The Echo Maker

Critics

• 'I am No One'

  The Echo Maker by Richard Powers 451pp, William Heinemann, £17.99 Richard Powers is at once one of America's very best- and least-known novelists. He has just won the National Book Award for this, his ninth novel, but even some of my most well-read a ... (read full critics)

  guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

• Migratory Spirits

  To dispense with the longstanding book reviewing practice of first-paragraph throat clearing, may I offer up Richard Powers’s “Echo Maker” as a wise and elegant post-9/11 novel? It avoids some of the now familiar features of the genre. It does not un ... (read full critics)

  nytimes published on Sat, 18 Sep 2010

3 Reviews

• 1 person find this helpful

  

  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 ... (continue)

  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.

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  meganzing said on Oct 28, 2008 | Add your feedback

• 

  Terrific

  You might need a dictionary of neurology, or at least Google handy, but this is a terrific read - about a brain damaged man who cannot recognize his sister while everyone else reminds him of her boyfriend, a popularising neurologist struggling with a mid-career doubts who (metaphorically) does not r ... (continue)

  You might need a dictionary of neurology, or at least Google handy, but this is a terrific read - about a brain damaged man who cannot recognize his sister while everyone else reminds him of her boyfriend, a popularising neurologist struggling with a mid-career doubts who (metaphorically) does not recognize himself anymore, a nurse whom everyone seems to have met before but can't pin down where... Should be called The Non-Recognitions (joke, homage to the William Gaddis novel of 1955). This is surprisingly gripping read on mid-life crises, family dynamics, imminent ecological disasters (the crane population in wetlands), PlayStation II, brain function and the truth of belief and the fragility of identity.

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  Shallow Phil said on Jun 2, 2008 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

• 

  wondering...

  I liked the book but have to confess: I didn't understand everything... For example: Was Karin's boyfriend really in love with Mark??

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  lottalitta said on Apr 3, 2007 | Add your feedback

Book Details

• Rating:
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• English Books
• Hardcover 464 Pages
• ISBN-10: 0434016330
• ISBN-13: 9780434016334
• Publisher: William Heinemann
• Pub date: Jan 04, 2007
• Dimensions: 1548 mm x 1032 mm Just how big is that?
• Also available as: Paperback, Audio CD and Others
• In other languages: other languages Livres Français, Deutsche Bücher, Libros en Español, Libri Italiani, Nederlandse Boeken

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• NY Times Notable Book Club (481)

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