The Echo Maker focuses on neurological problems in humans and a sustainable habitat for the Sandhill Crane. And if two people have sex in the mud, don't you think they might want to shower or at least change their clothes before going off to lunch and then on to some tourist attraction? Accumulating fresh insights into the human brain, the doctor sees Mark as a living embodiment of his theories. So he flies out to Nebraska, eventually incapable of helping due to the crippling amount of insecurity he has developed from negative book reviews, about how much of a scientific hack he has become. She got the infectious answering machine -- I wish I was here to talk to you for real -- in that cheerful treble that sounded like the horn of a Ford Focus on mood elevators.

But when Mark emerges from a coma, he believes that this woman–who looks, acts, and sounds just like his sister–is really an imposter. That is, in between standing in for Powers himself, when they sound as though the narrator has briefly entered the souls of his creation. Not only did it seem unlikely he would be subjected to that kind of peer disdain, but his reaction to it and the unraveling of his marriage made no sense to me, and was a major flaw in the novel and one that held it back from being as meaningful or sweeping as it was meant to be.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. According to his new brain, his sister is “the actress Karin,” the “pretend sister,” an imposter playing a game on him. This unfortunate ailment creates a bridge between Mark's personal crisis and the mysterious aspects of mind, memory, and identity. His friends Duane and Rupp, who may have had something to do with the accident, are even worse, something of an excuse for the degenerate path that Mark has chosen in life.

There was a great book lurking in the manuscript of The Echo Maker, but Powers' editors didn't bother to help him find it. la storia di un ordine geometrico, quello delle strade e di un luogo in cui nulla sembra essere stato costruito in maniera casuale, che si oppone al mistero e alla confusione che sembrano regolare la mente umana, dell'alienazione di vite vissute in case tutte uguali che si scontrano con quelle delle centinaia di uccelli che sembrano tornare dalla preistoria e che scelgono di tornare proprio lì, in quel luogo, per rivendicarne la proprietà e il diritto di appartenenza.Although there is an ethereal glow that swirls in every page, there is a definite, concrete and suspenseful plot. First I read the beautiful and opera-like The Time of our Singing and followed with the tender Galatea 2. For this, finally, is a novel of unseemly richness and complexity, never dry or condescending, always weaving its way towards an unsettling emotional climax. Set against the Platte River’s massive spring migrations – one of the greatest spectacles in nature – The Echo Maker is a gripping mystery that explores the improvised human self and the even more precarious brain that splits us from and joins us to the rest of creation. Or is there no intrinsic self, making us just clusters of cerebral nodules whose inter-relation may be damaged and altered at any time?

It's about consciousness and neuroscience and I don't really understand what he's doing, so it must be real smart, right? Pitting commercial developers (the bad guys) against environmentalists (saintly vegans), he manages through liberal logic ( cf: God is love; love is blind; therefore God is Ray Charles) to deduce that every fight in America is over water just as every fight in the Middle East is over oil. Barbara and the note are the two mystery elements that propel the story along, although the book is clearly about a lot more than just a simple mystery to be solved. Silicon Valley makes huge profits by seeking to persuade us that they are – to make us, like the architects, the servants of whatever their algorithms dictate. When he lights upon something interesting, he'll stay awhile (often too long), pressing into the depths with occasionally gorgeous sentences.The 'damaged', highly emotional, self-absorbed characters are a contrast to the intricate observations made about the functioning of the brain and humans in general. For much of the first part of the book, it almost doesn’t feel like a Powers’ novel, so different is the writing.