BOOK REVIEW

The Echo Maker by Richard Powers. National Book Award. Pulitzer Prize finalist.

(Brought to you by kat impatientreader.com)  The Echo Maker opens when Karin Schluter gets a horrifying call in the middle of the night: her younger brother Mark has flipped his truck on an icy Nebraska back road and now lies close to death in the hospital. She rushes to his side, but when he wakes up he doesn't recognize her. He knows who he is, and where he is, and that he has a 31 year-old sister. He can even see how much Karin looks like his sister.  But he no longer experiences an emotional connection to her: in fact, his instincts tell him that she is an impostor.

Poor Karin is devastated.  She wants to break free of Kearney, Nebraska -- a place enlivened only twice a year by the spectacular migration of sandhill cranes to the flats around the Platte River. She longs to escape the influence of her dead parents: her harsh, failed-entrepreneur father, and her religious-fanatic mother. But she has always had the urge to stay and mother her younger brother who works a dead-end job at the local slaughterhouse, and wastes his free-time trolling the internet.  Now he doesn't even acknowledge her as his only living family.

His doctors, however, are fascinated by his memory problem.  Known as Capgras Syndrome, it is a rare brain disorder that makes a person believe that his loved ones are impostors. Certainly Mark is manifesting it:  he has no trouble picking back up with his casual friends, but he can't recognize his sister or his beloved dog.  Mark's doctors make notes on all this, and do little else. 

Meanwhile the cops interview Karin and confirm that something weird caused Mark's accident:  there are two other sets of tire tracks out in the icy February dirt where Mark had run off the road, which implies someone may have chased him. Even stranger, someone crept into the hospital and left a cryptic note at Mark's bedside. The incoherent note implies guilt and a desire to be his "guardian angel." Poor Mark, however, doesn't remember anything about his accident and can't help Karin and the cops piece it together.  So the cops drop it.

Desperate, Karin realizes that she has been left holding the bag:  she's the sole person responsible for Mark's care, and he still treats her with hostility and suspicion as if she's a spy. She quits her job in the next town (mourning the termination of her life outside of Kearney even while realizing that she never got that far away). She moves into Mark's prefab house on the outskirts of town, and tries to arrange the horrible details of HMOs, long-term care, and insurance.

Mark's buddies Rupp and Duane, help him out by playing computer games with him during visiting hours. His girlfriend Bonnie can talk him into various treatment options when he refuses to listen to Karin.  (Bonnie has a job dressing up as a pioneer woman and staffing a theme park.)

Nothing, however, is getting done to solve the mystery of his accident and restore him to his former close relationship with Karin. So Karin writes to a famous neurologist named Gerald Weber and entices him with the details of her brother's case. Surely Weber will want to help them.  Mark's Capgras Syndrome is rare even in the schizophrenics who usually manifest it; it's unheard-of in an accident case like Mark.

Here the bleak and compelling The Echo Maker picks up speed while weaving in some complex plot threads.  Weber is a neurologist who has mostly turned into a writer of bestselling pop-science books explaining the oddities of the brain.  Hitting a midlife plateau of creativity, he snaps eagerly at Karin's bait. He shows up in Kearney.  There, he talks with Karin, and meets Barbara, the nurse assigned to Mark's care who is wrapped in a heavy-handed cloud of mystery.  Mark, amusingly, takes an instant liking to Weber (whom he names "Shrinky") and tries to enlist the older man's help in figuring out his "fake" sister's agenda.

Meanwhile Karin moves in with Daniel Reigel, a saintly conservationist who loved her back in high school. Daniel denies himself luxuries like hot showers, and meditates for hours. He also leads the efforts of an environmental group to save the local land around the Platte for the cranes.  His opponent Robert Karsh wants to develop the land for building. 

To complicate matters, Karin starts sleeping with Karsh, who is very married, behind the back of Daniel:  an illicit and dysfunctional relationship that the three of them already went through ten years ago!  Yes, they are repeating their own old history.  Just how long is it going to take Daniel to realize, and what is he going to do then?

The suspense centers on Mark's belief that he is a pawn in a big conspiracy. To him, the entire town has been altered from what he remembers, his "sister" is a spy who knows a LOT about their childhood, and even his dog has been switched with a look-alike.  A strange tension now exists between him and his buddies.

Well, yes, there is a power-struggle going on between the developers and the conservationists.  Could Mark have seen something secret that would motivate someone to try to kill him?  He can trust no one except the insecure Shrinky and the too-good-to-be-true nurse Barbara -- especially when some disturbing evidence throws suspicion upon his good buddies Rupp and Duane.

Mark is the best character in the book.  A young male knuckle-head, he's vivid and likable. Plus he provides most of the humor in the otherwise chilly book. He and his buddies have priceless conversations.  Poor Mark and his well-meaning girlfriend Bonnie start marching the streets of Kearney, stopping at churches and going door-to-door to solve the mystery of who left the note at Mark's bedside the night of the accident.  No one comes forward even when Mark goes on television and explains his problem. 

Karin is also a strong character:  caring, manipulative, fearful.  You may like her less when she descends into her repeat pattern of cheating on Daniel with Karsh.  It does, however, put her deep into the developer-conservationist struggle, and forces her to make a wrenching choice in the book's end.

The neurologist Weber is the weakest character.  At first, he seems smart and appealingly self-deprecating. Then he gets one bad review on his new book. It triggers a full-blown midlife crisis: he can't work, he can't sleep, he hates himself, he imagines everyone laughing at him.  He gets obsessed with icky cypher-nurse Barbara because she reminds him of his damaged self. Then, even while insisting that his obsession is abstract and unimportant, he tells his sarcastic wife all about it.  And makes her cry!  (Way to go, you stupid little man.)  Then he has the bad sense to act on this obsession.

Weber becomes extremely hard to like:  you want to slap some sense into him. However, his digressions on brain abnormalities are fascinating. It is all this material about bizarre states of mind that must have won this novel the National Book Award.  It is clear and compelling reading, and you want more.

In the end, the book's tension pulls tight.  You want to know how creepy Barbara factors into the plot (though you can guess part of it early on).  You care about Mark and hope he can find his way out of his increasing nightmare.  You marvel at the tightrope Karin walks, caught between desperate environmentalists and developers.  You wince in anticipation of the payback she is incurring for her behavior. 

Along the way, you learn about the brain, and get to hang out with three pitch-perfect male knuckle-heads.  Putting up with Weber and Barbara is a small price to pay for that.  The Echo Maker won the National Book Award for fiction in 2006. You can find it on Amazon through this link:

The Echo Maker: A Novel

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