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It’s been a long, long time since a book has challenged me to ask such meaningful questions about religious faith from a pro-faith position. The story follows Emilio Sandoz, Jesuit priest and sole survivor of an ill-fated mission to make first contact with recently discovered aliens. With the rest of the eight-person expedition, Emilio leaves Earth a brilliant, energetic man of unflinching action in faith, if not perfect belief. Emilio returns broken and mutilated, physically and emotionally. It’s up to Emilio’s Jesuit colleagues to unravel the mystery of the Rakhat disaster and pry the whole story out of Emilio, if they can. More than the mystery, the book is about how faith can or cannot survive shattering tragedy. After his experiences, Emilio can see only two possibilities: either God is evil, or else God does not exist. That dichotomy, though simplistic-sounding on the surface, is explored in nourishing, satisfying depth. Emilio’s struggle is a struggle I suspect most of us grapple with at certain points in our lives. Sometimes all our lives. This book is a precious, rare example of true Science Fiction. That is, there’s real science in it, not just space travel and aliens (a la Star Wars). The science isn’t just satisfying to a sci-fi fan like me, but lends the book intellectual credibility as well. Another author might have erected a scientific facade to the story in order to advance an agenda of faith. Maria Doria Russell instead enlightened The Sparrow with her own scientific career, and poured the soul of her faith into it, too. The book is as organic and mature a melding as the person herself. If I’m dwelling on the sophistication of the treatment of faith and science in this book, it’s only because it would have been so easy to screw up, or to half-ass. A critical flaw in the mission’s logic, and the science would be undermined. A single flinching from a difficult question, and the faith would be reduced to superstition. Maria Doria Russell’s work is credible, profound, and challenging, and such a success is worth dwelling on! Russell’s writing is, in a word, flamboyant. She paints her world in vivid primary colors—people, places, and situations “pop” with clarity and intensity. For the most part I took an indulgent pleasure in this. Whenever a new character is introduced, Russell draws them in caricature. D.W.’s Texas drawl and idioms were just a bit too Texan, for example. But such simplicity is always deceptive in The Sparrow and, I believe, meant to connote the depth and complexity that lies below the surface of every person we meet, no matter how stereotypical he or she seems at first. Where the flamboyancy pushed a bit too far for me was in the pop culture references. They’re laid on a bit thick. To me, pop culture references should create a familiar connection between the story world and the real world. In The Sparrow, they instead feel more like the author is winking directly at me, and so they take me out of the story rather than ground me in it. Perhaps I only feel that way because Russell and I seem to share a lot of DNA—the pop culture references were all quotes I have memorized, too, so they struck me as a bit too on the nose. Maybe that means Russell and I just need to hang out and watch movies together. :) Russell said in her interview on public radio’s Speaking of Faith (a show which is no help at all in shortening my to-read list!) that one of the reasons she believes The Sparrow found such a strong response is that “no matter where you are on the continuum between atheism and bridal mystic, there’s someone in the story who will articulate what you might be thinking.” I think this holds true only up to a point: there are no fundamentalists in this story. At no point does any character assert scriptural infallibility over observation, an arbitrarily puritanical sensibility, or an exclusive hold on the truth. One could easily make the argument that such traits would make for a deeply incompetent explorer of new planets, but even in the grounded, sheltered offices of Rome, not a single fundamentalist is to be found. I honestly don’t know what to make of this. Much of this book showed me new ways to think about tough questions of faith. For the sake of helping me learn how to cope with fundamentalism, I would like to have seen it represented. Nothing in Emilio’s struggle is wrapped up with a tidy bow. Even as he takes frail step after frail step out of his personal hell and toward some kind of physical and emotional recovery, the questions of faith persist. Emilio’s questions haunt his colleagues, and they haunt me as a reader, too. When presented with the full depth of the book’s challenges, I am struck dumb, my mouth hanging open with no idea what to say or do. I don’t share Emilio’s experiences, but whatever it is he craves, I crave it, too, but can’t reconcile it with real life any better than he can. Strange though this seems, I am so thrilled that The Sparrow leaves me dumbstruck. It makes me feel like I’m not alone with my own struggles of faith, that Russell is a kindred spirit. After attempting to read several religious authors supposedly of the “thinking” variety, I am gratified to find some truly meaningful and challenging thought in Russell’s work. And more than that, I admire Russell’s courage and gumption, for starting a project like The Sparrow must have been daunting in the extreme. I enjoyed The Sparrow thoroughly. As a novel, it’s well-written, but it’s not Shakespeare. That’s fine. More important than the storytelling itself, I was thrilled by the exploration of faith. This is the first book in a long time that’s made me want to shake the author’s hand and wholeheartedly thank her for what she wrote. It’s made a true contribution to my life and my own faith struggles. If you like science fiction, you might like this book. If you agree with Socrates that “an unexamined life isn’t worth living” (and that includes your faith), then I can’t recommend this book more highly. I hope it leaves you as speechless as it does me.

2022-10-26 03:20