I am working my way through Powers' novels as an occasional project, and I now have three more to go, so I may well finish the set in the next year or so. For me, although this one has an interesting premise and some powerful moments, it didn't coalesce as well as his best work. The starting point is the idea of a human who is predestined by her genes to permanent happiness, and its personification Thassa rather reminded me of Prince Myshkin in Dostoevsky's The Idiot. The plot is punctuated by m...

This book could have been a big hit for me if I had not first read Eric Weiner's 2008 book, The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World. That and this book both floated the idea that there is the so-called "happiness gene" in our DNA make up in the same fashion that there said to be a homosexual gene, a cancer gene and other anomalies that found to have been probably caused by gene abnormalities.It tells the story of a young Algerian woman Thassadit "Thassa" A...

I need to put some serious thought into this review - there's about 100 strands of plot, character and theme that I'd like to touch on. But right now, I can't do that - so suffice it to say, this book is fabulous. Don't be scared of it - even though it takes on some pretty weighty issues - freewill v. biological determinism; positive psychology and social cognition biases; and the absolutely fascinating, speculative fictional premise of what and how people would respond to a person who was genet...

The secret of happiness is to be born happy (i.e. right genes). With genetic engineering this can be made to order. This gives a new dimension to our God given right of the "pursuit of happiness." This novel is structured to examine this prospective future from multiple perspectives.This novel explores what and how people would respond to a person who was genetically predisposed to having an off-the-charts level of extreme well-being. The book examines the pursuit of happiness using genetic engi...

Behind every book that I have read so far by Powers there’s a current scientific or existential debate (sometimes also several ones). And that is also the case here. The story takes place in Chicago and revolves around a 23-year-old Algerian migrant woman, Thassa, who seems to be in a permanent state of happiness and ignites everyone with it. Russell, a failed writer with lots of personal issues, has her as one of his students in his evening class “creative non-fiction writing”. He immediately b...

Written years before winning the Pulitzer for "The Overstory" Powers displays a different style of narrative with this book whose theme raises the question, "Is happiness genetic, learned, or something else?"We first meet Russell Stone, an award winning journalist who takes a job teaching creative writing at a night school. Among the students is Thassa, a twenties Algerian girl whose happiness knows no bounds. A class of miscreants and oddballs, her ebullience wins the nickname, Generosity. Ston...

Last year I read and loved The Overstory. This year I plan to read all the rest of Richard Powers's novels in reverse order of publication by reading one a month. This is turning out to be quite an immersion into one author and a way of looking back into the last 30 some years of scientific and social history. In Generosity, Powers combines the science of genetics, an examination of how stories are written, and the ways that science and commerce become entangled. His characters serve his ideas

Russell Stone is a washed-up writer making ends meet by teaching a ‘Journal and Journey’ class to a group of art students at a Chicago college. One member of that group stands out because of her remarkable personality: Thassadit Amzwar is a young woman from Algeria who is apparently happy all the time; nothing seems to bother her, and people are naturally attracted to her sunny disposition. Even after everything she has experienced in her life, Thassa remains in perpetual good humour; Russell sp...

A young girl strikes a big American city like a meteorite. She fled a civil war and, via Paris and Montreal, disembarks in the metropolis. Her radiance and appetite for life transfixes those who have the privilege of orbiting around her. The circumstances remind us of the real-world work of epidemiologist Aaron Antonovsky who, in the 1960s and 70s was struck in his research by how certain women who had survived the Holocaust were able to sustain a rich and positive outlook on life. Antonovsky re...

Richard Powers is one of my favorite writers. Generosity is not my favorite of his books, but I almost feel like I will have to reread it again in a few months in order to review it appropriately. The book jacket says this book is about the search for a gene that determines happiness and a woman who is the happiest person in the world. And, yes, that's the plot, more or less. I would say the book is about how we live now, about how we measure our purpose and existence. If you're interested in th...

It seems, sometimes, that there are all the authors in the world, and then there's Richard Powers. It's almost unfair, everything that Richard Powers can do. He can turn a phrase, find the perfect analogy, make you laugh. He can explain complex science and play with multiple plot lines with equal aplomb. Wow.

from the Powells.com book review: The story postulates the existence of a "happiness gene" that would enhance the whole species. Thassa Amzwar, improbably happy despite her suffering, might be the donor who will usher in the "age of molecular control." Yet the novel's affect, first to last, isn't admonitory so much as amazed, a word half-buried in Amzwar's name. Generosity may be jam-packed, but it's genius: It soars, it boggles.

This is the third book I've read by Richard Powers, and it's hard for me to know exactly what I think of his work. His characters and world often seem a bit distant, as if we're watching them move around in some other world, far removed from ours. Partly to blame for this is Powers' habit of referencing everything under the sun in a way that is often interesting but also threatens to distract the reader, and sometimes hovers on egotism run amok: one feels that Powers' characters are in constant

Generosity: for a book with such a title there is awful little joy. Even the person with the extraordinary genes isn't in my opinion a really happy person. But maybe that's just the point Powers wants te make: that the existence of happiness genes is a non issue.The structure of the book, takes some accustoming to but once your used to it, it's quite readable.I hated the narrator though: I don't especially like the writer of a book to be so present in the story.The end is abrupt and unsatisfying...