The Echo Maker: A Novel
by Richard Powers
List Price:
Our Price: $2.00
You Save: $13.00 (87%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Richard PowersEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2007-08-21
ISBN: 0312426437
Number of pages: 464
Publisher: Picador
Book Reviews of The Echo Maker: A Novel
Book Review: "The mind can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven"
Summary: 4 Stars
In The Echo Maker the riddle of human identity and the unmistakable power of the human mind is explored through Capgras' syndrome, a rare disorder in which a person holds a delusional belief that a close family member or spouse has been replaced by an identical looking impostor.
Thirty-something Nabraska native Karin Schluter is devastated to discover that her twenty-seven year old brother Mark no longer recognizes her as his sister after he crashes truck on an isolated road, "like he fell of a wooden horse." Critically injuried, Mark lies in hospital, lapsing in and out of consciousness, whilst Karin having left her job in Sioux City to care for him, hovers over his bedside, frantically hoping he'll recover.
This is a time of great sadness and uncertainty for Karin, plunged into untried topography in a situation she is incapable confronting. Intent to survive on her savings and her mother's life insurance policy, Karin holds vigil as Mark gradually begins to respond to treatment, but as the days go by, it quickly becomes evident that something is terribly wrong.
Mark sees Karin as an imposter, perhaps even someone who has been hired and whose intentions are to underhandedly masquerade as his sister. When she is told by the doctors that Mark was manifesting a condition called Capgras syndrome, it is almost impossible to fathom and comes as a terrible shock to both Karin and Daniel, her environmentalist ex-boyfriend who works at crane sanctuary near the Platte River.
Days later, Mark is still denying her. He assembles everything else: whom he was where he works, what had happened to him. But he continues to insist that Karin is an actress who looks very much like his sister. The part of his brain that recognizes faces is intact, so his memory, but the part that processes emotional association has somehow disconnected from them.
Karin doesn't believe Mark has any syndrome - his mind is just sorting out the chaos of injury; until she discovers an opportunity to perhaps set things right and perhaps bring her brother out of his bemused state. In desperation, she contacts Gerald Weber, a world famous author and a specialist in brain injuries who lives in New York.
Gerald's professional career has been winding down and he's about to embark on a book tour. However, upon hearing of Karin's predicament, he travels to Kearney to meet Mark and tape his sessions. As the mystery of Mark's illness unfolds and the clues to the accident pile up, Gerald and Karin, and even Mark find that tenderness is found in the midst of grief and that hope resurfaces unexpectedly.
Gerald's intuition as a neurologist makes him feel unsettled and his precipitous arrival in Nebraska gives him a hamstrung sense that has plagued him throughout his residency. Karin knows she is trading on disaster, using her damaged brother to make things right with her own past, and she sees Gerald as unquestionably her only hope. While Mark, who once saw his sister as the voice of reason, now continues to resent her very presence.
Weber seems to think that Mark has stopped recognizing his sister because some part of him has stopped recognizing himself. Karin is sure that something is about to happen, a good thing she hadn't engineered, which is somehow the result of Mark's catastrophe. When she investigates the accident, the police tell her Mark wasn't alone on that night. There were three sets of tire tracks on the stretch of North Line where he lost control.
Someone else had lost control, right in front of Mark, and the calamity was called in from a pay phone at the Mobile Station just of the Kearney interstate exit by a male of indeterminate age who refused to give a name. As the description of that night unfolds in front of her "like a weirdly cut handheld -camera reality show," Karin wonders who left the note by his bedside signed, "I am No One."
Part of the journey for Mark and Karin is the recognition that only time and love can heal some of the wounds of their past. Both have escaped from a dysfunctional family life, with a severely religious mother who preached fire and brimstone and a father who was reclusive and ineffectual. Karin was left to raise her brother as though he was her "psychology experiment," a simple boy who just wanted to be "a real good chicken calmer" when he grew up.
Author Richard Powers writes an intriguing story of the ramifications of this rare syndrome on those who represent commonplace and how the psyche can be broken apart often at a moments notice. In his touching tale, his characters are fully fleshed out, totally three dimensional in all of their fears and worries and hopes and dreams.
These are ordinary people forced to confront the almost insurmountable, their lives defined by their cautious striving to reconnect with each other in the face of a very personal tragedy. Mike Leonard December 06.
Literature & Fiction Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Audiobooks on Cassette
- Audiobooks on CD
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- e-Books
- Engineering
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Medicine
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Richard Powers
The Time of Our Singingby Richard Powers
FSG; FSG; Release date: 2007-03-09; Published: 2007-03-09; Kindle Edition; eBooks
Best price: $9.99
Price in other shops:
The Echo Makerby Richard Powers
FSG; FSG; Release date: 2007-04-07; Published: 2007-04-07; Kindle Edition; eBooks
Best price: $9.99
Price in other shops:
Understanding Richard Powers (Understanding Contemporary American Literature)by Joseph Dewey
University of South Carolina Press; Published: 2002-06; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $38.62
Galatea 2.2: A Novelby Richard Powers
Picador; Published: 2004-01-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.61
Price in other shops:
Operation Wandering Soulby Richard Powers
Harper Perennial; Published: 1994-05-18; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.75
Price in other shops:
Prisoner's Dilemmaby Richard Powers
Harper Perennial; Published: 1996-05-22; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.75
Price in other shops:
Plowing the Dark: A Novelby Richard Powers
Picador; Published: 2001-08-11; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.99
Price in other shops:
Gainby Richard Powers
Picador; Published: 1999-05-26; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.75
Price in other shops:
The Time of Our Singing: A Novelby Richard Powers
Picador; Published: 2004-01-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.32
Price in other shops:
Gold Bug Variationsby Richard Powers
Harper Perennial; Published: 1992-09-09; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.55
Price in other shops:
Similar books summaries and other product reviews
Bridge of Sighs: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries)by Richard Russo
Vintage; Published: 2008-08-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.88
Price in other shops:
Suite Francaiseby Irene Nemirovsky
Vintage; Published: 2007-04-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.69
Price in other shops:
Loving Frank: A Novelby Nancy Horan
Ballantine Books; Published: 2008-04-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.71
Price in other shops:
Unaccustomed Earth: Stories (Vintage Contemporaries)by Jhumpa Lahiri
Vintage; Published: 2009-04-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.25
Price in other shops:
The Road (Movie Tie-in Edition)by Cormac McCarthy
Vintage; Published: 2008-11-18; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.33
Price in other shops:
The White Tiger: A Novel (Man Booker Prize)by Aravind Adiga
Free Press; Published: 2008-10-14; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.72
Price in other shops:
Tree of Smoke: A Novelby Denis Johnson
Picador; Published: 2008-09-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.70
Price in other shops:
Out Stealing Horses: A Novelby Per Petterson
Picador; Published: 2008-04-29; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.12
Price in other shops:
The Gathering (Man Booker Prize)by Anne Enright
Grove Press, Black Cat; Published: 2007-09-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.24
Price in other shops:
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Waoby Junot D?az
Riverhead Trade; Published: 2008-09-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.08
Price in other shops: