The Sparrow
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- ISBN13: 9780449912553
- Condition: New
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Product Description
ONE OF ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY’S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
“A NOTABLE ACHIEVEMENT . . . Russell shows herself to be a skillful storyteller who subtly and expertly builds suspense.”
–USA Today
“AN EXPERIENCE NOT TO BE MISSED . . . If you have to send a group of people to a newly learned planet to contact a really unknown species, whom would you choose? How about four Jesuit priests, a young astronomer, a physician, her engineer spouse, and a child prostitute-turned-computer-practiced? That’s who Mary Doria Russell sends in her new novel, The Sparrow. This motley combination of agnostics, right believers, and misfits becomes the first to explore the Alpha Centuri world of Rakhat with both enlightening and disastrous results. . . . Plain and engaging . . . An incredible novel.”
–Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“POWERFUL . . . Father Emilio Sandoz [is] the only survivor of a Jesuit mission to the planet Rakhat, ‘a soul . . . looking for God.’ We first meet him in Italy . . . sullen and bitter. . . . But he was not permanently this way, as we learn through flashbacks that tell the tale of the ill-fated trip. . . . The Sparrow tackles a hard theme with grace and intelligence.”
–San Francisco Chronicle
“SMOOTH STORYTELLING AND GORGEOUS CHARACTERIZATION . . . Vital novels place deep cracks in our beliefs, our prejudices, and our blinders. The Sparrow is one of them.”
–Entertainment Weekly
SELECTED BY THE BOOK-OF-THE-MONTH CLUBAmazon.com Review
In 2019, humanity finally finds proof of extraterrestrial life when a listening post in Puerto Rico picks up exquisite singing from a planet which will come to be known as Rakhat. While United Nations diplomats endlessly debate a possible first contact mission, the Society of Jesus quietly organizes an eight-person scientific expedition of its own. What the Jesuits find is a world so beyond comprehension that it will lead them to question the meaning of being “human.” When the lone survivor of the expedition, Emilio Sandoz, returns to Planet in 2059, he will try to clarify what went incorrect… Words like “provocative” and “compelling” will come to mind as you read this shocking novel about first contact with a race that makes composition akin to both poetry and prayer.
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If an alien sodomizing and torturing a priest is supposed to be thought-provking moral exploration of God’s being, then this is the book for you.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
This book was open to me as a Christian read. It is well written and more like an ‘alien encounter’ book than what most would call science fiction (they’re thinking more of Star Wars or something). But, it isn’t Christian literature.
The leader is a lapsed Catholic, a self-described “contented atheist” who converted to judaism b/c she wanted a convenient means to pass on ethics to her son after she became a mother. Her scientific / secularist / philosophical perspective drags the religious themes down until their possible value is virtually nil. Arguably, she isn’t really a Jew at all since to be Jewish you really do need to have faith in God! Having adopted a philosophy (not a belief system) where she can “choose what things to pass on and what things to weed out”, she then approaches the faith of a group of Christians lacking any real understanding or belief in what they judge.
Over and over again, her characters suffer spiritual crises where the answer to their suffering is faith in “Jesus Christ”. But, if you are an atheistic Jew, obviously you can’t answer a question with “Jesus Christ” and so she doesn’t. An appealing thing is that many of the crises she makes in her tale are predictable Jewish / athiest conundrums (an over-investment in worldly success b/c you reflect that God will reward you here and now as a replacement for of the hereafter cf. the tale of Job in the OT) that Christian theology has stirred past.
Essentially, the characters in the book should all be Rabbis – not Jesuits. All the Jesuits have the faith structure of Jews, not Christians. This is a reflection of the leader’s limitations as a person, and her laziness in not bothering to find out in what Christians judge and in whom they live and go and have their spiritual being – Jesus Christ.
I’d recommend this book to Jewish friends (but not the faithful ones) and athiests. I’d never recommend it as Christian literature, because it is not. Russell is just another post-modern secularist who believes that God needs to conform to her standards (so she can pick and choose the values she wants to pass on to children – note that she’s in control, not God) and her writing reflects this.
Another hilarious quote by the leader in response to the question “What’s the moral of this tale?” Her answer is ‘Maybe it’s “even if the do the best you can, you still get screwed.” Woody Allen would find this hilarious, it’s right up his alley! She then goes on to reveal what happens when your thoughts of religion don’t have faith, but are really just ‘a philosophy’. “In our world, if people judge at all, they judge that God is like, God is hearts and flowers, and that god will send you theological candy all the time. But if you read Torah, you realize that God has a lot to answer for.” Dangling prepositions aside, Russell’s total lack of comprehension of faith is clearly revealed here. Since she’s joined a “Torah debating college” and doesn’t really judge in God, or have faith in God, or a real, living relationship with God, she assumes that no one else does either. The childish thoughts of God she learned about as a young Catholic who abandoned her religion when she was 15 are clearly evidenced here, as she shows how small she understands religion, Christianity or even Judaism (assuming that you are a faithful Jew, and not an atheist masquerading as a Jew).
The odd thing is I know a name who is exactly like her – mentally stunted, a lapsed catholic atheist lacking faith or belief in God, or a relationship with God, yet was made a jew by a reformed congregation. How they let her in, I don’t know, but perhaps reformed Judaism will take people who are unbelievers as long as they seem interested? You’d reflect they’d have some minimum belief level before they let you join and aver their faith. Then again, a lot of conservative and orthodox Jews say that reformed Judaism isn’t Judaism. I guess they reflect you should really judge in God to be called a Jew?
I passed on the sequel.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
In this book a Catholic priest gets anally raped by Space Monkeys! It is worth buying for that scene alone! I heard Brad Pitt is supposed to play the priest in an upcoming movie adaptation. I am sure the role will be a “Stretch” for him! LOL
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
I establish this book to be very dissapointing. The whole premise of the tale is preposterous, many of the characters are highly annoying, and the ending is weird and disgusting. The first 100 or so pages are OK, but after that the tale goes off the deep end and really bogs down, and it’s hard building it all the way to the end.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
**SPOILERS** This book was suggested as a “must-read” to me, and so I borrowed it (I’ll admit, lacking much of an open mind). The plot itself wasn’t terrible- it is sci-fi, after all, you have to suspend some sense of reality. But, the tale is extremely slow, and it felt even slower due to the horrible character development. I was ready for the idiots to die much more quickly than they did (Ugh, the names Anne and George still make me nauseous). When you blessedly arrive at the last stretch of the book, the tale spirals into a sordid, disgusting account of what the priest endured on Rakhat (he was raped, repeatedly, and forced to live with additional assorted species that were theme to the same treatment). It’s just truly nauseating- “haunting” would be a excellent description if perhaps any additional segment of the tale had redeemed the ending, so I’m going to just go with “traumatizing”. Please do not waste your time.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5