-
Bewilderment
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy for $28.00
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The Overstory
- By: Richard Powers
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 22 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Overstory unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fable that range from antebellum New York to the late 20th-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. An air force loadmaster in the Vietnam War is shot out of the sky, then saved by falling into a banyan. An artist inherits 100 years of photographic portraits, all of the same doomed American chestnut. A hard-partying undergraduate in the late 1980s electrocutes herself, dies, and is sent back into life by creatures of air and light.
-
-
Loved the first half, struggled with the second
- By Max and Kimmy on 05-10-19
By: Richard Powers
-
Cloud Cuckoo Land
- A Novel
- By: Anthony Doerr
- Narrated by: Marin Ireland, Simon Jones
- Length: 14 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Among the most celebrated and beloved novels of 2021, Anthony Doerr’s gorgeous third novel is a triumph of imagination and compassion, a soaring story about children on the cusp of adulthood in worlds in peril, who find resilience, hope—and a book. In Cloud Cuckoo Land, Doerr has created a magnificent tapestry of times and places that reflects our vast interconnectedness—with other species, with each other, with those who lived before us, and with those who will be here after we’re gone.
-
-
Academic Snobbery
- By TVR on 10-03-21
By: Anthony Doerr
-
Sea of Tranquility
- A Novel
- By: Emily St. John Mandel
- Narrated by: John Lee, Dylan Moore, Arthur Morey, and others
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Edwin St. Andrew is 18 years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal - an experience that shocks him to his core.
-
-
An excellent listen.
- By Mark on 04-11-22
-
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
- An Oprah’s Book Club Novel
- By: Honoree Fanonne Jeffers
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo, Karen Chilton, Prentice Onayemi
- Length: 29 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The great scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois, once wrote about the Problem of race in America, and what he called “Double Consciousness,” a sensitivity that every African American possesses in order to survive. Since childhood, Ailey Pearl Garfield has understood Du Bois’ words all too well. Bearing the names of two formidable Black Americans - the revered choreographer Alvin Ailey and her great grandmother Pearl, the descendant of enslaved Georgians and tenant farmers - Ailey carries Du Bois’s Problem on her shoulders.
-
-
The Great American Novel is finally inclusive.
- By Margaret on 12-28-21
-
The Lincoln Highway
- A Novel
- By: Amor Towles
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Marin Ireland, Dion Graham
- Length: 16 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett's intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden's car.
-
-
I'm totally opposite
- By Meaghan Bynum on 10-10-21
By: Amor Towles
-
French Braid
- A Novel
- By: Anne Tyler
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Garretts take their first and last family vacation in the summer of 1959. They hardly ever leave home, but in some ways they have never been farther apart. Mercy has trouble resisting the siren call of her aspirations to be a painter, which means less time keeping house for her husband, Robin. Their teenage daughters, steady Alice and boy-crazy Lily, could not have less in common. Their youngest, David, is already intent on escaping his family's orbit, for reasons none of them understand.
-
-
Definitely not my favorite
- By 80 Oaks on 03-31-22
By: Anne Tyler
-
The Overstory
- By: Richard Powers
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 22 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Overstory unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fable that range from antebellum New York to the late 20th-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. An air force loadmaster in the Vietnam War is shot out of the sky, then saved by falling into a banyan. An artist inherits 100 years of photographic portraits, all of the same doomed American chestnut. A hard-partying undergraduate in the late 1980s electrocutes herself, dies, and is sent back into life by creatures of air and light.
-
-
Loved the first half, struggled with the second
- By Max and Kimmy on 05-10-19
By: Richard Powers
-
Cloud Cuckoo Land
- A Novel
- By: Anthony Doerr
- Narrated by: Marin Ireland, Simon Jones
- Length: 14 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Among the most celebrated and beloved novels of 2021, Anthony Doerr’s gorgeous third novel is a triumph of imagination and compassion, a soaring story about children on the cusp of adulthood in worlds in peril, who find resilience, hope—and a book. In Cloud Cuckoo Land, Doerr has created a magnificent tapestry of times and places that reflects our vast interconnectedness—with other species, with each other, with those who lived before us, and with those who will be here after we’re gone.
-
-
Academic Snobbery
- By TVR on 10-03-21
By: Anthony Doerr
-
Sea of Tranquility
- A Novel
- By: Emily St. John Mandel
- Narrated by: John Lee, Dylan Moore, Arthur Morey, and others
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Edwin St. Andrew is 18 years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal - an experience that shocks him to his core.
-
-
An excellent listen.
- By Mark on 04-11-22
-
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
- An Oprah’s Book Club Novel
- By: Honoree Fanonne Jeffers
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo, Karen Chilton, Prentice Onayemi
- Length: 29 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The great scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois, once wrote about the Problem of race in America, and what he called “Double Consciousness,” a sensitivity that every African American possesses in order to survive. Since childhood, Ailey Pearl Garfield has understood Du Bois’ words all too well. Bearing the names of two formidable Black Americans - the revered choreographer Alvin Ailey and her great grandmother Pearl, the descendant of enslaved Georgians and tenant farmers - Ailey carries Du Bois’s Problem on her shoulders.
-
-
The Great American Novel is finally inclusive.
- By Margaret on 12-28-21
-
The Lincoln Highway
- A Novel
- By: Amor Towles
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Marin Ireland, Dion Graham
- Length: 16 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett's intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden's car.
-
-
I'm totally opposite
- By Meaghan Bynum on 10-10-21
By: Amor Towles
-
French Braid
- A Novel
- By: Anne Tyler
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Garretts take their first and last family vacation in the summer of 1959. They hardly ever leave home, but in some ways they have never been farther apart. Mercy has trouble resisting the siren call of her aspirations to be a painter, which means less time keeping house for her husband, Robin. Their teenage daughters, steady Alice and boy-crazy Lily, could not have less in common. Their youngest, David, is already intent on escaping his family's orbit, for reasons none of them understand.
-
-
Definitely not my favorite
- By 80 Oaks on 03-31-22
By: Anne Tyler
-
Crossroads
- A Novel
- By: Jonathan Franzen
- Narrated by: David Pittu
- Length: 24 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jonathan Franzen’s gift for wedding depth and vividness of character with breadth of social vision has never been more dazzlingly evident than in Crossroads. A tour de force of interwoven perspectives and sustained suspense, its action largely unfolding on a single winter day, Crossroads is the story of a Midwestern family at a pivotal moment of moral crisis. Jonathan Franzen’s gift for melding the small picture and the big picture has never been more dazzlingly evident.
-
-
Less than! an hour in and I'm hooked...
- By Delane Garrett on 10-05-21
By: Jonathan Franzen
-
Klara and the Sun
- A Novel
- By: Kazuo Ishiguro
- Narrated by: Sura Siu
- Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Here is the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her. Klara and the Sun is a thrilling book that offers a look at our changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator, and one that explores the fundamental question: What does it mean to love?
-
-
Well Worth Having Waited For!
- By otherdeb on 03-04-21
By: Kazuo Ishiguro
-
The Time of Our Singing
- By: Richard Powers
- Narrated by: Peter Jay Fernandez
- Length: 33 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On Easter day, 1939, at Marian Anderson's epochal concert on the Washington Mall, David Strom, a German Jewish emigre scientist, meets Delia Daley, a young Philadelphia Negro studying to be a singer. Their mutual love of music draws them together, and - against all odds and better judgment - they marry. They vow to raise their children beyond time, beyond identity, steeped in song. But their three children must survive America's brutal here and now.
-
-
A truly life changing book
- By S. Adams on 12-07-19
By: Richard Powers
-
Great Circle
- A Novel
- By: Maggie Shipstead
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Alex McKenna
- Length: 25 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After being rescued as infants from a sinking ocean liner in 1914, Marian and Jamie Graves are raised by their dissolute uncle in Missoula, Montana. There--after encountering a pair of barnstorming pilots passing through town in beat-up biplanes--Marian commences her lifelong love affair with flight. At fourteen she drops out of school and finds an unexpected and dangerous patron in a wealthy bootlegger who provides a plane and subsidizes her lessons, an arrangement that will haunt her for the rest of her life.
-
-
So glad I was drawn to this book.
- By timbo on 05-23-21
By: Maggie Shipstead
-
The Sweetness of Water (Oprah’s Book Club)
- A Novel
- By: Nathan Harris
- Narrated by: William DeMeritt
- Length: 12 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the waning days of the Civil War, brothers Prentiss and Landry—freed by the Emancipation Proclamation—seek refuge on the homestead of George Walker and his wife, Isabelle. The Walkers, wracked by the loss of their only son to the war, hire the brothers to work their farm. Prentiss and Landry, meanwhile, plan to save money for the journey north and a chance to reunite with their mother, who was sold away when they were boys. Equal parts beauty and terror, The Sweetness of Water is an epic whose grandeur locates humanity and love amid the most harrowing circumstances.
-
-
Masterful storytelling and an exceptional audio performance
- By Pamela on 06-18-21
By: Nathan Harris
-
Flowers for Algernon
- By: Daniel Keyes
- Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
- Length: 8 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Charlie Gordon knows that he isn't very bright. At 32, he mops floors in a bakery and earns just enough to get by. Three evenings a week, he studies at a center for mentally challenged adults. But all of this is about to change for Charlie. As part of a daring experiment, doctors are going to perform surgery on Charlie's brain. They hope the operation and special medication will increase his intelligence, just as it has for the laboratory mouse, Algernon.
-
-
Walk with a Swagger
- By Tim on 05-30-14
By: Daniel Keyes
-
No One Is Talking About This
- A Novel
- By: Patricia Lockwood
- Narrated by: Kristen Sieh
- Length: 4 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As this urgent, genre-defying book opens, a woman who has recently been elevated to prominence for her social media posts travels around the world to meet her adoring fans. She is overwhelmed by navigating the new language and etiquette of what she terms "the portal," where she grapples with an unshakable conviction that a vast chorus of voices is now dictating her thoughts. When existential threats--from climate change and economic precariousness to the rise of an unnamed dictator and an epidemic of loneliness--begin to loom, she posts her way deeper into the portal's void.
-
-
Funny, moving, glad to have read it
- By Terra on 05-26-21
-
The Sentence
- By: Louise Erdrich
- Narrated by: Louise Erdrich
- Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Louise Erdrich's latest novel, The Sentence, asks what we owe to the living, the dead, to the reader and to the book. A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store's most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls' Day, but she simply won't leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading "with murderous attention", must solve the mystery of this haunting.
-
-
Addictive and surprising
- By Amazon Customer on 11-25-21
By: Louise Erdrich
-
The Promise
- By: Damon Galgut
- Narrated by: Peter Noble
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Haunted by an unmet promise, the Swart family loses touch after the death of their matriarch. Adrift, the lives of the three siblings move separately through the uncharted waters of South Africa; Anton, the golden boy who bitterly resents his life’s unfulfilled potential; Astrid, whose beauty is her power; and the youngest, Amor, whose life is shaped by a nebulous feeling of guilt.
-
-
Excellent novel
- By ALG on 11-09-21
By: Damon Galgut
-
My Meteorite
- Or, Without the Random There Can Be No New Thing
- By: Harry Dodge
- Narrated by: Harry Dodge
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Is love a force akin to gravity? A kind of invisible fabric which enables communications through space and time? Artist Harry Dodge finds himself contemplating such questions as his father declines from dementia and he rekindles a bewildering but powerful relationship with his birth mother. A meteorite Dodge orders on eBay becomes a mysterious catalyst for a reckoning with the vital forces of matter, the nature of consciousness, and the bafflements of belonging.
-
-
Absolutely ,life ,love ,heartfelt
- By SHERRY LOVESamazon on 06-12-21
By: Harry Dodge
-
Galatea 2.2
- By: Richard Powers
- Narrated by: David Aaron Baker
- Length: 14 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After several years living abroad, the fictional protagonist of Galatea 2.2 - Richard Powers - returns to the US as Humanist-in-Residence at the enormous Center for the Study of Advanced Sciences. There he runs afoul of Philip Lentz, a cognitive neurologist intent upon modeling the human brain. Lentz involves Powers in an outlandish and irresistible project: to train a neural net on a canonical list of Great Books. Through repeated tutorials, the device grows gradually more worldly, until it demands to know its own name, sex, race, and reason for existing.
-
-
Complex verbiage with a very self-centered focus
- By Trevor C. on 07-28-21
By: Richard Powers
-
A Passage North
- A Novel
- By: Anuk Arudpragasam
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A Passage North begins with a message from out of the blue: a telephone call informing Krishan that his grandmother’s caretaker, Rani, has died under unexpected circumstances—found at the bottom of a well in her village in the north, her neck broken by the fall. The news arrives on the heels of an email from Anjum, an impassioned yet aloof activist Krishnan fell in love with years before while living in Delhi, stirring old memories and desires from a world he left behind.
-
-
@ Jayantha Hettigama
- By Amazon Customer on 08-26-21
Publisher's Summary
An Oprah's Book Club Selection
Shortlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize
Longlisted for the 2021 National Book Award for Fiction
A heartrending new novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning and number-one New York Times best-selling author of The Overstory.
I never believed the diagnoses the doctors settled on my son. When a condition gets three different names over as many decades, when it goes from non-existent to the country's most commonly diagnosed childhood disorder in one generation, when two different physicians want to prescribe three different medications, there's something wrong....
Theo Byrne is a promising young astrobiologist who has found a way to search for life on other planets dozens of light years away. He is also the widowed father of a most unusual nine-year-old. His son, Robin, is funny, loving, and filled with plans. He thinks and feels deeply, adores animals, and can spend hours painting elaborate pictures. He is also on the verge of being expelled from third grade for smashing his friend's face with a metal thermos.
What can a father do, when the only solution offered to his rare and troubled boy is to put him on psychoactive drugs? What can he say when his boy comes to him wanting an explanation for a world that is clearly in love with its own destruction? The only thing for it is to take the boy to other planets, even while fostering his son's desperate campaign to help save this one.
"Richard Powers is one of our country’s greatest living writers. He composes some of the most beautiful sentences I’ve ever read. I’m in awe of his talent." (Oprah Winfrey)
Critic Reviews
"Richard Powers is one of our country’s greatest living writers. He composes some of the most beautiful sentences I’ve ever read. I’m in awe of his talent." —Oprah Winfrey
"Extraordinary.…Powers’s insightful, often poetic prose draws us at once more deeply toward the infinitude of the imagination and more vigorously toward the urgencies of the real and familiar stakes rattling our persons and our planet." —Tracy K. Smith, New York Times Book Review (cover review)
"A heartrending tale of loss.…Powers continues to raise bold questions about the state of our world and the cumulative effects of our mistakes." —Heller McAlpin, NPR
More from the same
What listeners say about Bewilderment
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Billy
- 09-28-21
Not Usually a Richard Powers Fan
I am not a huge fan of Powers’ books. The author’s style and voice and topic rarely click with me. This book I have a chance because of an early print review. It was 100% worth every minute I spent listening to it. The writing is beautiful. The characters are carefully drawn as three dimensional beings. The science is explained in small snippets that get folded into the story as a whole. One once did I think “That was info-dumpy” but even then it was okay because it enriched the story that surrounded it. The main character and his son are dealing with very heavy life circumstances, but it was rendered in a way that makes you laugh through the tears. And the narration is top notch. Easily the best new book I’ve listened to this year!
39 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- arwei
- 09-24-21
Brilliant novel
This novel will touch your heart as well as stimulate your brain. I love all of Powers books for their deep understanding of human beings as well as their deep knowledge of nature and science. Also, I suggest you try “ The Time of our Singing” which shows amazing understanding of the racial issues of our time.
21 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Josh Mitteldorf
- 09-24-21
gems of insight, glimmers of hope
Overstory was an epic, an impossible act to follow. Bewilderment has everything we love about Powers's novels, but on a smaller scale. He has a vision of all that is best about people and our time in history, and finds redemptive lives against a background of unfolding collision of capitalism with the global ecosystem that is the context for all life.
17 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- The Josephs
- 09-21-21
Required Reading... A Modern Classic
What a phenomenal read! Incively brilliant, and a powerful commentary on both the world, humanity and the things that matter.
Ultimately a story about a father, Theo, left alone with his special child... "in no way is he deficit, and he certainly doesn't have a disorder", yet Robin is not a normal child. While prone to aggression and a tempermental nature, Robin has a pure love of science and nature. Without Theo's wife Aly, lost under tragic circumstances, it seems his life is falling apart until a new study treating behavioral conditions creates a remarkable change in Robin, but at what cost?
A story about heart and connections, this should be mandatory reading for all of us. Powers does a masterful job of weaving a social, ecological and emotional web that draws us in and shows us just how far humanity has come from a rational, positive race... as well as the way back, thru the eyes of a boy, a bird (flying backwards) and the universe.
13 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Canda Mitchell
- 10-01-21
Beyond Words
This novel is beyond describing. Richard Powers combines the problems of our struggling planet, the ignorance of most and the child who held truth up to the light of day. It is a story to read again, and again, so much to contemplate and consider. Definitely not an easy read and definitely a reminder of what we earthlings have destroyed and our insipid refusal to accept responsibility or to fund projects to save any of us. In this fictitious novel, we may be shocked by what has and is continuing to occur to destroy planet Earth. Powers words may inspire a call to action, a new respect for scientific inquiry and maybe change.
11 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Brent Holcomb
- 09-30-21
Beautiful new modern classic
Reading "Bewilderment" is a sacred experience. I will follow Richard Powers wherever he leads. The audiobook narration is FANTASTIC.
8 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- nyc2cents
- 10-04-21
Great start, then too much sci-fi
A great premise and great start to the book. Beautiful writing. Eventually too much science-fiction mixed amidst real science. And the ending is a foregone conclusion because Powers has painted himself into a corner.
Lastly all the characters while being interesting in the fabric of the story are as individuals, too UN-nuanced, too much like stock characters.
7 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- joanna dunlap
- 10-01-21
Brilliantly Devastating
Written in the not too distant future of continuing environmental collapse and animal extinction, what do you do with a child who personally feels the suffering of each threatened species? This brilliantly written novel depicts the agonizing struggle of a father wishing to protect his different son from traditional labels and treatments. At the same time he has a need to foster an appreciation for the natural world they both love. The many who disregard the facts of science have devastating consequences on of these beloved characters.
7 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Fancy Cat
- 10-06-21
made me cry
no one articulates the interconnection of life better than Richard Powers. thank you for opening my eyes and my heart
6 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- MVSunshine
- 09-28-21
Fascinating and flawed-as we all are
I adored the Overstory. I was pulled into this book even though it is more linear, more polemical, perhaps less well written. I was challenged, engaged and believe Bewilderment is an important book to read and discuss.
5 people found this helpful