Bewilderment is a novel that I think everyone should read, but I know they will not. For some people, it may seem like a strange book, but it tackles important subject matters, such as raising a child on the autism spectrum, raising a sensitive child who is very much aware of the problems with our world, climate change, mass extinction of animals, the erosion of democracy, and our bewilderment in the face of all this. It would seem like Richard Powers is prophesizing our future in Bewilderment, if it were not for the fact that what he writes about is very much happening right now.

Bewilderment is about an astrobiologist named Theo Byrne and his nine-year-old son, Robin. Theo’s wife, Alyssa, who was a lawyer who advocated for animal rights groups, died a couple years earlier in a car accident, so he is left to raise Robin on his own. Robin may or may not be on the spectrum, or it may be that he thinks and feels too deeply, and he does not know how to cope with his emotions. He is prone to fits of anger and violence. He loves animals, but he does not know how to reconcile living in a world that is being destroyed by the people that inhabit it.  As an astrobiologist, Theo has found a way to search for life on other planets, but until the government funds the telescope he needs to do it, all he can do to help both him and Robin cope with life on this planet is to imagine exploring life on other planets.

When the novel opens, Robin is facing expulsion from school for assaulting his friend, if Theo does not put him on psychoactive drugs. Theo does not want to do this, so he looks for an alternative way to help his son. Bewilderment is not clear on the time in which it is set, but it seems to me to be set in a near future where technology is slightly more advanced, where disease is wiping out wheat production and cattle and really throwing food security into jeopardy, where fire and flooding and other natural disasters are even more cataclysmic than they are currently, and where an unnamed president is turning the US into a totalitarian country. Theo turns to a friend of Alyssa’s who is a research professor in neuroscience who is using technology to map people’s brains as they go through certain emotions. Long story short (and because I cannot explain how it works; you will have to read it for yourself), Alyssa’s brain has been mapped while she was experiencing “ecstasy” and the idea is that Robin learns Alyssa’s brain patterns to train himself how to experience ecstasy too. This works, and Robin becomes a completely different person, or rather more like his mother, who was able to control her feelings so that she could do her very difficult job.

Bewilderment is an incredibly touching story about the relationship between a father and his son, but it is also a tragic, heartbreaking story that is difficult to read. While reading this novel, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it does in a big way. I have a hard time myself coping with the changes in our world and with my fear of what our future is going to be like, but I cannot imagine what it would be like to have a child asking questions about why the world is so messed up and living with fear as well. I do not understand how most people seem to be complacent in the face of climate change. How short-sighted we are as a supposedly intelligent species. Maybe if everyone read this novel, we would start to think differently and we would fight to save our world. It should not be left up to children, like Robin or like the real-life Greta Thunberg, to save the world, or to live with the consequences when it is too late to save it.