With “The Echo Maker,” Richard Powers vindicates this faith, employing his trademark facility with all manner of esoteric discourse, but never letting it overcome the essential human truth of his characters.

Finalist, Pulitzer Prize, 2007 Finalist, Great Lakes Book Award, 2007 The Boston Authors Club 2007 Reading List Winner, National Book Award, 2006 Noteworthy books, 2006, Kansas City Star Notable books, 2006, The New York Times Best Fiction of 2006, The Boston Globe Holiday Fiction Guide, Atlanta Journal-Constitution Top Ten Books of 2006 , Christianity Today Best Books of the Year , Chicago Tribune Favorite Fiction and Poetry of 2006, The Los Angeles Times Best Books of 2006 , Seattle Times The Year in Books , New York Magazine Best Fiction of 2006, Washington Post Book World Notable Works of 2006 , San Francisco Chronicle Notable Books of 2006, Miami Herald Best Fiction of 2006, Kirkus Best of 2006, L.Powers' theme is dualism--familiar vs defamiliarization, and how that echoes in our perceptions of self and our relationship with our family and our environment, both personal and ecological. Powers' generous mind and renaissance intelligence weaves the story of the crane migration into issues of neuroscience and neuro-cognition as it soars into the mystery thriller plot of the story. One obvious difference is that there is much less music in this one, but there is a wealth of ideas - on the brain, on nature and evolution, on the nature of American society after 9/11, and on the nature of love and what it really means to know another person. la storia di Mark, che si perde, e dei circuiti impazziti del suo cervello, ove tutto, all'improvviso, diventa caos, ed è la storia di Karin, che ha provato a mettere ordine nella sua vita, allontanandosi da Kearney, e che invece, risucchiata dal caos della mente del fratello è costretta a tornare per ricominciare ad affondare lentamente nel proprio. So closely based on Oliver Sacks you wonder if Powers needed permission, Weber has written several bestselling books of neurological case studies that question the whole concept of consciousness and perception.

After all this build-up, The Echo Maker turns out, happily, to be Powers's most accessible novel to date, showing an ever-increasing skill at marrying his titanic smarts to plots that move and breathe.Now, take a second to consider the passage listed above, and a few more to consider the basic question of "selfness" or subjectivity. Siamo tutti potenziali fossili che recano ancora nel corpo le asperità delle esistenze precedenti, i segni di un mondo in cui le creature viventi scorrono da un'era all'altra senza molta più consistenza delle nuvole. But when he finally awakes from his coma, Mark believes that Karin - who looks, acts, and sounds just like his sister - is really an identical impostor. 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.

She would have stayed at home for ever, given herself to keeping her family intact, had it not been for her family.

In the end we see what Powers, with his beautiful language and broad reach, always wishes to have us see: the eternal mystery of human personality and how it functions in the extreme drama of the modern world.