Bewilderment (Powers)

Hmm. I have a lot of mixed feelings about this book, which I read for a book club. It's about an academic astrobiologist father Theo and his nine-year-old son Robin, set in the near-and-only-kicked-up-one-notch-dystopian-compared-to-reality future. The wife/mom Alyssa has recently died, which is a major dynamic in the book. The son is cognitively brilliant and emotionally challenged (presumably exacerbated by his mother's death), so you can see the appeal for me, and there were a lot of times reading it where I flinched away from feeling like our family was kind of seen. Eventually Robin starts a kind of experimental therapeutic treatment that involves using neurofeedback based on the (much more mature and centered) emotional responses of, interestingly, his own dead mother. (This sounds kind of awful when I say it like that, but it's really quite well done in the book -- although yes, there is a sort of weird quasi-incestual subtext to it that was clearly intentional.)

It's a gorgeously written book, as one might expect from Powers (I've read another book of his, but I can't remember which one now), and the experimental treatment given to Robin sound amazing and I would sign E up for it in a moment if it existed, but there were a couple of things that just really bugged me. First, this whole bit was driven by Theo not wanting to medicate his son, and saying things like "if eight million people are on medication, doesn't that mean that something is wrong with the system?" and I'm like... maybe? Or it could mean that evolution is kind of crap? (This reminded me of the time when I felt super inadequate that my body wasn't able to provide my child with enough food for the first week of her life. How could I possibly use formula?? Before formula people coped! My sister pointed out that, well, actually, before formula a lot more babies died.) And -- of course being against medication is a view that a lot of people hold, so it's not off-the-wall that Theo thinks that too; but it's hard for me to tell whether this was an author-endorsed stance or not. (Theo's views on politics, mind you, are very clearly author-endorsed, which leads me to suspect that this might be too.) Either way, I just... really had a strong visceral negative reaction as to how Theo keeps going on and on as to how he couldn't possibly give his child any medication at all, especially as I know multiple cases where medication really really helped people. (To be fair, someone in reading group was from a place where apparently kids were over-medicated, and also someone else pointed out that in the book the school system was all but forcing medication on the parent. So this is at least somewhat a kneejerk reaction on my part, but, well, there it is.)

The other thing was the ending, starting with the part where the social workers are all, "Are you abusing your child??" ( Major spoiler. On the other hand, it's the kind of thing I might have liked to know going in. )

Not, of course, that it would be at all tidy in real life, of course, I'm not saying that at all, but I did feel like for the book it was a cop-out ending that didn't engage with all the hard questions I guess I wanted it to engage in.

Since you guys have been amazing at book recs, do you know about books (fiction or memoir) about parenting kids with needs like giftedness, emotional sensitivity, ASD, ADHD, etc.? (The parent who organizes book club would prefer books about the parenting rather than about the kids, but it's not necessary.) She brought up the book The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon, also The Gifted School by Bruce Holsinger which sounds rather awesomely popcorn-y (which means I'll probably read it if I can get it from the library, and won't if I can't).