The Echo Maker: Richard Powers

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I grandi romanzieri del passato a leggerli oggi, alla luce di quel che si sta scoprendo sul funzionamento del cervello, hanno avuto una straordinaria capacità di intuizione. Had Iris Murdoch been born 30 years later and in America, these are the sorts of books she might now be writing. In Weber's case, this is a literal shortcoming, since Weber is based on the eminent neurologist Oliver Sacks. Then he has a near fatal car accident in the middle of the night while driving his pickup truck on a deserted road, leaving him in a coma from a severe head injury.

There is mystery here, although relatively low-key, as you don’t know how much of the unknown is actual versus just perceived by Mark in his impaired state.The Echo Maker offered some conversation pieces and several writing prompts, but any impact will fade quickly.

However, I should note that I thought the way the story was presented, switching between the perspectives of the main characters, is masterfully done (in the sense that Powers captures his characters' voice well, even though I may not appreciate the characters themselves). Karin takes up with an old friend who is involved in a green initiative to save the local river basin from business investors.His scientific discourses point to how the world works, but the struggles of his characters, whether down-and-out misfits like Mark or well-heeled magicians like Weber, help us understand how we work. No matter that the very idea that the human brain is a kind of computer is, in the words of the great neuroscientist Gerald Edelman, “one of the most remarkable misunderstandings in the history of science”; no matter that human judgement and creativity are not the output of a series of syntactical rules.