“What to Read With It: ‘Orfeo’ author Richard Powers recommends Alex Ross’ ‘The Rest Is Noise’,” Contra Costa Times, January 16, 2014. [Richard Powers] was not only happy to share the most recent titles on his reading list, but was willing to recommend one of them as the book most likely to shed extra light on,, Read More

“Richard Powers’ ‘Orfeo’ sends a composer on the lam,” a review by Dan Cryer, Newsday, January 16, 2014. Powers brings his characters to life through vivid dialogue and language sometimes musical and always attentive to precise detail. … his evocations of music, let alone lost love, simply soar off the page. …  Peter Els emerges as, Read More

“Richard Powers’ ‘Orfeo’ explores art and surveillance in the information age: A retired composer wrongly becomes public enemy No. 1 in lightning speed in Richard Powers’ moving ‘Orfeo.’” A review by David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times, January 16, 2014. Powers integrates these bits of narrative deftly, like the interweaving of a million strands of DNA. Yet, Read More

Orfeo reviewed by Keith Staskiewicz, Entertainment Weekly, January 15, 2014. Powers’ writing is complex and heady without being headachy, and his synesthetic descriptions of finding melodies in the mundane are full of their own kind of music.

“Music and science meld in Richard Powers’ ‘Orfeo’,” by Georgia Rowe, San Jose Mercury News, January 19, 2013. “Orfeo” is ultimately about the creative impulse, which Powers suggests will always be with us. “Each historical moment has its crisis,” he says. “Human hunger is complicated. But we will always want serious things. We have a need, Read More

“‘Orfeo’ author captures myriad emotions in the early ’70s,” by Rob Cline, The Gazette, January 12, 2014. “Orfeo” is beautiful, challenging, and haunting, a composition that captures a period of time while hinting at timelessness.

Review of Orfeo, by Harvey Freedenberg, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, January 11, 2014. “Orfeo” is that rare novel truly deserving of the label “lyrical.” Powers’ gorgeous and deeply felt writing about music sent me back to Mozart’s “Jupiter” Symphony and introduced me to Steve Reich’s “Proverb.” This is an ambitious work of broad scope and big ideas, like most, Read More

“Anywhere, Nowhere, Elsewhere, Everywhere: Music takes us beyond time  in Richard Powers’ Orfeo.” by Scott Korb, Slate, January 10, 2014. …Orfeo is a first-class American road novel…[In] this retelling of the Orpheus myth Powers also manages enchantment—or, re-enchantment, if you, like so many of us, believe the world today needs that…[Over] his career Powers has shown himself to be a, Read More

Sunday Book Review of Orfeo  in the New York Times, by Jim Holt, January 10, 2014. “Powers is prodigiously talented…  He writes lyrical prose, has a seductive sense of wonder and is an acute observer of social life…   I [was] unable to resist the emotional pull of Orfeo…  I [picked] it up eagerly each day and [found], Read More

Review of Orfeo, by Troy Jollimore, Chicago Tribune, January 9, 2014. Powers is the uncommon author who can write a novel of ideas in which the ideas do not compete with but rather enhance the emotional urgency of the proceedings. And “Orfeo” benefits from the deep sympathy Powers seems to feel for the brilliant and troubled protagonist he, Read More

“Albert Einstein, Hewlett-Packard and Marian Anderson: 1939 — It Mattered More Than You Know,” by David Kipen, Ozymandias, January 8, 2014.  “Without the three watershed events that hit in 1939, the year 2014 wouldn’t look the same at all.” To some, the civil rights movement started that week in 1939. The novelist Richard Powers beautifully describes Anderson’s, Read More

Orfeo is featured in “This Month’s Really Fast Book Reviews,” Esquire, January 7, 2014. Premise: Composer Peter Els goes on the run after police discover his home microbiology lab and suspect he’s a bioterrorist. One-Sentence Review: Powers proves, once again, that he’s a master of the novel with Orfeo, an engrossing and expansive read that is just as much a, Read More