Book Review: The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
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In the year 2019, a group of Jesuit priests, doctors, and scientists go to the planet Rakhat to learn about the life and language of its aliens. Forty years later, only one of the priests, Father Sandoz, returns to Earth, his faith and body completely shattered. This may be one of my favorite books this year. Not only is the mystery of what happened on Rakhat super intriguing (and the reveal absolutely devastating), but the ominous irony throughout the trip and Sandoz’s recovery makes it a tense and darkly funny page turner. I like the way Mary Doria Russell, who converted to Judaism three years before this book was published, writes about God and fate from the perspectives of her Jewish, atheist, Catholic, and alien characters. While they all wrestle with God one way or another, I really like how Jewish theology shows up across the conversations of the characters, one of whom is a proud Sephardic Jew. The culture and linguistics of the aliens are also really well thought out. Russell’s background in anthropology shines here, as she shows how exactly language and biology shape perception, and vice versa, to develop the strange world of Rakhat. All that said, the book does drag in some places, and the characters can come off a bit corny at times. But for me this still works because both the Rakhat crew and the Jesuits on Earth are forced to question whether faith is delusion, desperation, or something else entirely, and in the end we are all left wondering. In this cold, silent, beautiful universe, is the joke on us after all?
