"The Echo Maker": Exploring mysteries of human memory

"The Echo Maker"
by Richard Powers
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 451 pp., $25

Richard Powers builds each of his novels around a smorgasbord of grand ideas.

"The Gold Bug Variations" linked computer science, genetic coding, music and art history into intertwined strands representing life during the second half of the 20th century. "Galatea 2.2," featuring an artificial-intelligence protagonist named Helen, reinterpreted the Pygmalion myth. "Plowing the Dark" followed parallel narratives about a Seattle virtual-reality laboratory and an American taken hostage in Beirut, coupling them so brilliantly that what at first seemed like a hodgepodge becomes a compelling, unified narrative.

Powers' ninth novel "The Echo Maker," just nominated for a National Book Award, again demonstrates his intellectual zest and technical skill as a novelist. He concocts an unusual case involving a phenomenon called Capgras syndrome. The neurological condition is quite real; those who suffer from it believe family members are imposters. Characteristically, Powers has researched its real-world implications thoroughly before using it in his fiction.

By employing a real-life psychological phenomenon, "The Echo Maker" explores the mysteries of human memory, brain chemistry, character and identity. The medical portion of the story, set in the plains of Nebraska against the backdrop of a stunning spring bird migration, follows a New York cognitive neurologist named Gerald Weber whose understanding of the brain is so altered by one patient's case that reality assumes new meanings.

The novel is also a family saga centering on Mark Schluter, the 27-year-old ne'er-do-well who suffered brain damage when his truck mysteriously flipped over, and his 32-year-old sister Karin, who leaves behind her settled life to care for him.

The relationships among Mark and his sometimes lover Bonnie Travis, Karin and her sometimes lover Daniel Riegel, and Weber are told against the backdrop of a mystery: Why did Mark's truck flip over?

Writing additional detail about the novel's plot might anger readers, who will want to discover the resolution for themselves. And besides, Powers' plots transcend straightforward description.

His nailing of character, however, is precise: "Karin was Mark's only hope of surviving adolescence. When he turned thirteen, she tried to show him how to save himself. It's easy, she claimed. She'd discovered in high school, to her shock, that she could make even the elites like her by letting them dress her and instruct her musical tastes. People like people who make them feel secure. He didn't know what the word meant. You need a brand, she told him. Something recognizable. She pushed him into chess club, cross-country, Future Farmers, even the thespians. Nothing stuck until he stumbled upon the group that would take him in because he passed the simple audition of failing to fit in anywhere else — the group of losers that freed him from her."

Here and elsewhere, Powers proves himself a first-rate stylist whose characters are never caricatures in service to abstract theory. In fact, many of this idea-driven novelist's characters are unforgettable, flesh-and-blood individuals as finely drawn as those of any contemporary fiction writer.

Steve Weinberg is a director of the National Book Critics Circle.