The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
Apr. 18th, 2007 04:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigid31I picked up The Sparrow because I am kind of obsessed with the idea that the Catholics have a plan for when we make first contact. I think that this is comical and also very forward thinking. So when I read that there was a book about a group of Jesuits going to another planet to make first contact I had to check it out.
What I found was not exactly the book I had expected but I was not dissapointed. This was a beautiful book all about human nature and our relationship to the unknown as much as it was about aliens and God. I fell somewhat in love with many of the characters and felt that I had grown to know them by the end of the novel.
I thought the amount of suffereing heaped upon Emilio Sandoz was a bit much. I don't know if the fact of the rape was too much or in some way not enough. It's rather an obvious revelation by the time it happens but of course the book isn't a mystery and the end is not the point except for how it frees Sandoz to return to who he was before, even if in some small way.
The end is very fast, with events happenning in incredible succession. It fits since the falshback portions are in some way meant to be the story Emilio is telling his superiors though we learn much more in them than Sandoz could know. The end is the most recent portion of the narrative and would be the most jumbled in Sandoz's memory and he would be unable to process it the way that he processed the events closer to the beginning.
The characters are very good, I'm really fond of Anne Edwards but each one has their own charm. They get inside of you and become more like the treasured friends they are to each other than characters. It's the strength of the characters that really makes the book and by wisely staying focussed on them and their respense to the incredible events rather than the incredible events the book really succeeds.
I think I will read the sequel at some point because the questions left at the end of this novel make me long to spend some more time in this world.
What I found was not exactly the book I had expected but I was not dissapointed. This was a beautiful book all about human nature and our relationship to the unknown as much as it was about aliens and God. I fell somewhat in love with many of the characters and felt that I had grown to know them by the end of the novel.
I thought the amount of suffereing heaped upon Emilio Sandoz was a bit much. I don't know if the fact of the rape was too much or in some way not enough. It's rather an obvious revelation by the time it happens but of course the book isn't a mystery and the end is not the point except for how it frees Sandoz to return to who he was before, even if in some small way.
The end is very fast, with events happenning in incredible succession. It fits since the falshback portions are in some way meant to be the story Emilio is telling his superiors though we learn much more in them than Sandoz could know. The end is the most recent portion of the narrative and would be the most jumbled in Sandoz's memory and he would be unable to process it the way that he processed the events closer to the beginning.
The characters are very good, I'm really fond of Anne Edwards but each one has their own charm. They get inside of you and become more like the treasured friends they are to each other than characters. It's the strength of the characters that really makes the book and by wisely staying focussed on them and their respense to the incredible events rather than the incredible events the book really succeeds.
I think I will read the sequel at some point because the questions left at the end of this novel make me long to spend some more time in this world.