The Echo Maker

The Echo Maker
by Richard Powers

The Echo Maker
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Book Summary Information

Author: Richard Powers
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-08-21
ISBN: 0312426437
Number of pages: 451
Publisher: Picador
Product features:
  • ISBN13: 9780312426439
  • Condition: New
  • Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!

Book Reviews of The Echo Maker

Book Review: When the cranes fly
Summary: 5 Stars


The Post-9/11 fiction has become a category of its own. Books and movies have dealt with this issue since 2001 with different approaches and results. To say that Richard Powers' "The Echo Maker" is one of the best novels about this is to understate his book and his talent. At the surface this novel hasn't much to do with that tragedy, but once one thinks about its aftermath the connection is clear.

This is a novel, above all, about paranoia. After a truck accident, Mark develops a condition called Capgras -and therefore he can't recognize his sister, Karin, his dog, or even his house. As a doctor explains, Mark is able to identify them, but somehow can't believe they are what they really are. Somehow, throughout the narrative, his paranoia contaminates other characters that start doubting themselves and people they know - everybody may be a potential terrorist in verge of attacking.

"The Echo Maker" is a novel about identity. What makes us: what we really are or what people believe we are? Who is Karin after all, if her brother can't recognize her? As she moves back to them old small town to take care of her convalescent brother, she begins to have her issues as well.

To help her brother she contacts a famous neuroscientist-cum-writer, Oliver Sacks-like, who is about to have a crisis as well, when he reads the poor reviews of his latest book. Dr Gerald Weber is famous and look for more status - which he could acquire from his latest patient.

It is incredible the way Powers ties and unties these strings. His novel is brainy but not inaccessible. It is also remarkable how he works the formal field. In Mark's sections, for instance, the dialogues accumulates line after line with no quotation marks or any other indication. The novel is divided into five parts, each opening with a segment about cranes, also known as the echo makers - the birds are very famous in the Nebraska region where the narrative is set.

When Mark is in a coma, somebody leaves a note beside in which reads "I am No One / but Tonight on North Line Road / GOD led me to you / so You could Live / and bring back someone else." The quest to find the author of the note is also very important to the narrative which unfolds beautifully.

"The Echo Maker" is a relevant book that tackles philosophical and political issues seriously. While it asks the reader to pay close attention, in the end, it will be as rewarding. It handles the 9/11 aftermath and its consequences in a different approach, therefore more effective than the explicit fiction.

Summary of The Echo Maker

Winner of the 2006 National Book Award for Fiction
 
The Echo Maker is "a remarkable novel, from one of our greatest novelists, and a book that will change all who read it" (Booklist, starred review).
 
On a winter night on a remote Nebraska road, twenty-seven-year-old Mark Schluter has a near-fatal car accident. His older sister, Karin, returns reluctantly to their hometown to nurse Mark back from a traumatic head injury. But when Mark emerges from a coma, he believes that this woman--who looks, acts, and sounds just like his sister--is really an imposter. When Karin contacts the famous cognitive neurologist Gerald Weber for help, he diagnoses Mark as having Capgras syndrome. The mysterious nature of the disease, combined with the strange circumstances surrounding Mark's accident, threatens to change all of their lives beyond recognition. In The Echo Maker, Richard Powers proves himself to be one of our boldest and most entertaining novelists.

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