The Echo Maker: A Novel

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 464 pages
• Published by: Picador; First Edition edition August 21, 2007
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0312426437
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0312426439
• Book Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Weighs: 12.8 ounces

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. A truck jackknifes off an "arrow straight country road" near Kearney, Nebr., in Powers's ninth novel, becoming the catalyst for a painstakingly rendered minuet of self-reckoning. The accident puts the truck's 27-year-old driver, Mark Schluter, into a 14-day coma. When he emerges, he is stricken with Capgras syndrome: he's unable to match his visual and intellectual identifications with his emotional ones. He thinks his sister, Karin, isn't actually his sister—she's an imposter (the same goes for Mark's house). A shattered and worried Karin turns to Gerald Weber, an Oliver Sacks–like figure who writes bestsellers about neurological cases, but Gerald's inability to help Mark, and terrible reviews of his latest book, cause him to wonder if he has become a "neurological opportunist." Then there are the mysteries of Mark's nurse's aide, Barbara Gillespie, who is secretive about her past and seems to be much more intelligent than she's willing to let on, and the meaning of a cryptic note left on Mark's nightstand the night he was hospitalized. MacArthur fellow Powers (Gold Bug Variations, etc.) masterfully charts the shifting dynamics of Karin's and Mark's relationship, and his prose—powerful, but not overbearing—brings a sorrowful energy to every page. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From The New Yorker
This novel, a finalist for the National Book Award, addresses the question of how we know who we really are. Mark, who repairs machinery at a meat-processing plant, suffers a head injury that prevents him from recognizing his sister Karin; he believes that she is a look-alike sent to spy on him. Karin, who has spent her life trying to escape their small Nebraska town, returns to old lovers and habits she thought she'd renounced. Stung by Mark's rejection, she sends a desperate plea to an Oliver Sacks-like neurologist whose popular books have suddenly come under critical attack, causing fissures in his public persona and his seemingly perfect marriage. Powers's smooth coincidences and cute patter can be unconvincing and leaden, and he has a tendency to lapse into distracting repetitions. Yet his philosophical musings have the energy of a thriller, and he gives lyrical, haunting life to the landscape of the Great Plains.
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Reader Reviews
This review is from: The Echo Maker: A Novel (Hardcover) Is the self a smooth continuity of being, or a patchwork that shifts and rearranges to create an illusory but convincing image of unbrokenness? Exactly how reliable are our perceptions of our surroundings and experiences? Are human beings constitutionally unable to harmonize and harness their cognitive powers to the needs of the ecosystem that sustains them? If science's hypothesis that consciousness arises from organic brain function is true, where does that leave us spiritually? THE ECHO MAKER considers these and other hefty questions within the framework of a sophisticated story about a young Nebraska slaughterhouse machine mechanic, Mark Schluter, who suffers head injuries when his truck overturns at eighty miles an hour. When he awakens from a coma, his only surviving family -- his sister -- is a stranger to him. This is not a case of "typical" amnesia. He remembers his sister, but he feels no affinity or love for, no connection to, the woman in his hospital room who looks like her. He has the same impostor feeling about his faithful dog. Diagnosed with the extremely rare condition called Capgras syndrome, he soon attracts the attention of world-renown cognitive neurologist, Gerald Weber, who comes to interview and test Mark. As the novel progresses, Mark, sister Karin, and Gerald grapple with dissolving and re-forming self images. Mark's deficit evolves over a year's time, so Capgras doesn't become his only claim to fame in the medical literature. But perhaps even more interesting are the psychological convulsions that jolt Karin and Weber as they react to Mark's rearranging personality. We meet Weber's wife, two buddies of Mark's, the men in Karin's life, a nurse's aide who makes an indelible impact on just about everyone. And we become awed voyeurs as masses of majestic, migrating cranes rest stop on the fading river near small town Kearney from Valentine's Day until about St. Patrick's. All play important roles in the measured, dense unwinding of THE ECHO MAKER. Also at the heart and soul of the plot is a mysterious, nearly mystical message in a spidery scrawl Karin finds by Mark's hospital bed that begins "I am No One" and continues "GOD led me to you / so You could Live...." Who wrote it? Was it someone who saw the accident and can tell Mark why he swerved off the road? Does it transmit some transcendent meaning to and for the characters? Having read Richard Powers' PLOWING THE DARK, I'm familiar with his techniques of welding at-first-glance-unrelated subjects together. THE ECHO MAKER achieves an amalgamation earlier and with more impressive effect. Nevertheless, after both books, I felt emotionally distanced. It is as if the author's cerebral strivings smother other potential gifts to the reader. There is an arty unreality to some of the conversations and situations in ECHO: for example, the "cute" shorthand between Weber and his wife can be cloying and patience-testing (although, overall I did enjoy their marital bond). Furthermore, Power's language leans to the pretentious and flirts with narrative hyperventilation in places. In THE ECHO MAKER, the basic plot, somewhat on the lean side for a book of 451 pages, is elaborated by educational information about cranes, myriad cognitive disorders, water politics, and the stream of self-absorbed intuitions of the main characters (who aren't particularly sympathetic individuals). While the leisurely pace of the characters' self-discovery and the plethora of technical and natural detail can be attributed to thoroughness of exploration, less might have been more. Smart, layered, skillfully subtle novels deserve wider readership. But they often don't gain that wider audience...perhaps because authors write 450 pages where fewer could suffice. This novel is, at its heart, a study of consciousness: its determinants as defined by the scientific community; the suffering caused when its "normal" template is cracked or irreparably shattered by biological change; how any of us might, through mid-life crisis or other personal shakeup, face psychological realignment of our precious "selves." The novel also reminds us that the human race, as the earthly species with dominant brains/minds, is running out of the luxury of time to make decisions that will either cooperate with or decimate our environment and fellow living creatures. And we are reminded that even if the mind is a product of the brain, life is a wonder. As one character puts it, "Everything dances." Yes, this is a exhaustive and magniloquent volume. It is also an unusual, intellectually invigorating novel, and a very worthy endeavor. Please give it a go. Comments (5) | | (Report this)