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Harper C.: Five Book Friday: Uncanny Graphic Novels (0 comment)
We are in the thick of winter here in the Pacific Northwest, which means it's dark, damp, and chilly. Rather than escaping to stories with warmer, brighter climates, I personally want nothing more than to dive deep into gothic and uncanny fiction as the wind rattles my windows at night...
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Echo Maker

by Richard Powers
Echo Maker

  • Comment on this title
  • Synopses & Reviews
  • Award Excerpt

ISBN13: 9780312426439
ISBN10: 0312426437
Condition: Standard


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Awards

2006 National Book Award Winner for Fiction

From Powells.com

25 Books to Read Before You Die: 21st Century

These books create a stunning portrait of contemporary American life.


Staff Pick

Richard Powers is a national treasure. All of his books are astounding; he writes, in dazzling, poetic language, about subjects ranging from virtual reality to classical music, corporate capitalism to the genetic code. His novels explore sweeping, global concerns, but their essential questions often come down to what it means to be human, to live in concert with each other in our larger world. The Echo Maker has a fascinating setup (a man wakes up after a mysterious accident with Capgras syndrome, which makes him believe his loved ones have been replaced by actors) which delivers completely, weaving an engrossing, enlightening, and tender mystery out of strands of ecology, neurology, and the very nature of identity. If you haven't yet read this extraordinary author, The Echo Maker is the ideal place to begin. Recommended By Jill O., Powells.com

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

On a winter night on a remote Nebraska road, 27-year-old Mark Schluter flips his truck in a near-fatal accident. His older sister Karin, his only near kin, returns reluctantly to their hometown to nurse Mark back from a traumatic head injury. But when he emerges from a protracted coma, Mark believes that this woman — who looks, acts, and sounds just like his sister — is really an identical impostor. Shattered by her brother's refusal to recognize her, Karin contacts the cognitive neurologist Gerald Weber, famous for his case histories describing the infinitely bizarre worlds of brain disorder. Weber recognizes Mark as a rare case of Capgras Syndrome, a doubling delusion, and eagerly investigates. What he discovers in Mark slowly undermines even his own sense of being. Meanwhile, Mark, armed only with a note left by an anonymous witness, attempts to learn what happened the night of his inexplicable accident. The truth of that evening will change the lives of all three beyond recognition.

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.

Review

"A remarkable novel, from one of our greatest novelists, and a book that will change all who read it." Booklist (Starred Review)

Review

"One of our best novelists...once again extends his unparalleled range." Kirkus Reviews

Review

"[A] muscularly ambitious book, one that scatters small yet piercing revelations among the more thunderous ideas....Powers may well be one of the smartest novelists now writing." Los Angeles Times

Review

"Cleverly, this novel isn't simply about Mark's damaged brain...instead, it sheds light generally on the human mind and our struggle to make sense of both the past and the present." Library Journal

Review

"[A] mad symphony on the fragility of human identity....There's far too much happening in The Echo Maker...but the chaotic novel is nonetheless one of the year's most engrossing. (Grade: A-)" Entertainment Weekly

Review

"It's a tribute to Powers's nimble plotting that the mysteries unfold so organically and stealthily that you are unaware of his machinations until they come to stunning fruition....Powers accomplishes something magnificent." Colson Whitehead, the New York Times Book Review

Synopsis

The National Book Award-Winning Novel from the Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author of THE OVERSTORY

"Wise and elegant...The mysteries unfold so organically and stealthily that you are unaware of his machinations until they come to stunning fruition...Powers accomplishes something magnificent."--Colson Whitehead, The New York Times Book Review

On a winter night on a remote Nebraska road, twenty-seven-year-old Mark Schluter has a near-fatal car accident. His older sister, Karin, returns reluctantly to their hometown to nurse Mark back from a traumatic head injury. 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. When Karin contacts the famous cognitive neurologist Gerald Weber for help, he diagnoses Mark as having Capgras syndrome. The mysterious nature of the disease, combined with the strange circumstances surrounding Mark's accident, threatens to change all of their lives beyond recognition. In The Echo Maker, Richard Powers proves himself to be one of our boldest and most entertaining novelists.

Synopsis

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
From the Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author of The Overstory, a powerful novel about family and loss

"Wise and elegant . . . The mysteries unfold so organically and stealthily that you are unaware of his machinations until they come to stunning fruition . . . Powers accomplishes something magnificent."
--Colson Whitehead, The New York Times Book Review

On a winter night on a remote Nebraska road, twenty-seven-year-old Mark Schluter has a near-fatal car accident. His older sister, Karin, returns reluctantly to their hometown to nurse Mark back from a traumatic head injury. 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. When Karin contacts the famous cognitive neurologist Gerald Weber for help, he diagnoses Mark as having Capgras syndrome. The mysterious nature of the disease, combined with the strange circumstances surrounding Mark's accident, threatens to change all of their lives beyond recognition. In The Echo Maker, Richard Powers proves himself to be one of our boldest and most entertaining novelists.

Synopsis

Winner of the National Book Award

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Overstory and the Oprah's Book Club selection Bewilderment comes Richard Powers's The Echo Maker, a powerful novel about family and loss.

"Wise and elegant . . . The mysteries unfold so organically and stealthily that you are unaware of his machinations until they come to stunning fruition . . . Powers accomplishes something magnificent." --Colson Whitehead, The New York Times Book Review

On a winter night on a remote Nebraska road, twenty-seven-year-old Mark Schluter has a near-fatal car accident. His older sister, Karin, returns reluctantly to their hometown to nurse Mark back from a traumatic head injury. 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. When Karin contacts the famous cognitive neurologist Gerald Weber for help, he diagnoses Mark as having Capgras syndrome. The mysterious nature of the disease, combined with the strange circumstances surrounding Mark's accident, threatens to change all of their lives beyond recognition. In The Echo Maker, Richard Powers proves himself to be one of our boldest and most entertaining novelists.

Synopsis

Winner of the 2006 National Book Award for Fiction

On a winter night on a remote Nebraska road, twenty-seven-year-old Mark Schluter has a near-fatal car accident. His older sister, Karin, returns reluctantly to their hometown to nurse Mark back from a traumatic head injury. 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. When Karin contacts the famous cognitive neurologist Gerald Weber for help, he diagnoses Mark as having Capgras syndrome. The mysterious nature of the disease, combined with the strange circumstances surrounding Mark's accident, threatens to change all of their lives beyond recognition. In The Echo Maker, Richard Powers proves himself to be one of our boldest and most entertaining novelists.


About the Author

Richard Powers is the author of nine novels and has received a MacArthur Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award, and the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Historical Fiction. He lives in Illinois.

4.8 5

What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating 4.8 (5 comments)

`
h , August 14, 2012 (view all comments by h)
Richard Powers's award-winning novel is a double plot about crane migration that's told in a lyrical mode and neurological injury told in more didactic mode. Family drama, romance, environmental contests, and even a detective story also thread through these two main tales. The novel shows Powers's respect for the less-traveled parts of the US even as he shows the threats to them from brain drain and unsustainable development that ruins farming and crane habitat. The information about neuroscience will interest some and put off others. As will the characterization, which is the weakest part of the novel. The ending, however, will definitely surprise.

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Teresa de Eugene , July 09, 2012 (view all comments by Teresa de Eugene)
This is a chilling story involving a brilliant neuroscientist whose self confidence and career are cracking; a young wastrel (Mark) in Nebraska who struggles to return to himself or some consistent, recognizable self, after a terrible car accident; Mark's sister (Karen), unrecognized by her brother and floundering between lovers and identities herself. There's also a mysterious medical aide, far too smart for her lowly caregiving position, intent on helping Mark, and an activist environmentalist intent on saving The Platte River valley to allow the ancient migration of cranes to continue. More delicious characters include a developer, and Mark's lowlife drinking buddies. This perhaps simplistic cast indicates that the story is character driven, but what I loved about it was a layering of metaphors linking the natural world to this troubled set of individuals. The theme is identity and the mind. Delicious reading.

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zenithblue , September 01, 2011 (view all comments by zenithblue)
Plotwise, The Echo Maker is relatively simple; Mark Schluter, a twenty-something slacker from a small town in Nebraska, flips his truck in an accident on an icy stretch of road in the middle of nowhere. His older sister Karin, after years of trying to escape her roots, is brought back to care for him. But Mark, his brain damaged from the accident, displays symptoms of a rare syndrome known as Capgras; he believes that his sister has been replaced by a doppelganger or government spy. The story is at heart a mystery. The Schluters try desperately to piece together what happened on the night of Mark's accident, aided only by an enigmatic note left by Mark's bedside at the hospital. The mystery of the accident, though, is enclosed in a wider mystery: the mystery of consciousness, understanding, self. To that end Karin Schluter calls in a medical expert, Dr. Gerald Weber, a neurologist and writer who ends up facing his own identity crisis after being faced with Mark's. Powers' prose is dense and rich, and in some ways he writes like a modernist; there is the same interest in the fractured self, the same homage to the complexity of consciousness, the same intricate wordplay. If Woolf or Faulkner had a background in neurology, they might have explored territory similar to this. And then too there's the indelible touch of Hardy on the novel, the landscape-as-character, the way lives are determined as much by geography as by chemicals and hormones and genetics. Neurology, anthropology, zoology, psychology--there's a lot of heavy intellectual lifting in this book. Powers sifts his simple story through the scientific advances and ecological disasters of the last few decades. What you get is a narrative as knotty and variegated as mind itself. Some readers will be turned off by what will no doubt be called excesses, or by the labyrithine writing. It took me nearly three weeks to finish, but I was dazzled. If you are a reader who not only tolerates complexity but craves it, you are Powers' target audience. Challenge yourself to read this book.

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Shelly Lowenkopf , January 01, 2010
You'd have to look pretty far back, perhaps Tolstoy or Dostoyevski, for a comparable and engaging portrait of the human psyche, the way we see ourself (and possible selves) and the Self of others. Powers has us wandering round in the edifice of Self, as uncomfortable as though we were looking for a room we knew existed but couldn't find. In this one novel, he is alternately frightening and as humorous as if can get after one has been frightened.

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Cheryl Klein , May 13, 2008 (view all comments by Cheryl Klein)
I love the work of Richard Powers because he combines reams of research (in this case on ecology and the latest neurological developments) with the most intricate of human emotions. In lesser hands, either could easily be lost. The Echo Maker is one part mystery, one part narrativized science, but the part that resonates the most with me is the quiet manifesto at its heart, about people's need for stories.

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Product Details

ISBN:
9780312426439
Binding:
Trade Paperback
Publication date:
08/21/2007
Publisher:
ST MARTINS PRESS
Pages:
464
Height:
.90IN
Width:
5.40IN
Thickness:
.9 in.
Number of Units:
1
Copyright Year:
2007
Author:
Richard Powers
Subject:
Psychological
Subject:
Literature-A to Z
Subject:
Medical novels
Subject:
Psychological fiction
Subject:
Neurologists
Subject:
Nebraska
Subject:
Suspense

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