What’s not to like?

About a week ago, I finished Mary Doria Russell’s 1996 novel The Sparrow, which won all kinds of awards and, as far as I’m concerned, deserved them all.

The Sparrow is a first contact novel in which the Society of Jesus engages with intelligent life in the Alpha Centauri system, on the planet Rakhat. From the prologue, which concludes with the ominous, “They meant no harm,” you might think you know the end of this story; and indeed, it’s clear from the first pages that the Stella Maris’s crew met with disaster. Only one crew member survives — Emilio Sandoz, Puerto Rican Jesuit, bastard and baseball player, would-be saint and all-around nice guy — and he stands accused of murder and prostitution. The man is a PR nightmare.

The story is told with two intertwining narrative threads, one beginning with the discovery of extraterrestrial song by a SETI scientist working at Arecibo, Puerto Rico in 2019, the other beginning in 2059 with the Church’s hurried attempts to sequester Sandoz from the public eye. That Sandoz in 2059 is a changed man relative to Sandoz in 2019 (albeit just a few years older, thanks to relativistic effects) is evident from the outset. The younger priest wrestles with an imperfect faith but is otherwise joyful, while the older Sandoz gives damaged a whole new dimension. The mystery and much of the narrative drive stems from the questions: what happened to Sandoz (and the rest of the crew), and will he ever be whole again?

For much of the book, Russell’s pacing and characterization are masterful. I was grateful that she let me know upfront that all would end in tragedy because she does a stupendous job developing her eight crew men and women. Even knowing the outcome, I cared deeply for all of them, most of all Sandoz, and their fate was heartbreaking.

Yes, The Sparrow is a tearjerker, but it’s so much more: it’s a study of cultures not so much in conflict as in confusion; an exploration of sexuality and religion, of the bonds of family and friends, of the relationship of people with their God. All that, and yet it never felt “talky” or “preachy” (not at all like a Heinlein novel, in other words). Best of all, Russell respects the reader enough to explore these ideas without putting forward her own biases, at least not in any obvious way, and with her ending she offers no easy answers.

Not a perfect novel by any stretch, though. Mostly I was bothered by the rushed feeling in the last fifty pages. Major traumatic events happen off camera, told secondhand, as if Russell didn’t have the heart to write the scenes, or perhaps she didn’t think her readers would have the heart to read them. After a few hundred pages of masterful stonewalling, Sandoz gives his Jesuit inquisitors what they’ve wanted all along — his version of events — and the shift feels precipitous. And this is a book with an all too brief denouement, leaving the reader with a major WTF moment at the end. (Good planning on Russell’s part, though, since I instantly bought the sequel, Children of God. The usual story . . . dying to know what happens next.)

As for the sequel, I suppose I should reserve judgment until the end, but 3/4 of the way through I feel like Russell should have taken Elmore Leonard’s dictum to heart (cut the stuff that others skip). I’m glad I bought it because it does give a sense of closure to The Sparrow, and I understand why Children of God is flawed. Russell, I think, really wanted to tell the whole story of what happened on Rakhat following the debacle of the first Jesuit mission, so the sequel is in many ways more of a history than a novel. The focus had to shift from one riveting character to a number of folks who shaped a planet’s history. There’s a loss of dramatic punch in such a gear-change, and face it, histories aren’t as much fun as novels.

The Sparrow may not be the best book for the hard SF fan. The aliens are not terribly alien and the planet never feels like much more than a country the size of Denmark (no, not even when the Stella Maris is surveying it from above). Russell never falls into the It was raining on Mars trap, but I could tell world-building was not her strength when she wrote this. Culture-building, yes, and character-creation, absolutely. But world-building? Nope.

Enough complaints, though. This was one of those rare books that I had to read in every spare moment — a book that became more important to me than videogaming. What higher compliment can I pay it? And it had more genuine feeling to it, more pathos and poignancy, joy and sorrow, than any book I’ve read in a long time.

If you do read it, let me know what you think 😉

D.