The Echo Maker

Karin reconciles with Mark’s friends. She feels they are a bad influence, but she depends on them to stay with Mark when she can’t be there.

Weber has been feeling disconnected. He sometimes thinks he doesn’t recognize his own handwriting in his datebook. He persistently forgets his daughter’s wife’s name. He finds a review of his latest book, denigrating his methodology, the borderline violation of his subjects’ privacy, and an apparent lack of individual feeling for the subjects. The reviewer observes that his case studies also seem to ignore recent discoveries in neuroscience. The observation stings because Weber has recently been worrying about that issue himself. Sylvie rebukes him for his self-doubts.

Doubts continue on his book tour, as audience members raise the question of whether his case studies violate professional ethics. He replies as usual that case studies are important because the brain can’t be understood without looking at the whole person, their history, and personality. Privately, he feels less sure of this than he once did.

The world begins to seem strange to Weber, as if he were seeing new colors. During his sleep-deprived book tour, he has increasing difficulty at talks and readings, feeling confused and off-balance. His eyes seem to play tricks. His thoughts are incoherent.

Karin finds it hard to be sure how much Mark has changed since the accident. He has trouble making decisions. He sometimes mixes up words and keeps forgetting that he is on disability and doesn’t have to go to work. Mark puts up with Karin, still refusing to see her as his sister but tolerating her.

Barbara visits three times a week. She forces Mark to do things for himself, whereas Karin feels compelled to take care of him like a child. Karin longs to be more like Barbara—composed and self-contained.

Mark tolerates cognitive behavioral therapy but is annoyed by the therapist’s conviction that Karin is real. He resents the therapist trying to “brainwash” him. Karin tries to tell him the therapy might make him feel more like himself, but Mark says he already feels like himself.

Mark gets Karin to take him to the scene of the accident. By the side of the road, Mark remembers that there was someone else in the car with him. There was something in the road like a white column that flew up and away—a guiding spirit. “I’m a killer,” he tells Karin. “Some kind of guiding spirit [was] in the road, and I tried to kill it” (252).

Mark takes to going around town, knocking on doors and showing people the note from the hospital. No one recognizes it, and Mark begins to suspect the people he talks to are the same few people over and over. Karin identifies Mark’s delusion of one person pretending to be many as Fregoli Syndrome. Like Capgras, Fregoli is a misidentification delusion. Mark also believes he has seen someone following him house to house. He identifies the stalker as Daniel.

Going out to dinner with Daniel, Karin notices that Daniel is preoccupied. He tells her about his work at the crane refuge. The cranes’ environment is being threatened by development. A consortium of developers, led by Robert Karsh, is trying to overturn the legal agreements put in place to protect the birds.

Daniel refuses to eat anything other than vegetables, which makes it difficult for Karin to eat at restaurants with him. Even when the server brings him a plate of raw vegetables, Daniel barely touches them. Karin notices Daniel looking at both the female and male servers. He refuses to acknowledge that this is true.

Weber continues to brood over criticisms of his work. He becomes resentful of Sylvie, who dismisses the criticisms as irrelevant. His writing has lost its meaning for him. It started as a way to understand his field on a different level than the harsh empiricism of science. He doesn’t want science to fully understand consciousness.

He receives a message from Karin about Mark’s compounding symptoms. He realizes that he walked out on Karin and Mark without even trying to help, and his one suggestion—cognitive behavioral therapy—is making things worse. He resolves to go back to Nebraska and redeem himself by really helping. He barely admits to himself that he also wants to see Barbara again.