Powers pens a musical marvel
Powers is no ordinary novelist, and Orfeo is no ordinary novel. Like the haunting music it describes, it is stirring and odd, elegant and melancholy, the kind of book you can’t shake even if you dislike it. … Orfeo mainly strikes minor keys, but its political overtones, familiar to Powers fans — the policing of art, the intersections of power and technology — largely take a back seat to looming themes of love, loss and regret and, most of all, the excruciating effort involved in creating a meaningful work of art.