Movie Babble & Reaction to Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow

[rusty_halo]

http://rusty-halo.com/wordpress/?p=2737

* x_los wrote Eighth Doctor/goosnake!Master. And it’s… actually kind of awesome? If you enjoy crackfic, I highly recommend it.

* I. Um. I think I want to see Twilight. I KNOW I KNOW I KNOW. But… it’s just… you know… Robert Pattinson is really really cute!

Apparently somewhere inside me there still lurks a twelve year old girl, whose Pretty!Boy!Vampire! alert has just been triggered. I will have to hide my face in shame and sneak into the theater hoping that no one I know will recognize me. Or at least claim that I’m there only to snark. :P

* I saw the new James Bond this weekend and was disappointed. I’m all for emotional continuity, but it didn’t feel like the movie really went anywhere. Nothing made a big impression, and I was mostly bored. Apparently I’m one of the three human beings on the planet who do not find Daniel Craig attractive, so without a compelling story there just wasn’t much to hold my interest. Casino Royale was so much better. :(

* I just read this book called The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell, about a Jesuit expedition to Alpha Centauri (seriously). It was brilliantly written, but I didn’t love it.

The core of the novel is an exploration of the role of god in human lives. How directly does god intervene? And if he's responsible for the good things that happen to us, isn't he also responsible for the terrible things?

This didn't work for me for the obvious reason that I'm about as atheist as you can get. And I'm not even an angry atheist who wants to read about faith and build up arguments against it; I'm a bored atheist who really cannot fathom how people can expend so much energy on something imaginary. So, y'know, god god god... bored now.

The book does have its good aspects, though. The characters are wonderful--distinct, fully realized, three-dimensional, and fascinating. But the other problem is that you know from the beginning that it's a tragedy, and that you're going to watch these people die one by one. So it's difficult to get invested, and it infuses the whole experience with a sense of dread. I didn't enjoy reading this book; I rushed through it this weekend to get it over with as quickly as possible.

It's also an exploration of the process of "first contact." These days we tend to look back very critically on the explorers of previous eras, but could we do any better, even with our supposedly "enlightened" modern perspectives? Russell's answer is a resounding no. This theme was certainly more thought-provoking and interesting to me than the religious one. The book has wonderful explorations of language, culture, anthropology, even a sort of animal-rights theme with the "predator/prey" situation (what if you made first contact with what turned out to be the food source of the dominant species?). I just wish it had been more of a focus compared to all the religious introspection.

In the afterword, Russell credits Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond series, which doesn't surprise me at all. Her lead, Emilio Sandoz, is so Lymond-influenced, right down to the migraine headaches. He's introduced the same way, as someone terribly morally compromised, who is slowly revealed to actually be near-saintly and long-suffering. He's got a similar charisma and sense of humor, he's always dropping quotations (from film instead of literature and poetry), he's delicately-boned and hot, he doesn't let on when he's in pain, he's got an abusive father who's not really his father and a feud with his brother... oh, and the author loves torturing him. Sheesh. I'm not sure what's worse, what happens to Sandoz here or what happens to Lymond in Pawn in Frankincense.

So... yeah. I liked Emilio, but not enough to like this book. And I fully admit that it's written wonderfully. It's unpredictable (it approaches dozens of cliches and then twists around and avoids them), thoughtful, interesting, well-paced... but the theme was just not interesting, and the good parts didn't make up for how upsetting the tragic parts were.

I'm debating whether to read the sequel. To be honest, I think I'm just going to re-read the Lymond Chronicles instead. They've got everything I liked in The Sparrow (complex characters, interesting moral questions, a compelling lead) plus the actual writing is better and they're just so much more enjoyable overall.

Current Mood: tired

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