This novel was a disappointment. R. Powers seemed to be so fascinated with his theory of the brain that the art of writing was lost. I found the characters to be one dimensional and the plot - to quote Coleridge- did not create the "willing suspension of disbelief." Even his descriptions of nature and her creatures were flat. When I think of writers such as Updike or Toni Morrison, Powers' effort pales in comparison.

Sandhill Cranes, Oliver Sacks..read at Antelope Lodge, TG getaway / Holly, etc.

Great start and thought provoking at first but I didn't understand where the author was going sometimes.

Powers is a writer of daring and imagination. He is a thinker as much as a novelist and he makes demands on the reader who will find his or her mind exercised on profound issues that are often denied or ignored in this era of shallow distractions. On reading the oeuvre of Powers one is left with a sense of awe that one is living contemporaneously with a "great" writer who a century from now will be plumbed by scholars for insights into the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

2006 National Book Award - Fiction

Finalist 2007 Pulitzer prize for fiction.