"If you haven't put your heart through a good mangle yet this morning, try this."

With a strong nod to "Flowers for Algernon" and shades of "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy, "Bewilderment" is an enchanting heartbreak of a novel. A bereaved and grieving father and son — an astrobiologist and a highly sensitive, highly intelligent 9-year-old — navigate the bruising worlds of academia and fourth grade in a near-future near-dystopia where small meanness is given large power and creatures large and small are given too little consideration. It explores sweeping themes and big ideas about empathy and grief, parenthood and stewardship, and the intersections of science and belief and action.

"'Bewilderment' is Plato's Allegory of the Cave. I've just updated the fable for the age of pandemics, exoplanets, and mass extinction."
—Richard Powers

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, longlisted for a National Book Award, also excellent on audio.

My thanks to Libro.fm and the publisher for a listening review copy!

Topics & themes: grief, father-son relationship, empathy, neurodiverse, emotional struggles, climate crisis, outer space and inner space, astrobiology, neuroscience, ornithology, ecology, environmentalism, animal rights, biofeedback, dying democracy, fascism, emotional-behavioral disorders, modern education, psychiatric medicine, wildlife, extinction, search for life on other planets, pre-apocalyptic, dystopian, tragedy
Content notes: death of parent, wife, child; wildlife killed by car; unmoderated emotions; biofeedback therapy sessions; alcoholism (backstory)