Review by Matthew Scott Winslow
The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell, created a huge splash in both the speculative fiction and mainstream genres when it first appeared. It was followed up this year by a sequel, Children of God (and Russell promises no more books in the series). The Sparrow won the Tiptree Award and was a nominee for the 1998 MFA (but did not make the finalists—a shame). It deserves every award it gets.
The Sparrow tells the story of Earth's first encounter with an alien species and the problems that arise from it. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has finally borne fruit: in 2019, Jimmy Quinn, a radio astronomer in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, hears a strange music that he eventually locates as coming from Alpha Centauri, earth's nearest neighbor. Emilio Sandoz, a Jesuit friend of Quinn's, immediately begins to organize an expedition to make contact, ad majorem gloriam Dei, "for the greater glory of God." The Jesuits finally send a clandestine expedition to Rakhat in the Alpha Centauri system and there the Jesuit party makes innocent mistake after innocent mistake, ending in everyone but Sandoz dead and him disgraced in a harem. He reaches the extremes of depravity when he murders an innocent in front of a rescue party from earth. Upon arrival back on earth, a panel of Jesuits is established to find out exactly what happened. The novel takes two narrative paths to reveal what happens: one that follows the expedition and one that follows Emilio's sufferings back on earth as he comes to term with himself and the will of God (Whom he blames for all that happened).
But the strength of The Sparrow comes not from its plot (which is fairly typical in speculative fiction), but from its ability to draw the reader into the agonies of its characters, especially those of Emilio Sandoz, the sparrow of the title (cf, Matthew 10:29 for the title reference). In fact, the novel is uncharacteristic of much science fiction (and almost as much of fantasy) by the richness of its characters. Reading The Sparrow is like reading an Iris Murdoch book, but with a storyline that actually moves forward and comes to some sort of resolution. Even though the deaths of the major characters are known from the beginning due to the double-narrative structure, they are still mourned when their deaths actually occur.
Perhaps most important about this novel is that it deals with its issues in a frank and honest manner. Jane Yolen has observed that fantasy is about those things we'd be embarrassed to mention at a cocktail party: honor, courage, loyalty, faith. Unfortunately, much speculative fiction either reads as if we were at a cocktail party, thus becoming insipid and boring, not wanting really to tackle any issues, or it goes the other direction and gives the reader all the answers, spoon-feeding the reader, as it were. Russell, however, leaves questions unanswered, but frames them so well that the reader must address them in order to come to resolution about the book. As Russell says in the interview in the back of the trade paperback edition of the book, "We seem to believe that if we act in accordance with our understanding of God's will, we ought to be rewarded. But in doing so we're making a deal that God didn't sign onto." And that is where we are left: wondering what our role is in God's will and whether we are just a bit too vain in trying to understand it.
Children of God, the sequel to The Sparrow, suffers from being the second book in the series. If it were not for The Sparrow, Children of God would be considered a great book and would probably be as talked about as The Sparrow was when it was originally published. It is a well-written, tight novel that creates depths and heights of pathos in the reader that few works nowadays can achieve. It is, however, the second book and thus a comparison to The Sparrow is inevitable, and so we are not seeing as much critical response to it as The Sparrow. Still, it is a book well worth being read on its own merits, if not merely on the merit of being the sequel to an incredible book.
Children of God, like its predecessor, employs two story lines that are separated not only by locale, but also by time, and that eventually merge at story's end for an emotional climax. The book begins almost immediately after The Sparrow ends with Emilio Sandoz on the road to recovery from his horrific ordeal on Rakhat. The Society of Jesus is planning another expedition to Rakhat, this time funded by outside sources. Emilio agrees to help with the language training but refuses even to consider going back. Meanwhile, we discover that one member of the original party is still alive on Rakhat. Even after discovering this, Emilio is still adamant about not going. Eventually the Jesuits manage to get him on the spaceship, separating him from his fiancé.
Taken together, The Sparrow and Children of God form an incredible tale of the suffering and questioning of faith of a man many consider a saint. While both books are written with SF trappings, they both transcend the genre to explore the details and workings of faith.
An edited version (ok, ok, I get verbose at times) of this review appeared in Mythprint, July 1998, 35:7, 196.
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