"Theo Byrne is an astrobiologist. As part of his job, he speculates on what planets outside the Solar System might look like, and shares his ideas of these worlds with his 9-year-old son Robin, as a kind of bedtime story. Robin is going through a hard time - he's on the spectrum, though his condition has never been definitively diagnosed. He's also grieving the loss of his mother Alyssa, who died in an accident two years ago. Theo struggles to look after his son's special needs. He takes him camping which helps to ease his mind, but as soon as Robin gets back into the routine of school, old problems resurface. Salvation arrives in the form of a neurological experiment, which allows the boy to recalibrate his emotions based on a recording of his mother's brain activity. This proves a big success, but also becomes a media sensation, and Theo & Robin end up with a new set of problems to deal with.

I was a fan of Powers' previous novel, The Overstory, so I had been looking forward to this one. I thought it started off brightly - I was engaged in the hardship facing father and son, and felt sympathy for their plight. But as the story progressed, I became less enamored, and most of my bugbears were to do with Robin. As the treatment takes hold, he turns into a kind of ecological savant. Some of the stuff he came out with made me cringe, his sentimentality about the natural world seemed over the top. And the overall message of the book felt so preachy, a heavy-handed attempt to press home the anxieties of the climate crisis. While The Overstory had its flaws, I thought it addressed environmental concerns with a much subtler approach - its characters were well-rounded and the story was compelling. Bewilderment, however, is wrapped up in schmaltz and though it has admirable intentions to tackle an urgent topic, I found it an unconvincing, awkward effort."