciate why she has such an extreme effect on everyone she meets. It is only through the reactions of the characters that she interacts with that we are really able to recognize her outlier status.

Overall though, I loved the story, the ideas, the structure, the little satirical touches, the topicality, and the well fleshed-out characters. For anyone who has read and enjoyed Richard Powers in the past, you won't be disappointed in this; and for anyone who has yet to discover this brilliant, indispensable author, "Generosity" is a perfect place to start.

[Jennifer (formerly Eccentric Muse) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I need to put some serious thought into this review - there's about 100 strands of plot, character and theme that I'd like to touch on. But right now, I can't do that - so suffice it to say, this book is fabulous. Don't be scared of it - even though it takes on some pretty weighty issues - freewill v. biological determinism; positive psychology and social cognition biases; and the absolutely fascinating, speculative fictional premise of what and how people would respond to a person who was genetically predisposed to having an off-the-charts level of extreme well-being. Happy all the time, in other words.

It's a slightly satirical, future-looking morality play - but it's also a tale just plain told well. It doesn't lecture or patronize (or worse, bore) its reader and although Powers grazes dangerously close to exposition, he doesn't make the same mistake Shriver does in so much for that -- putting all the heavy research findings and stats directly into his characters' mouths as dialogue.

Instead, he uses a meta-fictional technique of a very self-conscious, break-through-the-wall narrator to develop his plot, characters and themes. I couldn't decide what that was about at first, or whether it was annoying, but I realized quickly that it was an essential way to tell the story and AVOID the otherwise tragic need to put too much stuff into dialogue. (and that, in and of itself, highlights this theme of fiction-writing that he manages to explore - it's really complex, yeah? But fun! Like an Escher drawing).

So, while he also creates characters - Miss Generosity, Thassa Amzwar, herself; Russell Stone as depressive-realist Everyman; his love interest Candace, college counsellor who can interpret all the psych mumbo-jumbo in layperson's terms for Russell (and for us readers) who represents the "nurture" side of the argument; Thomas Kurton, mad scientist/geneticist who represents the "nature" side, they are also still characters in a compelling story (as the narrator reminds us), and interesting, likeable ones at that.

Last few things before I run ... Powers' reminds me quite a lot of Jennifer Egan in the way he makes contemporary technology and its influence on human behaviour a central theme while at the same time risking the anachronisms that are sure to emerge. Just two (three?) years post-publication, his references to MySpace, to facebook "pokes," to Kurton punching something into a Blackberry (oh, please -- the man's an iPad user if I've ever met one) and the lack of reference to twitter (word would NOT spread via blogs, it would be twitter all the way) -- are all outdated.

While all that's forgivable, I did truly stumble at some of his Canadian references. First, I laughed out loud when, in seeking some kind of explanation for Thassa's ever-present "niceness," Russell rules out "even the time spent in Canada." HAHAHHAHAHA. But then, Powers talks about "states" visible from the Sears tower: "75% of which are not ours." (Don't call Canada's provinces states. It pisses us off.) And he references, twice, "council flats" in Montreal - which is a U.K. term not used anywhere in Canada - it's public housing, low-income housing or subsidized housing. Finally, he talks about Thassa being sexually naive - and makes some reference to that being a fact of her time in Quebec. Uhhhh ... no. You could pin that on uptight Ontario, but never never on Quebec.

Anyway -- little quibbles -- kind of like the Doomsday Book's potatoes (right, Simon Evnine??) - that ultimately were only slightly distracting.

Looking forward to more Powers.

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Last year I read and loved The Overstory. This year I plan to read all the rest of Richard Powers's novels in reverse order of publication by reading one a month. This is turning out to be quite an immersion into one author and a way of looking back into the last 30 some years of scientific and social history.

In Generosity, Powers combines the science of genetics, an examination of how stories are written, and the ways that science and commerce become entangled. His characters serve his ideas and I am coming to see a pattern in these novels.

The main ethical question he addresses is the use of genetic data to rearrange the human mind and body as a means to circumvent disease and mental illness. A big question!

The inexplicable bliss of Algerian refugee Thassadit Amzwar drives the plot. She is a great creation of a character, at risk of exploitation and the destruction of her personality.

Though this novel did not quite reach the wondrous heights of Orfeo or The Overstory, it was a worthwhile look at the potential dangers and the powers of science in relation to society and the media. If you could give your child the guarantee of happiness by genetic manipulation, would you?

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I enjoyed this one more than the two other Powers novels I've read, though I can't say if that's because it's a better book or because I've adapted to him as a reader. In the past I think I've found his novels sort of puzzling: the world and the nexus of problems that he brings up is in some ways too complete in and of itself somehow? This seems a strange thing to say, especially since I think it was a failure of me as a reader: I was expecting a novel that seemed more conventional, and the novels don't have those metafictional bells and whistles that tell you they are unconventional, or that they are using a different set of conventions, so you sink into these worlds and these intellectual webs of ideas that are somehow wholly other, and you don't get what you're expecting. But that's a problem with me, not Richard Powers.

In any case, this one did have a little superstructure to signal to the reader, so perhaps I was better prepared for what I was getting into. But looking back on something like the Prisoner's Dilemma, the otherness, the complete world that you get that's wholly fictional, was this one weird family, complete with their verbal strategies that populate the book and the writing, and I think it may be a better book than I realized at the time, letting myself be carried along instead of actually thinking.

Anyway.

[Joy D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Russell Stone is a jaded writer teaching a creative nonfiction class in Chicago. He becomes fascinated by one of his students, Thassa Amzwar, an Algerian refugee with a seemingly boundless capacity for happiness. The class nicknames her “Generosity.” Eventually her perpetual joy attracts attention from scientists, media, and corporations, and the storyline morphs into an evaluation of whether happiness is a genetic trait that could be identified and potentially replicated. She is discussed online and the unwanted notoriety challenges even her seemingly endless supply of kindness.

This book explores themes of happiness, genetics, and ethics. It challenges readers to consider what might be gained or lost if happiness were a product of genetics. Richard Powers excels at delving into the ramifications of science-related topics. His prose is elegant, and the reader will be able to tell he enjoys wordplay. In this book, he frequently breaks the fourth wall, making observations about writing the novel, providing insight into the authorial process. Recommended to readers interested in bioethics, the nature of happiness, and the ever-blurring boundary between humanity and technology.

[Susanna Rautio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Älykäs, mutta inhimillinen, kirja geeniteknologiasta ja -bisneksestä. Harmittavasti kirja alkaa vaisusti. Alkujakson laahustaminen elämänlyömän editori/opesijaisen arjessa oli kuin toisesta kirjasta lainattu startti sen jälkeen paljon kiinnostavammalle tarinalle.

Sittemmin löytyi onnellisuusgeeni. Lopulta maailmallekin paljastui onnellisuusgeenin haltija, joka oli liian suopea yhteistyöehdotuksille ja yhteydenotoille.

Syntyi kultti, syntyi vastakultti sekä myötä- ja vastajulkisuus. Syntyi ystävyyttä, rakkautta ja eettisiä ongelmia. Ja lukija tietysti mietti, onko sittenkin onnekkaampaa taistella onnestaan kuin syntyä onnelliseksi.

Powers oli ensimmäisiä ihmisiä, joiden geeniperimä on selvitetty perinpohjin. Faktaa ja teoriaa hän sisällytti tähän fiktioon hyvin kiinnostavasti. Keskeisinä henkilöinä muun muassa kuuluisat ja kunnianhimoiset tiedetoimittaja ja geenitutkimusta hyödyntävä kasvuyritysjohtaja.

Isoja kysymyksiä, kiinnostavia näkökulmia. Hieno kirja kymmenen vuoden takaa, joka yhä tuntui vähän scifimäiseltä. Mutta ei enää kauaa.

[David Hebblethwaite · Rating 5 out of 5]

Russell Stone is a washed-up writer making ends meet by teaching a ‘Journal and Journey’ class to a group of art students at a Chicago college. One member of that group stands out because of her remarkable personality: Thassadit Amzwar is a young woman from Algeria who is apparently happy all the time; nothing seems to bother her, and people are naturally attracted to her sunny disposition. Even after everything she has experienced in her life, Thassa remains in perpetual good humour; Russell speaks to Candace Weld, one of the college’s counsellors, who can only conclude that nothing is wrong, and Thassa is just a naturally happy person. At the same time, we read about Thomas Kurton, a biotechnologist with an evangelical zeal for his work in the field of genetics. Kurton’s current project is to isolate the genetic basis for happiness; when he hears about Thassa, he invites her to participate in his study – and soon she becomes public knowledge.

Generosity has a number of concerns, but the one that’s most prominent to me is stories. The novel is full of then: the creative nonfiction taught by Russell makes a story out of one’s life; media reporting makes a story out of science; science itself makes a story out of the stuff of the universe. The characters are presented to us through filters of story: we first encounter Thomas Kurton as talking head in a science documentary; and there are frequent asides from the narrator (whose identity is unclear; it may be Richard Powers himself, or perhaps Russell Stone, or the science broadcaster Tonia Schiff, or someone else entirely) which emphasise the fictional nature of what we’re reading. The effect of this is to suggest that reality is mutable: our conceptions of the world change with the telling, and there is no escaping the web of story, however much we might think otherwise (some of the most effective passages in the book show this in action, describing the spread of information in an age when the boundary between public and private has all but dissolved).

This leads into another of Generosity’s main themes, which has to do with the ethics of science and its reporting. Powers is more concerned with dramatising questions than providing answers, and paints a complex picture: is it unethical for Thassa to profit from her genes, if it means that she can improve her family’s lot to a degree that would otherwise be impossible? When Kurton makes a song and dance in the media over his company’s research, is he feeding the flames of hype, or just doing what he has to do to get noticed in that day and age? Such issues never quite lose their shades of grey in the book, as characters are shown to both benefit and lose out from the choices they make.

I’ve been thinking about the characterisation in Generosity for some time, particularly that of Thassa. For one so charismatic with by definition an extraordinary personality, she comes across on the page as remarkably unremarkable – I never felt Thassa’s charisma when reading about her. At first, I considered this a problem, because generally I want to experience characters’ traits, rather than just read about them. But now I tend to think it’s a way of showing how this aspect of her character can be a space that other people fill in their own way; there’s a striking scene where Thassa makes an impassioned speech that spreads all over the internet, but we witness its detail only through the online reactions and imitations. Of the other characters, I found the depiction of Russell Stone particularly vivid; in some ways, he is the opposite of Thassa – where her personality faces naturally outwards, his turns inwards (when we first meet him on the train to work, Russell is described as being ‘dressed for being overlooked’). Over the course of the novel, Powers traces the (fairly complex) development of Russell’s character, as he becomes less withdrawn, but without shaking off his doubts.

Generosity leaves one with much to think about in a variety of areas, from ethical issues in science to the effects on people of being caught up in scientific change; from the place of story in the world to the effects of contemporary communication methods. Recommended.

[Philippe · Rating 4 out of 5]

A young girl strikes a big American city like a meteorite. She fled a civil war and, via Paris and Montreal, disembarks in the metropolis. Her radiance and appetite for life transfixes those who have the privilege of orbiting around her.

The circumstances remind us of the real-world work of epidemiologist Aaron Antonovsky who, in the 1960s and 70s was struck in his research by how certain women who had survived the Holocaust were able to sustain a rich and positive outlook on life. Antonovsky reoriented his research to try to understand how this was possible (“Had it been just one woman, it would still have been important to find out why”!) which led him to develop an original and important theory of health.

Also Richard Powers takes this phenomenon as the start for a process of inquiry.
From the immigrant’s dazzling presence he conjures two major questions: ‘How are we to live?’ and ‘How are we to know?’. The novel lets then two sense-making and life-making paradigms collide: the scientific and the narrative. The scientist (or, better, the scientist-entrepreneur) is on a visionary quest to lay bare the order in things and to explore the upper limits of human ingenuity (in sofar as this continues to provide venture funders with a reasonable short-term return). And that includes rewiring our genomic apparatus to “make ourselves over into anything we want”. Happiness should not be left to chance; it’s a neurochemical design challenge.

For the narrator (or novelist, or mythographer) happiness emerges from a tangled web of relationships. “Happy people have stronger social relationships, more friends, better jobs, higher salaries, and stronger marriages. They are more creative, more altruistic, calmer, healthier, and longer lived.” But the causalities aren’t always clear. And there are contingencies, and human fallibility. From this messiness and from this abundance of possible relationships the narrator constructs a story, and hence imposes some sort of sense on the world.

The paradigmatic difference between the ‘objective’ and utopian scientist and the narrator who is all too conscious of the inescapable fragility of human life is played out quite literally in this novel. Powers overlays it with another dilemma that is rooted in the foundational problem of freedom. Imposing order is never an innocent business. Narrators make normative judgments. And those judgments may have unwanted or unintended consequences. One of the characters in a short-story authored by one of the protagonists (drawn from real life) commits suicide because he rebelled against the irreversible framing by the narrative. So how to navigate this dilemma between order and freedom? How to write a story of “the kind that, from one word to the next, breaks free. The kind that invents itself out of meaningless detail and thin air. The kind in which there’s no choice but chance?”

Scientists have to deal with a similar conundrum. In the hypercomplex universe of genomics, the data are always more or less inconclusive. “Genes don’t code for traits. They synthesize proteins. And single proteins can do incredibly different things, depending on where or when they’re produced … “ Deciding where to put the line between nature and nurture, between determinism and freedom, is, for the time being, also in science an unresolved issue.

Richard Powers’ books invariably are novels of ideas. This double dilemma – between science and story-telling, between determinism and freedom – seems to me to be the philosophical backbone of the book. There are other themes that Powers weaves in with characteristic brio. But at the center remains the young girl, Generosity, for whom the whole challenge of ‘happiness’ is a mirage: “People think they need to be healed, but the truth is much more beautiful. Even a minute is more than we deserve. No one should be anything but dead. Instead we get honey of out rocks. Miracles from nothing. It’s easy. We don’t need to get better. We’re already us. And everything that is, is ours.

[Dustin the wind Crazy little brown owl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exuberance carries us places we could not otherwise go - across the savannah, to the moon, into the imagination - and if we ourselves are not so exuberant we will, caught up by the contagious joy of those who are, be inclined collectively to go yonder.
- Kay Redfield Jamison, Exuberance: The Passion for Life

No place is bigger than where we live.
- Pablo Neruda

Generosity is my second Richard Powers experience after enjoying the Overstory immensely. I like Generosity: An Enhancement, but so far, I prefer The Overstory, The Echo Maker and Gain : A Novel. I'm looking forward to exploring more by the author.

Favorite Passages:
A man rides backward in a packed subway car. This must be almost fall, the season of revision. I picture him in the thick of bequest, tunneling beneath the I Will City, the world's twenty-fifth biggest urban sprawl, one wedged in the population charts between Tianjin and Lima. He hums some calming mantra to himself, a song with the name Chicago in it, but the train drowns out the tune.
He's just thirty-two, I know, although he seems much older. I can't see him well, at first. But that's my fault, not his. I'm years away, in another country, and the El car is so full tonight that everyone's near invisible.
_______

The blank page is patient, and meaning can wait.
_______

"When you're sure of what you're looking at, look harder."
_______

They're hiding in the sullen, shiny performance of youth.
_______

"Writing always comes from beyond the grave, anyway," John Thornell says. "I mean, either the author or audience is already dead, or will be soon."
_______

Taped to the inside of the desk he inherited from his grandfather, he keeps the Schiller quote found in Melville's desk after his death: "Keep true to the dreams of thy youth." His forgotten note awaits the discovery of death's garage sale.
_______

Feelings are the new facts. Memoir is the new history. Tell-alls are the new news.
_______

He burned with the need to befriend Emma Woodhouse, to pass her funny notes int he mind's eternal freshman biology class. With Dorothea Brooke, he took long rambles through the countryside, camping out with her under the stars and never touching anything but her lips. Much later, Odette was great fun, until she wasn't. He tried to protect Daisy Miller, and failed miserably. He tried to desire Daisy Buchanan, but failed to do much more than shake her till she whimpered.
_______

"Everyone's a major motion picture," Princess Heavy sneers. "Every life, based on a true story."
_______

We're shaped to think the things we want will make us happy. But shaped to take only the briefest thrill in getting. Wanting is what having wants to recover.
_______

The night is clear and the wind comes off the moon and literature has just been invented.
_______

"Do you think it's possible for people to change their own story?"
_______

It's the perfect day to play the tourist in one's own life.
_______

Is it true that a California woman has mortgaged her house to raise the $50,000 needed to bring her dog back from the dead?
_______

I want a world where the one source of real wealth - genetic possibility - is common knowledge and accessible to everyone.
. . . The point is to find out where collective wisdom wants to go . . .
_______

Deep inside his tangled passageways, he's already breaking free. Art is whatever you make. Walk on air. No one gets hurt by any true invention. She's showing him the foreign pages, and the words are all in a Martian alphabet no human being could possibly read. Teh writing is chaos, the coldest thrill, the best drug of all.
_______

. . . story starts when a character's core value no longer suffices to stabilize his world.
_______

Information may travel at light speed. But meaning spreads at the speed of dark.
_______

Resentment is the coward's retreat from possibility. He could resent the night sky, for thrilling him.
_______

Days pass in a short forever.
_______

The world outside their rented casket floors him. Night is deep and crackling. The air smells of sap, as it must have smelled for millions of years before the first flicker of awareness.

[Karenina]

Lettura coinvolgente per i due terzi del romanzo, si risolve in tono minore lasciando un vago senso di insoddisfazione. A tre giorni dalla chiusura del libro non sono certa di aver individuato il punctum della narrazione; come spesso accade nei romanzi di Powers, i temi sono molteplici ed intersecati. Provo ad elencarne alcuni, così, per cercare di chiarirmi le idee:
il primo più esplicito è quello, caro all’Autore, del confronto/scontro tra due visioni del mondo, una contrapposizione irrisolta fra scienza ed etica, fra determinismo e acquisizione culturale, quale peso attribuire alla dotazione genetica nell’ipotesi di fornire una selezione ottimale degli individui. Si paventa un futuro di maternità “à la carte” in un mondo occidentale soffocato dall’infelicità;
qui si innesta il secondo tema, la critica alla società dello spettacolo, all’informazione pilotata, al gregge internet dipendente, dove i rapporti virtuali si sostituiscono ai contatti reali impoverendo di fatto l’esperienza proprio mentre assicura a tutti il mondo a portata di mouse;
l’ultimo tema che serpeggia per tutto il romanzo è metanarrativo ed è, a mio avviso, il più ambizioso ma anche il meno riuscito: a chi appartiene la voce narrante? Ci sta dicendo esplicitamente che si tratta di narrativa o ci sta raccontando i fatti a posteriori e deve identificarsi con uno dei protagonisti?

“Di cosa parlerebbe il suo libro, se osasse mettere piede in questo mondo? Lei non lo chiede, lui non lo dice. Potrebbe parlare delle scarsissime probabilità di sentirsi ancora a proprio agio nel mondo. Degli enormi movimenti di capitale che rendono la realizzazione di se stessi a dir poco stravagante. Della catastrofe del buon senso collettivo che ci fornisce, finalmente, ciò che vogliamo.”

Qualcosa mi è sfuggito nella costruzione macchinosa di quest’ultimo aspetto lasciandomi con un pizzico di perplessità.

P.S. Tolgo la valutazione in stellette perché nel libro il figlio decenne della psicologa attribuisce stelle ad ogni esperienza e questo particolare ha toccato per me un punto dolente, si impone una riflessione sul ridurre ogni cosa a “mi piace/non mi piace”, ma quante stellette?

[Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Richard Powers is one of my favorite writers. Generosity is not my favorite of his books, but I almost feel like I will have to reread it again in a few months in order to review it appropriately.

The book jacket says this book is about the search for a gene that determines happiness and a woman who is the happiest person in the world. And, yes, that's the plot, more or less. I would say the book is about how we live now, about how we measure our purpose and existence. If you're interested in the intersection of science, culture, media, and corporations, I think you might want to pick this up.

It is shorter and more accessible than any other Powers book I've read. It's also set in Chicago (or a facsimile thereof), so Chicagoans will enjoy recognizing streets, subway stations, and city sights in the text. I love the experience of sinking into Powers's paragraphs - something about the way he writes is so compelling to me, like coming home to someplace you recognize in a dream (but yet you wake up to realize you've never been there before).

I found the ending of this book unsatisfying, at least on first read, but even slightly-unsatisfying Powers is better for me than most anyone else on their best day.

[Abby Albright · Rating 4 out of 5]

“To look on a thing that had been true since the start of creation but never grasped until you made it so: no euphoria available to the human brain could match it. Cleaner than drugs, broader and more powerful than sex-Huxley's "divine dipso-mania." Anyone who tasted it once would spend the rest of his life trying for more.”

•••

Really good. Also takes a lot of creative liberties, not all of which I was able to follow (hence the non-perfect rating). The descriptions of science were absolutely gripping — and I did appreciate many of Thassa’s comments on living a “happy life”. Overall, takes a cheesy premise on finding happiness and makes it beautiful and original.

[Oriana]

from the Powells.com book review: The story postulates the existence of a "happiness gene" that would enhance the whole species. Thassa Amzwar, improbably happy despite her suffering, might be the donor who will usher in the "age of molecular control." Yet the novel's affect, first to last, isn't admonitory so much as amazed, a word half-buried in Amzwar's name. Generosity may be jam-packed, but it's genius: It soars, it boggles.

[Noreen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Richard Powers is as usual dealing with all the most difficult questions. His work is almost always immediate, topical, beautifully written (od in his case spoken) and wildly ambitious. I was particularly interested in reading this one because it's about young Algerian woman who seems to possess the "happiness gene." As the daughter of a father who so obviously did have the happiness gene,how could I resist?

[Stephan Benzkofer · Rating 4 out of 5]

It seems, sometimes, that there are all the authors in the world, and then there's Richard Powers. It's almost unfair, everything that Richard Powers can do. He can turn a phrase, find the perfect analogy, make you laugh. He can explain complex science and play with multiple plot lines with equal aplomb. Wow.

[Ron Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sixteen years after Peter Kramer's "Listening to Prozac," Richard Powers has heard the alarming implications of treatments that let us buy better moods and personalities. His cerebral new novel offers a chilling examination of the life we're reengineering with our chromosomes and brain chemistry. Although it's tempting to call "Generosity" a dystopia about the pharmaceutical future in the tradition of Huxley's "Brave New World," Powers sticks so closely to the state of current medical science and popular culture that this isn't so much a warning as a diagnosis. And as with any frightening diagnosis, you'll be torn between denial and a desperate urge to talk about it.

The story begins on a deceptively small scale: Russell Stone is a cynical young editor for a cheesy self-improvement magazine called Becoming You. He's still recovering from a brief period of fame when his witty personal essays were sought after by NPR and the New Yorker. But now, at 32, he spends his days translating saccharine testimonies of personal triumph into Standard English. Lonely and depressed, he jumps at the chance to teach a night class in creative nonfiction at a Chicago arts college.

Everything in this provocative novel revolves around a mysterious student in Russell's class named Thassa Amzwar. She's an Algerian who came to Chicago by way of Paris and Montreal after losing her home and her parents "during the Time of Horrors." By any reasonable measure, she should be shellshocked or corroded with bitterness, but instead she's hypnotically happy, "the world's most blissful refugee," with a voice like "mountain flutes." Russell is immediately fascinated by her: "Ten years of organized bloodbath have reduced a country the size of western Europe to a walking corpse. And Thassa has emerged from that land glowing like a blissed-out mystic." Everybody in class soaks "in the glow of this woman, her eerie contentment." They quickly dub her "Miss Generosity," but Russell thinks she's "either on newly discovered antidepressants or so permanently traumatized she's giddy."

Powers can write lovely and heartfelt stories (he won a National Book Award in 2006), but he also has a well-deserved reputation for brainy fiction (he won a MacArthur "genius" grant in 1989), and "Generosity" may be his most demanding novel yet. It's told in a series of moments that run from just a paragraph to a few pages long, involving a triple-helix plot.

In the main story line, Russell befriends Thassa and introduces her to a psychological counselor to make sure the young woman's striking happiness is not the manifestation of some mental illness. The three of them form a strange kind of support group, bound together in a dangerously ambiguous web of professional responsibility, love and sex.

A second story line involves a jet-setting scientist named Thomas Kurton, who stays on the cutting edge of genetic research and, as much as possible, in front of a camera. This irrepressible entrepreneur joins the august company of such literary scientists as Drs. Faustus, Frankenstein and Rappaccini, but Powers's Dr. Kurton is also a dead ringer for the real-life vitamin-popping futurist Ray Kurzweil. "Vaguely messianic," Kurton oversees an ever-evolving galaxy of pharmaceutical companies, and he loves to electrify the public imagination with "ecstatic pieces about the coming transhuman age." From his first genetic breakthrough while a student at Stanford, he's been on a tear to revise the chemical composition of our genes to save us from mortality. For a price. Equal parts scientist and huckster, he tells adoring crowds: "The script that has kept us in gloom and dread is about to be rewritten. Labs across the globe are closing in on those ridiculous genetic errors that cause life to suicide. Aging is not just a disease; it's the mother of all maladies. And humankind may finally have a shot at curing it."

The thrust of the novel involves Dr. Kurton's discovery of Russell's elated student, Thassa. A series of innovative tests reveals that she possesses a unique genetic mutation that makes her permanently content, although the announcement of that discovery threatens to burn her life under a glare of toxic publicity. By using her genetic material, Dr. Kurton suggests he may be on the threshold of ridding humanity of despair, coding soma right into our chromosomes. In a country where 10 percent of us take antidepressants -- "Generosity" is packed with such startling factoids -- that could be the greatest breakthrough since penicillin.

This seems like plenty of rich material for a relatively short novel, but Powers folds a third story line into the mix. As Russell struggles to guide Thassa through her interaction with Dr. Kurton, we also follow the work of the country's most popular science journalist, a savvy young woman named Tonia Schiff. What Powers makes so bracingly clear with Tonia's gradual disillusionment is that the scientific breakthroughs that alter the nature of humanity don't take place in the laboratory. These drugs and genetic techniques aren't fully born until they're packaged by the media and consumed by a distracted but passionate public. In a culture in which entertainment value is the highest value, all things -- including scientific truth -- must be hyped for mass consumption. One of the most depressingly realistic scenes shows flashy Dr. Kurton debating the benefits of genetic enhancement with a Nobel Prize-winning novelist. Needless to say, the novelist's wise objections are blown to smithereens by the force of Dr. Kurton's shiny optimism. There's also a spot-on depiction of an episode of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" about the latest psychological discoveries. A graphic reminder of the nuance-free way millions of people learn about complicated medical science, it's as funny as it is sobering.

And to this fascinating mix, Powers dares to add a postmodern narrator who periodically breaks into the story to deconstruct readers' assumptions about characters and plot. "I'm caught like Buridan's ass," he writes, "starving to death between allegory and realism, fact and fable. . . . I know what kind of story I'd make from this one, if I could." It's easy to feel annoyed with this kind of authorial gamesmanship, particularly in a story that already boasts so many bells and whistles, but in the context of "Generosity," Powers's self-conscious narrator is brilliantly relevant. This is, after all, a novel about human beings attempting to design their own characters and, in a sense, narrate their own biological stories. With "Generosity," Powers has performed a dazzling cross-disciplinary feat, linking the slippery nature of "creative nonfiction" to the moral conundrums of genetic engineering.

Although you might expect a novel so weighted with medical and philosophical arguments to flatten its characters into brittle stereotypes, ultimately that's the most impressive aspect of this meditation on happiness and humanness. As "Generosity" drives toward its surprising conclusion, these characters grow more complex and poignant, increasingly baffled by the challenge and the opportunity of remaking ourselves to our heart's content.

[Paolo · Rating 5 out of 5]

La capacità e il bisogno degli esseri umani di raccontare storie è espressione di un qualche pattern genetico della nostra specie o c'entra qualcos'altro (tipo dio o una proprietà più generale di organismi complessi)?

Powers parte da questa domanda per sviluppare una storia parallela tra un insegnante di scrittura creativa fallito e un famoso biologico transumanista, con una ragazza felice in maniera quasi patologica a fare da collante tra i due. Questo permette a Powers di osservare il metaromanzo con gli strumenti della genetica e della biologia E il discorso scientifico con gli strumenti della [non]fiction creativa, in una sorta di doppia elica che per me è davvero ben riuscita, visto che, salvo qualche uscita vagamente cringe, questo romanzo si legge che è una meraviglia.

Ci sarebbe tantissimo altro da scrivere ma sono pigro, quindi leggetelo aaaaaaaaa

[Anna Hokkinen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oivallisesti rakennettu tarina onnellisuudesta ja inhimillisyydestä. Mielenkiintoisia välähdyksiä geenien vaikutuksesta onnellisuuteen ja ihmisten reaktioista geenitutkimuksen tarjoamiin mahdollisuuksiin. Kirjan luettuani jäin miettimään, että ehkä juuri epätäydellisyys tekee ihmisistä ihmisiä.

[Clara · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to adore this book so desperately that I read a few sections more than once, waiting for the themes (positive psychology; the human genome a la Craig Venter; an Algerian war refugee: so alluring on their own!) to solidify into one self-reinforcing text. Instead, I found myself increasingly cynical about the existential narrator and plot that solves its own problems. Powers sets up the nature vs. nurture debate only to walk you through the monologue of objections you may have experienced while it was being doled out; he places a creative writer in the role of protagonist and makes you wonder if he [Powers:] is getting bored with writing fiction, e.g. "He [Russel:] knows why he could never in his life or anytime thereafter write fiction: he's crushed under the unbearable burden of a plot" (p. 273). The novel is clever, but I found it emotionally dishonest. Powers is right on about the virulence spawned by the anonymity of the "web," and the brave new world here today in the largely unregulated domain of in vitro fertilization; but I suspect his themes were drawn from equally anonymous and ubiquitous sources (I wondered more than once if Thassadit's character is a derivative of Eggers' real life Valentino).

[Jordan Magnuson]

This is the third book I've read by Richard Powers, and it's hard for me to know exactly what I think of his work. His characters and world often seem a bit distant, as if we're watching them move around in some other world, far removed from ours. Partly to blame for this is Powers' habit of referencing everything under the sun in a way that is often interesting but also threatens to distract the reader, and sometimes hovers on egotism run amok: one feels that Powers' characters are in constant danger of becoming little rats in the maze of his own genius. The very meaning of his stories is often threatened by the same bombardment.

Still, there is something fascinating and resonant in his work, and I know of no other author that tackles important posthuman themes with such talent and gusto. I will continue to read him, and I cautiously recommend Generosity, though I feel that it is not as strong a story as Galatea, or The Echo Maker. I have a hard time even now knowing where the book's central meaning lies, but the themes continue to prick my mind, and I did feel attached to the characters by the end of it. Also, bonus points for featuring Tunisia.

[Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Generosity: for a book with such a title there is awful little joy. Even the person with the extraordinary genes isn't in my opinion a really happy person. But maybe that's just the point Powers wants te make: that the existence of happiness genes is a non issue.

The structure of the book, takes some accustoming to but once your used to it, it's quite readable.
I hated the narrator though: I don't especially like the writer of a book to be so present in the story.
The end is abrupt and unsatisfying.

There have been moments, I wanted to shelve it unfinished but in the end I'm happy I finished it. It's worthwhile. For me it certainly wasn't a page turner: more a book you have to put your teeth in and grind at, digest it.

[Ffiamma · Rating 3 out of 5]

uno scrittore in crisi, una classe di "non fiction" e una giovane profuga algerina che sembra essere sempre radiosa e felice. e ancora: genetica, televisione, potere delle masse, una psicologa confusa, meccanismi sociali impazziti, dubbi etici. secondo me powers è uno dei più grandi scrittori contemporanei- ma questo romanzo non mi ha convinta fino in fondo. certo, la storia è interessante ma ho trovato la narrazione (a volte) inutilmente labirintica- al contrario di altri suoi romanzi altrettanto intricati e i personaggi mi sono sembrati sfocati e bidimensionali (a cominciare da thassa, di cui non sono riuscita a immaginare lo stato di beatitudine). diciamo che per me è stato un buon romanzo che non ha saputo generare un grammo di empatia.