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OPERATION WANDERING SOUL Paperback – April 8, 1994

by Richard Powers (Author)
3.9 3.9 out of 5 stars 43 ratings
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National Book Award Finalist

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Overstory and the forthcoming Bewilderment, an exquisitely rendered novel set in the pediatrics ward of a public hospital that examines the power, joy, and anguish of storytelling.

 “If you have children or will have children, if you know children or can remember being a child, dare to read Operation Wandering Soul. . . [it] is bedtime reading for the future.” —USA Today

In the pediatrics ward of a public hospital in the heart of Los Angeles, a group of sick children is gathering. Surrogate parents to this band of stray kids, resident Richard Kraft and therapist Linda Espera are charged with keeping the group alive on make-believe alone. Determined to give hope where there is none, the adults spin a desperate anthology of stories that promise restoration and escape. But the inevitable is foreshadowed in the faces they’ve grown to love, and ultimately Richard and Linda must return to forgotten chapters in their own lives in order to make sense of the conclusion drawing near.

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Previous page
  1. Print length
    352 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publication date
    April 8, 1994
  4. Dimensions
    5.31 x 0.88 x 8 inches
  5. ISBN-10
    006097611X
  6. ISBN-13
    978-0060976118
  7. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Powers's prose soars like the most magnificent of choirs, memorably capturing the moments of joy and anguish, barrenness and grace, that add up to life." — Washington Post Book World

"If you have children or will have children, if you know children or can remember being a child, dare to read Operation Wandering Soul...Dense in knowledge, rich in imagination, powerful in expression, [it] is bedtime reading for the future. Like the stories read to children, this intensely caring novel can help prevent the nightmare it describes, children out too late at night, far from home, lost, the wandering souls of the future, our future." — USA Today

From the Back Cover

Highly imaginative and emotionally powerful, this stunning novel about childhood innocence amid the nightmarish disease and deterioration at the heart of modern Los Angeles was nominated for a National Book Award.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ MorrowPb; Harperperennial ed. edition (April 8, 1994)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 006097611X
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0060976118
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.7 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.31 x 0.88 x 8 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.9 3.9 out of 5 stars 43 ratings

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Richard Powers

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Customer reviews

3.9 out of 5 stars
3.9 out of 5
43 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Kashaknishra
5.0 out of 5 stars Operation Wandering Soul
Reviewed in the United States on July 15, 2007
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Richard Powers: Operation Wandering Soul (1993) 7/15/07

This is one hell of a novel, not surprisingly a National Book Award Finalist. And hellish it is too, for it depicts the inner (and outer) life of surgeon Richard Kraft as he works day and night in the emergency ward of an inner-city hospital within Los Angeles. From time to time he makes humane contact with therapist Linda Espera, too bedraggled a mutual experience to be called love (carnal or otherwise).

Of course their names carry symbolism. The author's namesake by translation represents the quick surgical fix, and at worst the "surgical strike" we hear about in the world news concerning our military conquests to spread our notion of civilization abroad. And Linda does represent some humanoid hope, which is also embodied by a dying little patient named Joy, a boat girl maimed by us saviors somewhere around Cambodia and somehow spirited here with her hopelessly anxious parents.

In the course of this novel, and through its amazingly skillful use of language, we become more deeply aware, not only of folkloristic tales and actual history concerning the victimization of innocent children through the ages (the Pied Piper, the Children's Crusade, etc.), but of how this has continued during our own lives - both abroad (with our help) and here at home, where we dare not look. Through magisterial story telling, all this failure of our flawed human experiment is interwoven with retold biographical reminiscences of the aforementioned protagonists of this deeply saddening reenactment of imagination and hope against a tide bigger than all of us.
11 people found this helpful
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Eric H
4.0 out of 5 stars It makes me think
Reviewed in the United States on December 28, 2012
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I bought this while I was mid way through a library copy. Clearly, this book would require a few reads, but I find that frequently with Richard Powers. I find his books worth a reread and this appears to not be an exception.

It's hard for me to put in words what this book said to me, but come away feeling I may have a better understanding of universal truths having read it.
5 people found this helpful
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Matthew Taylor
3.0 out of 5 stars Forceful, but overwrought
Reviewed in the United States on July 12, 2012
"The world, as is widely known, is divided into two sorts of people," Richard Powers writes in Operation Wandering Soul. "Exactly what those two sorts are is a matter of continuous speculation."

I would say that, in the context of this novel, those two sorts are those who are glad to have their childhood behind them and those who wish they never had to grow up. Dr. Richard Kraft, caught in a whirlpool of emotion and self-doubt, is someone for whom both are equally true.

Kraft is a pediatric surgeon who finds himself at the appropriately-named Carver Hospital in Los Angeles (or Angel City---this book maddeningly obfuscates place names). Having to operate on legions of children who are abused, neglected, starved, and shattered is eating at his soul to the point where he is reaching a crisis. He is clearly seeking something, since his profession and his current life hold less meaning for him each day.

Then he meets Joy, the refugee child of parents from Laos, who becomes a touchstone to his potential salvation. By meeting Joy, Kraft retrieves memories of a time when he was most happiest, living with his Foreign Service parents in Bangkok. It was a time, on the cusp of adolescence, where for him the world was still a wonder and life could be lived without the encumbrances, until grownup guilt and cynicism enters his life from one fearful event.

Powers has written a forceful book of unveiled contempt for American consumer culture and filled with millennial foreboding that civilization is at its end (having lived in Los Angeles myself in the late 80s, I can understand his concern). The sign by which it will be known that the end is near is the disappearance of children. The book veers into seemingly irrelevant digressions including stories of the evacuation of children during the London Blitz, the Children's Crusade of 1212, and a marvelous retelling of the Pied Piper fable, but they all shed light on Kraft's ultimate fate.

That said, I have taken away 2 stars because much of the book is overwrought. I haven't read any of his other work, so I can't say whether this is Powers' style or not, but the language is dense and dark and hard to wade through.

One of reviewers printed on the cover of my copy says "Powers's prose soars like the most magnificent of choirs...." Mmmm, I don' t think so. Often, it feels like Powers uses 20 words when one will do. The result is a wall of writing that obscures rather than enhances the themes of the story. It's too bad, because in the end, it is a marvelous story.
4 people found this helpful
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Indie Watcher
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, compelling reading.
Reviewed in the United States on April 20, 2019
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Inexpensive, in great condition, arrived sooner than expected. Simply great reading.
One person found this helpful
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Jesse Liberty
5.0 out of 5 stars Top of his craft.
Reviewed in the United States on June 7, 2022
To see an author at the peak of his craft (possibly at the peak of virtually anyone's) take a look at Operation Wandering Soul. His control of alliteration, reference, puns, intermingling of events, braided story telling... it is very impressive plus it is a great read.
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Stoneworks
1.0 out of 5 stars Do not buy this book. It is horrible......a mess of despair and hopelessness drenched with drivel.
Reviewed in the United States on August 18, 2020
Verified Purchase
The reviews of this book are hilarious. Reviewers faced with a book this bad and unreadable react by heaping praise on this incoherent stream of stupidity. The main character cannot handle anything. He doesn’t know who he is, what he is doing, which way is up. He indulges in endless self pity and ennui. There are pointless passages of spiritual mambo jumbo, diversions into nothingness, and self indulgent babble. Hard to overstate how bad this book is. An author who wants us to be impress3d with how much time he spent editing this book into pointlessness. Horrible. Fire the editor. I stopped at page 100......you won’t get further than that without wanting to throw this book away. I put it in my recycle bin to save an innocent reader from coming across it.
3 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Herman Norford
4.0 out of 5 stars Who was Powers Writing for?
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 11, 2013
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I think it might have been better if I had read Operation Wandering Soul by Richard Powers on my Kindle. I say this simply because of the broad vocabulary used by Powers. The Kindle built in dictionary would have aided my reading and made it more efficient. What aid I could call upon to help me cope with the novel's bleakness I simply don't know. "The tune piping in the distance is deliverance from evil, the end of that torture, childhood." Thus runs a sentence in the novel revealing its bleak and pessimistic outlook about the treatment of children at the hands of adults.

Set in a fictitious city called Angel city, Operation Wandering Soul takes the reader into a public hospital called Carver where a group of destitute children has effectively been given shelter from the brutal world of adults where children suffer in various ways. As required the children receive medical treatment from Richard Kraft, a surgeon, and as post medical treatment they receive counselling from Kraft's would be lover, Linda Espera, mainly in the form of story telling. Along with the story of the children's experience there is the narrative of a relationship between Kraft and Linda. Under pinning Powers pessimistic view about the treatment of children throughout time, there is also an issue about millenarianism and the end of the life as we know it. The novel does not dwell on character development and there is little or no plot which moves the narrative along. Not too surprisingly some of the above issues make the novel a difficult read.

Along with the fact that there is little or no plot a number of other features make the novel a difficult and frustrating read. One of those features is that the text is littered with allusions. To make sense of many of Powers' sentences the reader has to grasp the allusion. This style of writing can be refreshing to read with the allusions making lots of connection, revealing similarities and insights, and stimulating thought. The problem with the allusions in this novel is that they are so abstract and esoteric that the reader is left wondering is Powers writing for a select few. Here are two examples, "The neighbourhood forgoing enlightenment ran in two-story, poured concrete shanties." I think Powers is saying that the type of poor run down neighbourhood he is referring to never got the opportunity to hear about and know what the age of enlightenment was about. A second example, "The southeast of the town was a slum so vast and desperate that no philosophy could reduce it to illusion." I will let you workout what that sentence is alluding to and stating. Another feature that makes the a difficult and demanding read is the unforgivable approach by Powers of beginning section and chapters wit the personal pronoun "he" or "she" and then proceeds in this vein for pages. This makes it difficult to decipher exactly which character Powers is referring to.

Let me set out what I think Operation Wandering Soul is about and why it might be worth reading it. The novel is about the treatment of children at the hands of adults throughout the ages. It is about the human capacity to endure suffering. It is about how as human beings we survive or difficult plights if only by using our imagination. It is also about story telling and how the writer presents his or her story.

The novel is a broad history of the mistreatment of or at best lack of care for children. Powers does history in a refreshing and exciting manner. His is no mere regurgitation of events in a chronological fashion. From relaying the Welsh mining town of Aberfan school disaster Powers slips easily with subtle signpost to relay the plight of boy soldiers, in the same year as the mining disaster, fighting a war in a desert storm. He shifts to this scene in one simple phrase: "Mudslide slips elementally into sandstorm."

In this novel Powers' style is dense and opaque but inventive. He writes as if standard English grammar has outlived its purpose. He creates new diction and syntax which at times forces the reader to read a sentence a second maybe even a third time. He writes: "Here in the sunny Southern Caliphate they make up a smorgasbord of least favoured nations." In passages even though the prose is dense and opaque, Powers prose captures the reader's imagination revealing a text that is quite simply prose poetry. It is a bit of a cliché to call prose poetry and sometimes it is done without justification but take this passage about reflecting back on stories one was told: "Words will return at livid intervals to haunt even you, the most hardened, back-of-the-class switchbladers. They will pop up unsponsored. Unshakable, like old manslaughter charges." The passage goes on in that vein for a few more lines. The diction, syntax and tone render the passage simply as poetry.

For me this is the most difficult novel of Mr Powers that I have read - I have read 8 of his 10 novels. The novel is a test of the intellect and on that basis it leaves little scope for the fun and pleasure of reading per se. The novel is a blend of the realistic and reflexive novel. Nonetheless, despite its difficulties, Operation Wandering Soul is an important book and worth reading. Shortly after reading the novel I watched a film about Hitler's last days - Downfall. Towards the end of the film Geobbels' wife poisoned their six children. The children had no choice or say in the decision. Operation Wandering Soul is a novel that serves to remind us of such action by adults towards children.
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