![]() ![]() Robin’s about to be expelled from third grade for impulsively clouting a boy in the face. When a pediatrician suggests he might be “on the spectrum,” his father thinks: “I wanted to tell the man that everyone alive on this fluke little planet was on the spectrum. Young Robin is bright and sweet but compulsive and quick to anger. Alyssa, Robin’s mother - birder, vegan, hiker, activist, friend to abandoned dogs - died two years earlier in a car crash. He’s searching for life in the cosmos while raising Robin, his sensitive 9-year-old son. ![]() The narrator is Theo Byrne, an astrobiologist in mourning. “Bewilderment” is equal parts earnest opinion-page essay (humans + nature = yikes) and middling Netflix science fiction product (boy reconnects with dead mother through high tech). Pauline Kael said it about film, and it applies more so to novels: “the good ones never make you feel virtuous.” Good novels are rarely built on good intentions or politics. ![]()
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