Richard Powers - Kirkus

[paolo beneforti]

"The echo maker"?

Billy Sprangs ha scritto:
> The theme of cognitive disorder, variously explored in Powers's 
> forbiddingly brainy earlier fiction, is the central subject of his 
> eerie, accomplished ninth novel.
>
>
> An image of sand-hill cranes migrating from Nebraska's Platte River 
> sets the scene, where 20-something slaughterhouse-worker Mark Schluter 
> crashes his truck in an adjacent field, sustaining severe bodily and 
> neurological injuries. Repeating an all-too-familiar pattern, Mark's 
> older sister Karin leaves her job and life in Sioux City to be with 
> him -- stirring up memories of their shared childhood in thrall to a 
> violent, alcoholic father and religious zealot mother. But Mark (whose 
> inchoate, terrified viewpoint is rendered in a rich mlange of 
> semi-coherent thoughts and visions) no longer knows Karin; he is, in 
> fact, convinced she's a stranger masquerading as his sister.
>
> Eventually, he's diagnosed as suffering from "Capgras syndrome . . . 
> one of a family of misidentification delusions." But Mark's symptoms 
> elude the pattern familiar to Gerald Weber, a prominent New York 
> cognitive neurologist and bestselling author, summoned by Karin's 
> importuning letter. Weber's "tests" fail to relieve or explain Mark's 
> delusive paranoia, and Karin turns first to the siblings' former 
> childhood friend Daniel Riegel, long since estranged from Mark, now a 
> deeply committed environmental activist; then to her former lover 
> Robert Karsh, a manipulative charmer who has risen to local prominence 
> as a successful developer. Contrasts thus established seem pat, but 
> Powers explores the mystery surrounding Mark through suspenseful 
> sequences involving his raucous drinking buddies (who may know more 
> about his accident than they're telling); compassionate caregiver 
> Barbara Gillespie; and the unidentified observer who left a cryptic 
> message about Mark's ordeal at the patient's hospital bedside. Issues 
> of environmental stewardship and rapine, compulsions implicit in 
> migratory patterns and Weber's changing concept of the fluid, 
> susceptible nature of the self are sharply dramatized in a fascinating 
> dance of ideas.
>
> One of our best novelists (The Time of Our Singing, 2003, etc.) once 
> again extends his unparalleled range.
>
> Publication Date: 10/3/2006 0:00:00
>
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