The Gold Bug Variations

By: Richard Powers

Narrated by: Rachel Botchan, Andrew Garman

A national best-seller, voted by Time as the number-one novel of 1991, selected as one of the "Best Books of 1991" by Publishers Weekly, and nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award - a magnificent story that probes the meaning of love, science, music, and art, by the brilliant author of Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance.

Stuart Ressler, an up-and-coming molecular biologist, finds his career sidetracked by the turmoil of the '60s, and a young couple of the 1980s tries to discover why the biologist abandoned his scientific pursuits.

The Gold Bug Variations is a double love story of two young couples separated by a distance of 25 years.

©1991 Richard Powers (P)2018 Recorded Books

words for the sake of words

Dr restler's story was compelling. I understood the characters, their motivations and the influence of the times. The librarian's story fell flat. In spite of excessive rumination, all I received was an education on DNA. What moved the characters in that storyline was lost in deep explanation of everything but the character's personalities. Good performances, but a 'no' from me.

very cool, but

I thought it was very interesting but where was the editor. seriously, it's fairly absurd.

Worst narration ever

The female narrator spoke so disjointedly, I don't think she understood a word she spoke. It was as if she was doing the job on auto-pilot.

Read the Overstory instead.

The writing here is beautiful but prolix. Great themes, leitmotifs, and great writing in many places. Brilliantly synthetic of a variety of subject matters. But, like Atlas Shrugged, needed a strong editor to winnow the chaff. The narration was weirdly problematic especially towards the end. If you listen you’ll see what I mean— Hard to follow sentence flow because of random pauses. All that said, his novel The Overstory, is one of my favorite books of all times. This may be one of the books that I should have read instead of trying to listen to over the course of about 50 jogs.

A librarians interpretation of the human atlas

Incredible story, beautiful celebration of all the variants in species and human life that give this world its magical feeling.