The Echo Maker: Richard Powers

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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.

When Karin contacts the famous cognitive neurologist Gerald Weber for help, he diagnoses Mark as having Capgras syndrome. She saw that my job had me knee-deep in numbers and thought maybe I’d appreciate more words in my life for ballast. The language and metaphors of the book are powerful and the mystery of how the man was injured is interesting to watch unfold, but the one other major subplot -- the public humiliation of the cognitive scientist after his latest book comes out -- simply didn't ring true. 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 impostor. Although I continued to enjoy the story, I ultimately felt the novel was much longer than it needed to be; there simply wasn’t enough plot to justify the number of pages.A psychological thriller, a flawed love story, a study of authenticity in emotions, a commentary on America's relations with itself and the world, humanity and ecology. If you spent a week reading The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat while watching the Hallmark Channel, you might end up writing this novel. The Gold Bug Variations will teach you more than you thought possible about DNA, but underneath there also lurks a tender, tentative romance that might move you to tears. When he's double voicing for Weber in particular, the narrative drones on like a bland version of Ramachandran's A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness, or some incredibly dull introduction to neuroscience.

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. Keep in mind, that Powers also has numerous philosophical reflections to make on the nature of the self, as well as the various mysteries of human consciousness. More importantly, the probing questions about the nature of consciousness, and the abstract meditations on the ecosystems of Cranes, their brains, human brains, and the boorish march of progress that Powers seems to think that human beings are so notorious for, just overwhelm the book.We expect — and need — them to tell us of our world, how things work, how against all odds we make it through. He has been a slacker most of his life but due to his first steady job in a meatpacking facility, he has managed to purchase a mobile home at the age of 27.

In his utterly fascinating exploration of brain plasticity and the way that neuronal signaling almost seems to communicate with various external environments to create physical movement, Llinás focuses on the perplexing psychological obsession that human beings have with the concept of an I, me, or a self. Of course, the problem is that he can't recognize her, and he believes that she is an actress who has temporarily taken the real Karin's place. He hints at why she's that way but he doesn't follows through (or maybe he does eventually, but I couldn't get there).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. As Karin tries desperately to rehabilitate her brother back to normal, she enlists the support of a few old friends and a few outsiders. Karin takes up with an old friend who is involved in a green initiative to save the local river basin from business investors.