Friday's Book Review

My newspaper kids are doing a feature on the English department for the next issue. They asked each of us about our favorite book and then took a picture of each teacher with his/her favorite book.

Because I'm on maternity leave, I had to submit my own picture.

Here it is!

And here is the one I took that caught Elliott jumping from the table to couch in the background. He made it, by the way. 

The book I am holding is "The Sparrow" by Mary Doria Russell. And it is one of my favorite books...but it may currently hold the position for my favorite book of this exact moment. (BOLD statement, I know.)

Taking this picture prompted me to start a weekly book review on this blog. Every Friday I'll write about a book. Maybe it will be a book I read and loved. Maybe it will be a book I HATED. I know I slowed down blogging on the book blog, but I can't abandon blogging about books entirely. 

We're going to start with "The Sparrow" for two reasons. 1) I do love this book. Love. 2) I recently recommended this book to a friend and she abandoned it stating that she couldn't get into it and didn't care for the characters and doesn't like aliens. Since I did get into it, loved the characters, and am totally into aliens, I feel compelled to defend my choice for this book landing on my favorite list. 

Let's start with the blurb:

"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."

This book made me week. Not cry -- not choke up. Weep. Break down and tug my legs up into my body and sob uncontrollably. You have to finish the story to put all the pieces of this book together -- which is why I don't recommend abandoning it. It's slow going for the first half, but the second half is so rewarding.

As I wrote before when I named this book my favorite book of 2009: This book is about God -- it's about faith -- it's about children -- it's about the ethics of invading unknown lans (socially, ecologically, spiritually); it's about the marriage of science and religion. And it's about love.

There is more humanity in this book than almost all of the other books I own. It's also one of those rare books that delivers for the reader a full experience. This book is nearly perfect. I said nearly. It's suspenseful, it's thoughtful, it's well balanced between flashbacks and the present (a technique I like, and use in my own writing, despite the fact that every writing book tells you not to do it...and to those people I say: Read this book and then try to tell me it's not an effective narrative tool), the characters are real and engaging -- especially Emilio. 

Don't read this book unless you're wiling to invest yourself into it emotionally. And hopefully you'll be open to the religious and scientific implications of a "first contact" book. (Sagan's "Contact" might be similar only because they both deal with science, contact with extraterrestrial life, and religion. But "The Sparrow" is so much better and bigger than Sagan's story.) Along the way, I hope the book captivates you and makes you think. I'm pretty sure it will make you cry.