surreal landscape that sucks you in...
Powers knows how to suck you into the turmoil and conflict in a character's life.
This book deserves all the accolades it received. I could not put this down. Great stuff on identity, sibling relationships, what it means to be intimate after decades in a romantic relationship, and how we are so ignorant about whether we are in control of our brains or vice-versa. I love how he weaves in neuroscience research without being tedious or preachy. It takes a gifted writer to tell a compelling story and at another level, discuss complex philosophical issues and the latest scientific work.
I cherished the scene when the main character, Mark, moves his mailbox over 2 feet to fit with his figment of reality before his car accident, when in fact the mailbox sits on a completely barren field where there is no point of reference. great stuff. these little scenes throughout the book had me craving more.
Toooooooooo Looooooong!
I stayed with this book for over 200 pages before I finally abandoned it! Powers has the power to write beautifully captivating prose but I just couldn't stay with the dragging story line and I really got sick of Mark's character - just seemed too artificially contrived. Life's too short to spend toooooo loooong with a book that isn't holding you!
Intelligent and entertaining
This novel, the winner of the 2006 National Book Award, addresses the question of how we know who we really are. This novel is extremely well-crafted and a worthwhile read. Intelligent and entertaining.
Worst book I've read in a long time
I purchased this book because I had read some great reviews. I was immensely disappointed and wish I hadn't wasted the time suffering though the book. The characters are dull and not very likeable. By the end I really didn't care to know what happened to any of them.
One thing in paticular that irked me was that the author attempts to allude to a mystery surrounding the circumstances of the accident. However, by the time the mystery is revealed the reader is no longer interested. Overall, a boring book and a waste of money.
Case History
There is much interest in this book, but not enough to justify a novel of 451 closely-set pages. Set in Kearney, Nebraska, where migrating cranes come annually to forage around the Platte River, the vast sandhill countryside evokes pages of lyrical writing from the author that show his love for the area without necessarily awakening a similar rapture in the reader. Against this, he sets a story that is simple in its outlines. Mark Schluter, a mechanic in his mid-twenties, drives his truck off a road at night, for no apparent reason. Even when Mark emerges from his coma and regains most of his functions, he still refuses to recognize his sister Karin, who has given up her job to look after him, calling her a cunning look-alike sent to trick him. This apparently is a disorder called Capgras Syndrome, whose rarity brings celebrity neurologist Gerald Weber out to study the patient. As Mark improves in many respects, but degenerates in others, many other people are drawn into the web of remembering, rediscovering, and denying.
There are many stories here. There is the mystery of why Mark crashed, and who left a mysterious get-well note by his bedside, but the accident is really too commonplace for this to sustain the tension of the book. Another mystery surrounds a nurse's aide, Barbara Gillespie, who cares for Mark during his rehabilitation, but who seems to be more than her lowly position would imply; Barbara is a sympathetic character, but I think she would have been a lot more interesting if her origins had not been wrapped in mystery. Weber, a neurologist presumably modeled after Oliver Sacks (author of THE MAN WHO MISTOOK HIS WIFE FOR A HAT), is shown at a crisis in his personal life and career, but the author cannot decide between recounting a string of Sacksian case-histories and really exploring Weber as a person; by the time the book reaches its climax, it is hard to feel with him or to care. It is hard also to care about Mark himself, who is neither very interesting nor very likeable; he makes a very weak subject for everybody to get so worked up about.
In contrast, fortunately, there is Karin, by far the most fully-realized character in the book. Her year with Mark involves her going back into her past, examining her failing ambitions, her relationships with two former boyfriends, and her upbringing by fundamentalist parents. There is certainly material for an engaging small-town novel here on the lines of Ann Packer's THE DIVE FROM CLAUSEN'S PIER, though not at this length or diluted with so many other materials from so many different genres.
(102 reviews)
