The Sparrow
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 discovered planet to contact a totally unknown species, whom would you choose? How about four Jesuit priests, a young astronomer, a physician, her engineer husband, and a child prostitute-turned-computer-expert? That's who Mary Doria Russell sends in her new novel, The Sparrow. This motley combination of agnostics, true believers, and misfits becomes the first to explore the Alpha Centuri world of Rakhat with both enlightening and disastrous results. . . . Vivid 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 always this way, as we learn through flashbacks that tell the story of the ill-fated trip. . . . The Sparrow tackles a difficult subject with grace and intelligence."
--San Francisco Chronicle
"SMOOTH STORYTELLING AND GORGEOUS CHARACTERIZATION . . . Important novels leave 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 CLUB
Product Details
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.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 Earth in 2059, he will try to explain what went wrong... Words like "provocative" and "compelling" will come to mind as you read this shocking novel about first contact with a race that creates music akin to both poetry and prayer.
From Publishers Weekly
An enigma wrapped inside a mystery sets up expectations that prove difficult to fulfill in Russell's first novel, which is about first contact with an extraterrestrial civilization. The enigma is Father Emilio Sandoz, a Jesuit linguist whose messianic virtues hide his occasional doubt about his calling. The mystery is the climactic turn of events that has left him the sole survivor of a secret Jesuit expedition to the planet Rakhat and, upon his return, made him a disgrace to his faith. Suspense escalates as the narrative ping-pongs between the years 2016, when Sandoz begins assembling the team that first detects signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life, and 2060, when a Vatican inquest is convened to coax an explanation from the physically mutilated and emotionally devastated priest. A vibrant cast of characters who come to life through their intense scientific and philosophical debates help distract attention from the space-opera elements necessary to get them off the Earth. Russell brings her training as a paleoanthropologist to bear on descriptions of the Runa and Jana'ata, the two races on Rakhat whose differences are misunderstood by the Earthlings, but the aliens never come across as more than variations of primitive earthly cultures. The final revelation of the tragic human mistake that ends in Sandoz's degradation isn't the event for which readers have been set up. Much like the worlds it juxtaposes, this novel seems composed of two stories that fail to come together. BOMC, QPB and One Spirit Book Club selections.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
When readers meet Father Emilio Sandoz, he's a wreck, inside and out. His hands are maimed, his body bruised; he suffers from scurvy, anemia, and spiritual devastation. The year is 2059. Although Jesuit missionaries thrive on suffering, something particularly dire has happened to this skilled linguist. Four decades earlier, he proposed an expedition to discover the sentient beings whose strange yet beautiful music had been detected by radio telescope. As the only survivor of this spiritual odyssey to Alpha Centauri (the star system four light years from Earth), Sandoz was found dazed and filled with terror by rescuers who inferred that he had resorted to prostitution to stay alive. Returned to the Jesuit Order, Sandoz is forced to face truths about the godless alien societies on the planet Rakhat that he and his colleagues grew to know, love, and perish at the claws of. Miscommunications, misplaced trust, and tiny mistakes led to their downfall. The dense prose in this complex tale may at first seem off-putting, but hang on for the ride; it's riveting! Russell's first novel is also a Book-of-the-Month Club selection. Jennifer Henderson
Customer Reviews
The Sparrow: Sci-Fi, Catholicism, and Fantasy
This book was a slow start, but the premise kept me going, and then I couldn't put it down. The author's lavish and detailed descriptions greatly enhanced the story line. I have begun reading the sequal, Children of God. I gave The Sparrow only 4 stars because of the difficulty I had getting going on the book.
WWJD
What would Jesuits Do - if sent to pioneer space? Here is the answer, in an era-claiming achievement in science fiction. Not since the Dune trilogy have I been so taken in,immersed and rattled by a piece of fiction.
Emotionally Engaging and genuinely thought provoking...
I've struggling with reading The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell because it starts with a tragedy and goes backwards, so as I read more and more about the characters and grew to like and admire them more and more, I knew bad things were coming. I kept lingering at the good spots, unwilling to go forward.
In the book we discover music from another planet, not only conclusive evidence of sentient life, but also of some technological progress - at the very least they have radios. So while the UN and everyone else argues over what to do, the Jesuits at the Vatican buy a mining asteroid (it's set 20 or so years in the future, the book is now 10 years old, but I think it should still be read as '20 years from today' to allow for the technological advances that she needs) and put together a mission of 8 people to get there first, including 4 Jesuit priests.
But the book starts at the end - one priest has returned under the most suspect of circumstances, and the rest of the party is dead... What happened? And finding out what happened is the rest of the book.
Very nicely written, with lots of thought and care. There are 4 Jesuits and the Vatican is involved, so there's religion here, but really warmly and beautifully portrayed. I struggled with getting into it not because it was bad, but because it was good. I didn't necessarily want to know what happened to these fine folk... but I was sitting in a New York cafe as I read the denouement and softly crying there... Really moving. She wrote a sequel and I'm going to read that too. Emotionally engaging and genuinely thought provoking, like all the best science fiction should be.
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