[Powers’s] 11 works of fiction have surfed the revolutions of science and technology, drawing the heart and head into lyrical alignment. … Orfeo is a long novel, but it never feels so. The book sets its themes early — grief and love, exploration and its limits — and plays variations on them, some of such power it is the only thing that forces you to stop.
“Ofeo,” a review by Tom LeClair, Barnes and Noble Review, January 21, 2014.
Since reviewing Richard Powers’s second novel, Prisoner’s Dilemma, in 1988, I’ve had to keep track of his age so that, when asked who to read, I can say, “Powers. He’s the most important living American novelist under” whatever age he happens to be at the time. … I can almost see a slimmed-down Frank Langella as Peter Els in the westering road-trip movie.
“‘Orfeo’: Artist or terrorist — is there a difference?,” by Laura Miller, Salon, January 19, 2014. In Richard Powers’ sweeping new novel of ideas, an avant-garde composer flees charges of bioterrorism.
Powers, with “Orfeo,” also seems to be entertaining a revived respect for storytelling; there’s no point in this novel where you feel you have to push yourself through. It’s one long express-train ride to the gorgeous. … And the scenery is as sublime as ever. … These are ecstasies that can consume a whole life, but to those who hold a book like “Orfeo” in their hands, it certainly seems worth it.
“‘Orfeo,’ richly told, details our culture of fear,” by John Domini, Philly.com, January 19, 2014.
Orfeo displays all the excellences for which Richard Powers is celebrated. … But beyond the conceptual fit is the beauty of its expression. Orfeo, titled after a Monteverdi opera and, of course, a mythic maestro, has passages that rise to ecstasy. Its descriptions mushroom, transforming grit to psalms. …
… In this medium, the novel, Don DeLillo used to be the American we relied on for cold-eyed brilliance about our “altered world.” Now, Richard Powers has taken over the job, alert to every fresh crack in the former reality. Yet as he details these, in his two latest narratives, he embraces a new playfulness and teases out unexpected glimmers of possibility.
A 2008 Buffalo News file photo shows Kurtz at home.
“Orfeo” is based on the strange and tragic case of Steve Kurtz, art professor at UB and founding member of the Critical Art Ensemble. In 2004 he was arrested and had his house torn apart by federal agents when they discovered (without a search warrant) Bio Art in his house the day after his wife died unexpectedly of natural causes. So this book should have special meaning to Buffalo residents who lived through that fiasco.
A review of Orfeo by Ted Gioia, San Francisco Chronicle, January 17, 2014.
For sheer bravado in constructing sentences, few authors of contemporary fiction can surpass Powers… The end result is a style that mixes the best elements of Oliver Sacks, Alex Ross and Virginia Woolf. I’m not sure any other writer could pull this off, but Powers has the formula down… One of his finest yet.
It is a rare thing to finish a book and still be lost in it – to be startled by the drone of a lawnmower or the thunk of the next dishwasher cycle because a story has lifted you, so completely, out of time. … a dense, bracing, gorgeous opera of words….
“Fiction Chronicle: The Staff of Life,” a review of Orfeo by Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal, January 17, 2014. The reviewer also notes that Orfeo is the first novel he has encountered “that incorporates Twitter in a smart and interesting way.”
Powers reaffirms the magnetic attraction between music and the miracle of life… Orfeo alternates between bittersweet memories of his past and the taut predicament of the present. There’s a touching juxtaposition in these reflections, an evergreen excitement that sits alongside regret… The raptures of music seem to invigorate [Powers], and there are extended passages…that are as fine as anything the author has written.