Another widely loved book that I can't get into. Character-driven books are getting tricky for me these days... Half of the time I just don't care enough about those characters, and the other half of the time I straightup can't stand them. Maybe I need to understand the 90s coolness to get their witty conversations, or maybe I need to be religious to appreciate the message about faith, but ultimately this group reminded me too much of some people that I really don't like in real life, and I thought it was impressive that I made it to page 140.

As stated in my profile, I love books that provide a unique perspective, excite my imagination, have emotional weight and/or challenge my view of the world. The Sparrow is all of these in spades. It is wonderfully thought provoking, and fully deserving its many awards. Highly recommended.

Ms. Russel sets up the premise of The Sparrow perfectly on the opening page

”During what Europeans are pleased to call the Age of Discovery, Jesuit priests where never more than a year or two behind the men who made initial contact with unknown peoples; indeed they were often in the vanguard of exploration...They went ad majorem Dei gloriam: for the greater glory of God...They meant no harm.”

On the surface The Sparrow is about discovery, mirroring the epic voyages of Marco Polo, da Gama, Magellan, Cortes, and other famous explorers. At its core however it is an exploration of faith—not in the sense of proselytizing, but rather asking how is faith acquired? What sustains it? How is it lost? Can it be regained?

Emilio Sandoz is a Jesuit priest. Trained as linguist he has traveled the globe in service of the faith while questioning the existence of the God he professes to believe in. He seeks evidence of God's existence—a miracle—that can’t be explained by science. When an astronomer friend discovers a radio broadcast of song from a distant planet, Emilio sees the sign he’s been looking for.

”Life on Earth is unlikely…Our own existence, as a species and as individuals, is improbable. The fact that we know one another appears to be a result of chance. And yet, here we are. And now we have evidence that another sentient species exists nearby and that they sing. They sing…We have to find out about them. We have to know them.”

With the backing of the Jesuit church, Emilio and friends—scientists and theologians—set off to find the singers. They find first a garden of Eden, and later a Hell foreshadowed in four conversations.

The first discusses the similarity between love and faith.

”You know what’s the most terrifying thing about admitting that you’re in love?...You put yourself in harm’s way and you lay down all your defenses...Completely vulnerable. The only thing that makes it tolerable is to believe the other person loves you back and that you can trust him not to hurt you.”

In the Eden of Rakhat, the party initially finds both love and faith. But as in the Eden of the Bible, questions of God's beneficence arise.

When one of the party dies, the Jesuits seek someone or something physical to blame. The mission’s doctor retorts:

”Why is that so hard to accept, gentlemen?” Anne asked with a flat stare. “Why is it that God gets all the credit for the good stuff, but it’s the doctor’s fault when shit happens? When the patient comes through, it’s always ‘Thank God,’ and when the patient dies, it’s always blame the doctor. Just once in my life, just for the sheer fucking novelty of it, it would be nice if somebody blamed God when the patient dies.”

Faith can be blind.

The third conversation comes in response to Anne’s outburst:

”It is the human condition to ask questions like Anne’s last night and to receive no plain answers,” he said. “Perhaps this is because we can’t understand the answers, because we are incapable of knowing God’s ways and God’s thoughts.”

God then is alien and unknowable.

When the party encounters the equally alien and unknowable Jana’ata, Emilio and the party are shattered.

“Was it..God?” he asked with terrifying gentleness. “You see, that is my dilemma. Because if I was led (to the planet) by God to love God, step by step, as it seemed, if I accept that the beauty and the rapture were real and true, then the rest of it was God’s will too, and that, gentlemen, is cause for bitterness. But if I am simply a deluded ape who took a lot of old folktales far too seriously, then I brought all this on myself and my companions and the whole business becomes farcical, doesn’t it. The problem with atheism, I find, under these circumstances,” he continued with academic exactitude, each word etched on the air with acid, “is that I have no one to despise but myself. If, however, I choose to believe that God is vicious, then at least I have the solace of hating God.”

Russel provides no easy answers. The reader is left to ponder these questions—and likely will long after the final page—and draw their own conclusions.

There is a sexual undercurrent in the novel, from Sofia's background, discussions of sex within marriage, celibacy, and ultimately a shocking and vivid discussion of rape at the end of the novel. I understand why Ms. Russell inserted the last, but found it very uncomfortable. Be aware.

Final thoughts:

Ms. Russel is an Ph .D. anthropologist. Her expertise in dissecting cultures shows in the alien cultures created for Rakhat. They are exquisitely complete and detailed on par with Herbert's Dune and similar epics.

It is also interesting to note that Ms. Russel was brought up Catholic, left the church for many years, and later converted to Judaism. The characters in The Sparrow trace her journey: Catholic, atheist/agnostic, and Jewish. In an interview that follows the story, she states that in writing The Sparrow she sought to "look at the place of religion in many people and to weigh the risks and the beauties of religious belief...." Mission accomplished!

There is a sequel to The Sparrow titled Children of God in which Emilio continues his faith journey, back to Rakhat. I look forward to reading it.

I had wanted to read The Sparrow since its release back in 1996/1997. I had seen a review of it and loved the basic idea of future Jesuits being the first “missionaries” to make contact with the first sentient alien species discovered. But I lost that review and was never able to figure out the name of the book or the author. I tried to discover it everywhere I went, and all those I asked were oblivious. I really thought I would have no trouble tracking it down, but I couldn’t, so after a while I gave up.

Now, over ten years later, I discovered Mary Doria Russell’s masterpiece and am disappointed that I didn’t read it sooner.

I feared -- many times over while reading The Sparrow -- that my disappointment would be complete.

The Sparrow is so good, you see, that as I moved from moment to moment, following Father Emilio Sandoz’s broken narrative, I was sure that there was no way Russell could deliver on the promise of her writing. It was so good it was great, and I worried that it was too good to maintain its level throughout. Experience with much literary disappointment was steeling me for a let down.

Creating Suspense -- One of the things Russell did was to create suspense in the story with all the skill and technique of Alfred Hitchcock.

Hitchcock provided an example of how to craft suspense in an interview many years ago, relating this scenario: show the audience a bomb being planted under the seat in the witness stand, then bring the witness in and have him take a seat. The man goes on answering questions, going through the action we expect of him, totally oblivious to what is coming, thus letting the audience worry about the bomb. The audience wonders when the bomb will go off. Who will the bomb injure? Is there a chance for the man to be saved? How will he be saved? How will he die? And the audience’s tension rises for every minute that ticks by without a resolution.

It’s a cinematic version of dramatic irony, and Russell is a master of her own prose version. We the audience are positioned as the tribunal of Jesuits, listening to Father Sandoz’s history of the mission to Rakhat, but we are given droplets of information ahead of our brethren that none but Sandoz and Father General Guiliani have access to. These droplets set up Russell’s entire narrative structure, making the story compulsively readable by piquing our need to know more, our need to understand how these terrible things we know must happen actually happened.

Complete Characters -- But this need to turn pages, this desire Russell kindled in me to know it all and know it all as quickly as possible, was steadily tempered by my desire to stay with the characters she crafted. I didn’t want to leave Emilio Sandoz to his torment; I wanted to prolong my stay in his presence. I wanted to remain with Anne and George, D.W., Marc Robichaux, Sophia, Jimmy, Father Behr, Father Candotti, Father Reyes, Father General Guiliani and even Father Voelker and the Jana’ata trader Supaari. I wanted to stay with them so much that I found myself slowing down my reading, setting the book aside even while another part of my mind tugged me back to turn the pages.

The reason was how deeply Russell made me feel her people. They were real for me in a way that few characters have been (really...it’s only my favourite books that have achieved what Russell achieved, character being more important to me than anything). Their decisions made sense, their love for one another made sense, their desires and cares, their anger and frustration, their actions and reactions. They were real and true. And I felt them as though they were real people in my world.

Morality -- Then there was The Sparrow's struggle with morality. I am not a moral person; but I am an highly ethical one, and Russell’s management of the big moral questions moved me.

Contemporary or futuristic moral struggles in literature often bore me, or even anger me with their preachiness or closed minded simplicity, but not the struggles of the priests in The Sparrow. These men were struggling with their morality and their God in passionate, energetic, complex and vital ways. And the heart of the struggle was Emilio Sandoz, the man who loved his God the deepest and had his faith and love shattered in the worst possible ways.

He described the struggle best when he said: “...[That:] is my dilemma. Because if I was led by God to love God, step by step, as it seemed, if I accept that the beauty and the rapture were real and true, the rest of it was God’s will too, and that gentlemen is cause for bitterness. But if I am simply a deluded ape who took a lot of old folktales far too seriously, then I brought all this on myself and my companions and the whole business becomes farcical, doesn’t it.”

This meditation on responsibility is pivotal for all of the characters’ morality, not just the Jesuits, but this pivot is most emotionally raw for Father Sandoz, and his position as our narrator makes his struggle, to some extent, our own.

Disappointment? -- I expected that all this excellence was too good to be true. I expected Russell to lose her nerve in the end, to take the easy route of evil, thereby absolving all of the missionaries from their own responsibilities based on the scapegoating of the VaRakhati -- more specifically the Jana’ata. And for one moment, during one act of Jana’ata brutality, I thought she had done what I feared, but Russell stood fast and said what needed to be said through Sandoz: “There are no beggars on Rakhat. There is no unemployment. There is no overcrowding. No starvation. No environmental degradation. There is no genetic disease. The elderly do not suffer decline. Those with terminal illness do not linger. They pay a terrible price for this system, but we too pay...and the coin we use is the suffering of children. How many kids starved to death this afternoon, while we sat here? Just because their corpses aren’t eaten doesn’t make our species any more moral!”

This moment is an act of true authorial bravery, solidifying The Sparrow's place in my pantheon of books while ensuring that no disappointment could taint Russell's fine work.

There are quibblous moments in the book that stroked my fur backwards, such as Russell’s tendency to focus on her characters joyous moments of laughter and rejoicing (I’ve never seen people laugh so much or so easily as the Jesuit missionaries and their party, except in a Guy Gavriel Kay novel) or the veneration of Anne by every being she met, but these are meaningless when faced with the triumphs of The Sparrow.

I could go on -- discussing linguistics, the clear link between Mary Doria Russell and the great Ursula LeGuin, the subtly handled science, the concepts of culture and race, the manifestations of violence, rape, prostitution, art, love and scent -- but all of that would be superfluous. As is most of what I have written.

Suffice to say that The Sparrow is a masterpiece that Russell will likely never better. I wish I had written her words. And I hope to meet her one day so I can thank her properly for the experience.

I've hit page 199 of 'The Sparrow' and the viscosity of the text is increasing.

By page 12, I had a lot of hope for this book. By page 88 I was really into the book, and thinking there was a good chance this was a 4 or 5 star book. At this point though, I'm not sure I can summon enough conviction up to finish it.

Russell takes a gamble with her story of telling it from the beginning and end toward the middle, and relies extremely heavily on foreshadowing. It’s high risk technique with a big payoff, and while it is somewhat effective at first in generating interest in the story, after about 130 pages of foreshadowing gloom and horror, it gets really tiring. It's like taking a bad page from some of the worst of Kurt Vonnegut's literary tics, only where Vonnegut comes off as pretentious or even pandering, Russell is coming off as being a bit of an amateur. Even worse, making the first third of your story foreshadowing with nothing happening is I think promising a payoff that is so large that I don't see at this point how she can deliver a sufficiently big twist or epiphany to justify it.

There are a lot of things to like about this book - its witty intelligent dialogue, its ambition, and its quality prose. But the chief merit of the book so far is the sensitivity to human culture that Mary Doria Russell brings to her work. Her skill and knowledge as an anthropologist shows, and in particular she envisions the social fabric of the world of 2016 in a way that is believable and seems to be almost prescient.

The same easy believability cannot be said for almost any other aspect of her work. Her characters are all little more than caricatures, with the sort of exaggerated easily identifiable physical features that you’d expect of characters in a comic book or role-playing game. The physicist is 6’6” and scarecrow thin. The mathematician is a petite and impossibly beautiful ex-prostitute. The pilot is impossibly ugly and speaks such an exaggerated Texan slang that the portrayal is embarrassingly close to racism. The main character Emilio is a roguishly charming and impossibly handsome Jesuit priest. He’s essentially an agnostic that wants to believe, who hubristically seizes on the mission to another world as a way to reconcile his own lack of faith in his God. His chief sounding board, and seemingly the author’s chief voice, is Anne – a 64 year old silver haired but still sprightly sexual doctor and hostess who is always ready with wit and wine. Both characters seem to be someone’s fantasy rather than real people, and tellingly Anne’s husband George is the least well drawn and least independent of the central characters.

I'm finding it increasingly difficult to suspend my disbelief. While I can easily believe the social developments that appear to have happened by 2016, it’s simply ludicrous to believe that by 2016 we will have sufficient in space infrastructure and technical process that a private organization will be able to mount an interstellar mission. It seems highly unlikely that a technological civilization would be found orbiting our nearest neighbor. It seems even more unlikely that news of the discovery of said alien civilization would create only a small and passing sensation in the press, or that any of the major world governments would simply allow such a singularly important event as contact with an alien species to be unregulated. I mean, I would think contact with a new sentient species would be perceived as a matter of the utmost delicacy, given that the potential extinction of either species is on the line should matters go wrong. But as Russell would have it, the discovery of mankind’s first extraterrestrial neighbor generates somewhat less interest than the Y2K bug.

Equally bad, it seems impossible to me that supposedly excellent scientists would fail to develop contact protocols and would arrive at a distant planet inhabited by a sentient species with no clear idea what they intend to do. This last one is for me the near mortal blow to the story. Not only are no contact protocols developed, and no plans made, and no experiments scheduled, and no egos bruised fighting over whose theoretical models should be attempted first, but upon reaching the planet, the team takes essentially no environmental precautions and stupidly starts sampling everything that looks remotely edible. This, quite unsurprisingly, leads to the death of one of the crew. This is a severe problem because we've been foreshadowing a tragedy the whole time and the author - somewhat unsuccessfully - has been trying to make the characters very sympathetic, congenial and witty so that this tragedy will produce some sort of big emotional payoff when its elements are finally revealed. In what amounts to the prologue chapter, Russell voices what appears to be something of a thesis statement. Through the thoughts of one of her most sympathetic characters she writes:

"The mission, he thought, probably failed because of a series of logical, reasonable, carefully considered decisions, each of which seemed like a good idea at the time."

But at this point I've not been seeing a lot of logical, reasonable, carefully considered decisions. I'm seeing characters behaving like such complete buffoons that the vibe I'm getting is more slasher film than tragedy, and if they keep acting so foolishly I'm going to be rooting for their gruesome deaths before it’s all over.

------------

Well, I'm finally done with 'The Sparrow'. For all that foreshadowing, Russell ends up spoiling most of the 'twists' either explicitly or by inference long before the story is complete. There isn't a really big epiphany at the end, and the last thing she chooses to resolve seems almost anticlimactic to the point of unbelievably.

Judged as a science fiction book or a non-science fiction book, this is a book with major flaws.

As a non-science fiction book, it's very difficult or impossible to have sympathy for the characters because their mistakes are in many cases so egregious and have so predictable of consequences. Some of the 'Mary Sue'-isms which would be forgivable in a sci-fi book are made to grate precisely because the author builds up how hyper-competent the people are, and then makes them jump through hoops of stupidity so as to achieve her tragic story goals. The slasher movie vibe was palpable. Ultimately, it's difficult to believe that anyone considers Emilio that saintly. Speaking as a religious person myself, I never got the impression that Emilio was acting with divine guidance and never understood why anyone would have seen him as such. His faith was childish in all the worst ways rather than all the better ones. He seemed infected with Hubris, projecting his hopes, desires, and needs on to God, and then blaming God when his Emilio's plans didn't work out. He never struck me as someone who walked with God or who had some spiritual gift the some real people have. And, I found it difficult to believe that Emilio, who has lived such a hard brutal life, if he had any faith, would let simple Latin male machismo get in the way.

As a science fiction book, the story fails for several reasons, not the least of which is none of the participants seems to be particularly skilled in hard sciences. The biology of the story was utterly unbelievable. You can't move from one end of the country to the other, much less to a foreign country, without spending at least the first six weeks sick as your body builds immunity to local pathogens and your digestive tract accommodates new flora. Yet, these people go to a whole new world and don't show the slightest concern for the fact that they'll be encountering microorganisms wholly unlike anything they've ever encountered, or that they'll be exposing the new world to the same. Old world explorers didn't have a clue about the consequences of exposing the New World population to small pox, but modern explorers have no such ignorance. The events of this story are scientific irresponsibility to the point of being criminal.

I could have rated this story just two stars or even less, based on the flaws and the fact that I nearly put this story down unfinished twice. But I think some consideration has to be given to the ambition, seriousness, and thoughtfulness of the author. This story gives me a lot more to chew over and has a lot better prose than most stories I'd just give two stars. So I'm tentatively giving the story three stars, even if it wasn't as enjoyable as most stories I'd actually say of, "I liked it."

This is Mary Doria Russell's first novel, and it shows. I can only hope that she has a long and productive career, because the talent is there to produce a true masterwork that puts her in the first rank among science fiction authors. However, this wasn't it.

Completely baffled by the amount of praise this novel has received, this is horrendously, abhorrently bad.

Absolutely unbearable characters that have some of the cringiest dialogue I have ever seen; it reads like some shitty 90s sitcom where everyone is so funny! and happy! and witty! The author's own self-insert character and her husband are possibly the worst. Not to mention the fact every character is supremely virtuous and supremely intelligent, it's like you're reading Sonic fan-fiction written by a 12 year old, except the 12 year old is a middle aged north American white woman with alarming narcissistic tendencies (if you doubt me, just read her impressively self-congratulatory afterword on the book's most recent edition).

Unlike the main protagonists of the novel, the aliens they meet are not supremely virtuous and supremely intelligent, quite the opposite: they are violent, vile and brutal OR dumb, passive and cute. I get it, Russel wanted to give us this story about a bunch of good-willed people making contact with an alien species they couldn't possibly comprehend, and the ensuing results of the misunderstandings arising from this encounter. The fact Russel decided to make the central character of the novel a Jesuit priest makes the whole thing insanely tone-deaf: here is a novel that is essentially an allegory for the colonial project that started in the American continent in the 14th century, except the underlying message of this novel is that, really, it was all a misunderstanding, the genocidal consequences of colonialism, the historical scars that endure to this day, the apocalyptic destruction of entire cultures, nobody really wanted these things to happen, it was simply a result of unfortunate circumstances. This idea is made overt by the author at the literal first page of the novel, at the prologue, which ends with this paragraph:

“The Jesuit scientists went to learn, not to proselytize. They went so that they might come to know and love God’s other children. They went for the reason Jesuits have always gone to the farthest frontiers of human exploration. They went ad majorem Dei gloriam: for the greater glory of God.
They meant no harm.”

Of course, that is a lie. More interestingly I suppose is the assumption that the Jesuits were the real victims, an idea that is the driving force of the plot. The main character, the Jesuit priest Emilio Sandoz, has been brutalized by aliens in unspeakable ways, and the whole novel is a story taking the reader to the point where you can finally understand how and why. While it is true Sandoz ends up facing a horrific fate, the point the novel seems to make is strange at the best and malignant at worst. Sandoz, and the entire human crew for that matter, never do anything reproachable. Their mistakes are consistently innocent, their wrongs always supremely forgivable. Meanwhile, the native aliens execute toddlers, practice sexual slavery and eugenics. What story do we have then? A story about a group of space-missionaries with good intentions who encounter this supremely barbaric culture that ends up victimizing them. This is the precise kind of narrative Europeans used to justify the atrocities committed in the Americas: we are dealing with cultures that act violently and unpredictably, there is simply no way we are the bad people.

That Russel is a colonial apologist is not something she keeps a secret, to quote the author herself:

“The idea came to me in the summer of 1992 as we were celebrating the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s arrival in the New World. There was a great deal of historical revisionism going on as we examined the mistakes made by Europeans when they first encountered foreign cultures in the Americas and elsewhere. It seemed unfair to me for people living at the end of the twentieth century to hold those explorers and missionaries to standards of sophistication and tolerance that we hardly manage even today.”

And here is where Russel has it all wrong: it is entirely fair to hold the European "explorers" (a truly funny choice of words here from Russel) of the 14h century to the same standards we have today. A genocidal project with the ultimate goal of extracting profit from an entire continent is not the byproduct of some misunderstanding. Certainly, some Jesuits were probably not murderous psychopaths and some "explorers" had no terrible intentions, but to consider this the rule instead of the exception requires a degree of innocent stupidity or ill-faith that is frankly perplexing. In the unlikelihood that Russel is stupid, I will assume the latter.

It doesn't help that the whole plot is absurd and incoherent.

Well, I can definitely see why Russell's The Sparrow received so many accolades from my GR friends! On one level, this narrates an exciting first contact story, but that is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. On a deeper level, The Sparrow revolves around issues of faith, meaning and ultimately, the human condition, and this is where it packs its punch.

In 2015 or so (this was first published in 1996), the SETI project finally confirmed via radio transmissions evidence of alien life, and fortunes of fortunes, the signals were coming from only 4 or so light years away. While the UN and the scientific community were debating what to do, the Jesuits planned a mission; after all, Jesuits had via their history conducted many 'first contacts', albeit of a human variety around the globe. Hence, Jesuits put together humanity's first interstellar mission, involving the initial discoverers of the radio signal (which was largely beautiful music), along with some Jesuit priests and a few others. Basically, take an asteroid (humans had already begun mining them), slap on some rockets that could take the 'ship' close to light speed, add some life support, and go find what is out there!

As I said above though, the science and the first contact are really secondary, or at least the mere surface of the novel; do not expect hard science here (and I had some quibbles regarding this to be sure). The 'meat' of the story surrounds the wonderfully drawn people on the mission. Emilio, our main protagonist, started life in an extremely brutal, abusive home in Puerto Rico, where he 'escaped' to a Jesuit school at 15 or so; eventually (and for him surprisingly) he became a priest and a very talented linguist. For him, the mission coming together against all odds seemed like a miracle or God's will-- hurdles emerged and were overcome and a mere three years after discovery, the ship left to meet its destiny.

Russell utilizes a very effective dual narrative line structure in The Sparrow, one chronicling the mission in real time, the other starting in 2060 when Emilio, the sole survivor of the mission, returned to Earth on the asteroid ship, mutilated and devastated emotionally. Worse, a UN mission that left for Tao Ceti three years after the Jesuit mission sent a radio message back stating how they found Emilio working in a brothel and witnessed him killing an alien child. Obviously, something went terribly wrong (and the US mission seems to be lost as well) and only Emilio can fill in the blanks. Emilio in 2060, however, is in one sorry state. His hands are mutilated, his body racked by scurvy and who knows what else, but his emotional and mental state is even worse. So, we witness Emilio's slow recovery in the hands of the Jesuits and his eventually interrogation to find out what happened while oscillating to events unfolding on the alien planet.

The title comes from a discussion late in the book among Emilio's interrogators after he finally revealed just what happened (a great, surprising tragedy that I will not discuss to avoid spoilers). What is the role of God in human existence? He created us for what?

"So God just leaves?" John asked, angry where Emilio had been desolate. "Abandons creation? You're on your own apes. Good Luck!"
"No. He watches. He rejoices. He weeps. He observes the moral drama of human life and gives meaning to it by caring passionately about us, and remembering"
"Matthew ten, verse twenty-nine," Vincenzo Giuliani said quietly. "'Not one sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it.'"
"But the sparrow still falls," Felipe said

What I really appreciated about Russell's story here is how she weaved in a powerful religious theme without being preachy at the least. Instead, the religious discussions all revolve around a broader existentialist dive into the human condition. All the priests (along with the other characters) are flawed humans and their scars, their trials and tribulations, help anchor the quest for greater meaning, or at least and understanding of life in general. Powerful novel to say the least if you are into such things! 4.5 fallen sparrows! I would have bumped this to 5 stars except for the science handwaves.

Öncelikle çok iyi bir bilimkurgu kitabı okudum.

Ama adı üstünde kurgu, bilimsel altyapısı zayıf. 4 arkadaş bir sinyal bulup sırt çantalarıyla bir gezegene gidiyorlar, rahipler de cabası.

Şimdi diğer tarafa gelelim Cizvitler amaçları için yani tanrının çocuklarını bulmak için yola çıkıyor; bir yandan inanç ilişkisi, çelişkiler, öte yandan ilişkiler ve kafa karışıklığı.
Buldukları gezegende 2 tür ırk var ve nasıl yaşadıklarını, neler yaptıklarını görüyoruz. Detaylar çok güzel verilmiş, yazarın biyolog/ antropolog olmasının katkısı büyüktür.

Çok merak uyandıran bir eser, beklettiğime üzüldüm. Bilimkurgu grubumuz olmasa hiç okumazdım belki de...
Okuyun.

4.5 stars

Some day I will surely learn not to judge a book by its genre. When it comes to science fiction, I have a tendency to give it a pass. I want to like it, and have in fact read a few that I liked, but I'm generally lost from the beginning and give up, or finish til the end and still have no idea what I just read. Lest you sci-fi fans out there judge me harshly, let me just say that I consider sci-fi readers to have very high IQ's, else how could they understand what's going on? All this to explain why it's taken me so long to get around to reading this book, even though a lot of trusted friends have recommended it, even though I've read other books by Russell that I liked, even though it appears on a lot of must-read lists. That sci-fi label defeated my best intentions.

So this time I read it with a GR friend. Sometimes it helps to have someone to bounce ideas off of, and a sense of responsibility to finish. So now I've read it. Everyone was right, it's a great book, the science involved is not technical, there's a lot about morality and religion and the human condition, even among aliens, so many wonderful characters, some of them quite funny, a lot of quotable lines, and a riveting story. There was a lot to love about The Sparrow, but I can't quite get to 5 stars because of the length. It dragged in a few places, and I won't re-read it, but I will read the sequel, so that counts for an extra 1/2 star.

Favorite lines:
"Son, sometimes it's enough just to act less like a shithead. And by that kindly if inelegant standard, Emilio Sandoz could believe himself to be a man of God".

" You know what? I really resent the idea that the only reason someone might be good or moral is because they're religious".

"Genius may have its limits but stupidity is not thus handicapped".

" Matthew ten, verse twenty-nine', Vincenzo Giuliani said quietly. "Not one sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it."
" But the sparrow still falls, Felipe said. "

Indeed. The Sparrow still falls.

Can't put any thoughts here yet since husband hasn't finished reading but...wow.

(Full disclosure: Book abandoned on page 106, out of 431 pages.)

***SPOILERS HIDDEN***

The Sparrow is set half in 2019 and half in 2059. As is often the case with stories split like this, one is weaker than the other. In this case that’s the 2019 section. It centers on an ensemble cast of five friends—of varying ages, backgrounds, and professions (one is a priest)—who discover life on another planet and promptly try to figure out a way to reach that planet. The section is uneven. Mary Doria Russell’s characterization is strong, and in the parts where the friends interact during cozy dinners, the story is at its most engaging. These five are dynamic, distinctive, and realistically crafted, with a palpable chemistry; however, once in a lab, they’re unrecognizable as that same companionable five. Their jabbering for pages in incomprehensible sci-fi astronomy-speak is the height of mind-numbing:

In the next hour, George and Jimmy and Sofia outlined the ideas for him: how wildcatters selected and obtained suitable asteroids and outfitted them with life support, how the engines broke down silicates to use as fuel to move the asteroids to Earth-orbit refineries, how twenty-ton loads of refined metals were aimed, like the old Gemini capsules, at recovery sites in the ocean of Japan’s coast. How you could scale the system up for long-range travel.

Russell should have shown consideration for her reader and fast-forwarded straight to arrival on the new planet.

She did at least flash back and flip between the time periods adeptly, and she knew how to set up a mystery so it grips readers. In The Sparrow’s early pages readers learn that during the mission to the new planet, something went not just wrong, but horrifically wrong. Only one explorer survived—and very much not well. But that’s all Russell reveals to readers initially. The mystery of the sole survivor’s trauma and of what happened to the other explorers drives the 2059 section to make it a page-turner.

Readers who enjoy straightforward stories heavy on dialogue and forward-moving action should avoid this book, though. The Sparrow is categorized as science fiction, but contemplative spiritual and philosophical moments slow the plot, as does character backstory. Russell clumsily chunked in, rather than wove in, these parts, and she needed to generously shorten, if not axe, contemplative moments. This book is categorized as science fiction, but it leans heavily into literary-fiction territory, and that genre allows for, even expects, musing—but to a point. The author’s inclusion of tech talk reminds readers that her book is science fiction, but she chose the most boring way to remind. A great read keeps readers engaged, obviously. The Sparrow prioritizes the boring.

(Tip: According to fans it’s important to read Children of God directly following The Sparrow, as Children of God continues the story—in a slightly more action-based fashion—and is necessary to fully understand everything that happens in The Sparrow.)

I read The Sparrow after making a fuss about some of the things the author said when promoting it and its sequel. Having now read the book I can safely say that that's where all the controversy lies because there really isn't anything resembling controversial content in the story itself.

A conversation with Allison pointed out that the story has a Puerto Rican lead, which is somewhat praiseworthy for a SF book written in the 90s. And it touches on linguistics without the oft used SF idea of language being a superpower that unlocks your mind or the universe. I'm still unconvinced about this being a seminal work though. Not that every story has to be such, but that's what I was led to believe going into this.

Anyway, let me talk about the actual story.
The Sparrow jumps back and forth in time between a mission to meet some singing aliens and the Church's reaction to things they learn of the mission. There's some character building and interpersonal bonding interspersed with stuff post mission that I assume is meant to tease us with the goodies to come but it goes on for about half the book and just had me wondering when the heck first contact was going to be made. There's a lot of talk about what it means to believe, which mostly came down to 'fake it until you make it'. And plenty of talk about priests needing to be the master of their domain*, especially when stuck on a fairly small spaceship with an amorous couple that tries to put the 'in space no one can hear you scream' theory to the test.

In the last third or so of the book we finally get first contact with aliens who are used to meeting with new species and opening trade with them whilst learning to communicate. Convenient that. No aliens want to talk about the singing, which we later find out is because its the noise they make when fornicating. Just our luck that these aliens are as prudish about sex as the Church is and so politely scamper away when approached to discuss it with ignorant strangers of a different species. A series of unfortunate events sees the Earthling friend group diminish leaving only one survivor who then gets kidnapped by aliens who are turned on by the smell of his fear so he's brutally raped, repeatedly, until he's eventually rescued from a brothel. Some of the teasing we got earlier in the book was questioning why the church would refuse to publish the data that was gathered on the mission. They were under the impression the sole survivor chose to give up the rosary to become a sex worker on the planet on a whim. A perfectly rational line of thought. I guess priests getting on their knees and supplicating to their lord isn't that big a leap to sex work in the minds of these holy men.

I don't know. I was mostly underwhelmed by it all. The Sparrow is a pretty well grounded tale. Sparrows are meant to soar though and this doesn't.


* that's a Seinfeld joke about masturbating for those that don't know.

It gets better with every re-read.