The Sparrow

by Mary Doria Russell

  Q: What’s the hardest thing about using two narrative lines to tell a story?

  A: Pacing. You have to stop and think, Who does the reader want to be with now? Some time ago I realized the books that kept me turning pages were the ones that had two or more story lines. It’s a structure I admired as a reader. As a writer, having two story lines proved to be of great value. When I played out my imagination in one story line I could take a break from it and turn to the other with fresh enthusiasm. The tricky part is in introducing two separate sets of characters in the first one hundred pages. There’s a lot of setup that goes into it and you have to keep readers interested while developing the new characters.

  Q: What sort of writing routine do you have?

  A: I sit down in the morning when my husband’s at work and my son’s at school, and I spend seven hours in front of the computer. My working method is to make yardage every day. I don’t expect to throw a long bomb each time I sit down to write. Occasionally a whole chapter does come all at once but that’s the exception rather than the rule. The main thing to remember is that writing happens by doing the writing.

  Q: Are any of your characters based on real people?

  A: Some of them are. Anne and George share a biography with my husband and me, within certain limitations. Anne was willing to go to another planet and I won’t even go camping. Nevertheless, she speaks fairly clearly in my voice. I used my brother’s voice for John Candotti. There’s a kind of "Chicago attitude" in his character that came from my brother. There were also real people who gave me the voice of D.W. One of them is a Texas congressman and the other a real-life New Orleans provincial. Emilio is his own person. I know nobody like him. I’m not sure I could be friends with a person like that. He’s too intense in a lot of ways. Sofia is also her own person.

  Q: Why did you use the Jesuits as main characters and how did you gain such insight into their world?

  A: The reason for using the Jesuits was simple logic. If we were to receive incontrovertible evidence of an extraterrestrial culture that could be reached in a human lifespan, who would go? I thought of the Jesuits because they have a long history of first contact with cultures other than their own. The problem was I knew no Jesuits at the time I wrote this. And you can’t just knock on a Jesuits door and say "I’m writing a first novel about Jesuits in space. Tell me your intimate thoughts about being a priest." What I did have, however, was access to dozens and dozens of autobiographies written by priests and ex-priests during the last thirty years. Since Vatican II, 100,000 priests have left the active priesthood. Many priests have written autobiographies in which they discuss the motives that brought them to the life, the satisfactions and frustrations of the priesthood, why they decided to leave it behind, or why they remained true to the vocation.

  Q: One reviewer calls this "a parable about faith—the search for God, in others as well as Out There." Another says it’s about "the problem of evil and how it may stand in the path of a person’s deepest need to believe." How do you describe the themes in this book?

  A: The central theme is an exploration of the risks and beauties of religious faith, If there isn’t a God, then Emilio Sandoz is all alone. And yet he’s terrified of the God he thinks he has discovered. But the story also revolves around the theme of family. One of the things I noticed after the story was finished was that all the main characters are childless, and yet they create a family for themselves, They relate to one another as son and daughter, brother and sister, uncle and aunt, grandparent and grandchild. It seems to me that this kind of spiritual kinship is tremendously important to all the people in this book. And the fact that they don’t have close genetic kin—they have no children to leave on Earth— gives them a kind of wistful freedom. Anne and George would have made terrific parents but they’re childless. Emilio, Jimmy, and Sofia become their surrogate kids. Those ties—that spiritual tension—was every bit as strong and resilient as genetic ties—perhaps even stronger.

  Q: Why did The Sparrow have to end the way it did?

  A: Because I needed to ask questions in their starkest terms. What happens to Emilio Sandoz is a holocaust writ small. He survives, but loses everyone. Now he has to live in its aftermath.

  Q: What’s the moral of this story?

  A: Maybe it’s "Even if you do the best you can, you still get screwed." 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. Emilio has kept his end of a bargain that he made with God, and he feels betrayed. He believes he has been seduced and raped by God, that he’s been used against his will for God’s own purpose. And I guess that’s partly what I’m doing with this book. I winted to look at that aspect of theology. In our world, if people believe at all, they believe that God is love, God is hearts and flowers, and that God will send you theological candy all the time. But if you read Torah, you realize that God has a lot to answer for. God is a complex personality. I wanted to explore that complexity and that moral ambiguity. God gives us rules but those are rules for us, not for God.

  Q: What’s your next project?

  A: I’m working on a sequel to The Sparrow titled Children of God. Emilio Sandoz goes back to Rakhat, but only because he has no choice. God is not done with him yet.

  Q: What has been the toughest thing about writing the sequel?

  A: The fact that there are so many people who are passionate about the original characters and care so much about the issues. Writing a sequel has been a real high-wire act. I’ve got to be able to reproduce those elements of the first book that people responded to strongly but I don’t want to repeat myself. I have to break new ground. I hope that I have done that but it has not been an easy trick to pull off. What the second book does is reverse the story’s emphasis—two thirds of the action takes place on Rakhat. and one third on Earth. Children of God explores what happens to the people on Rakhat because Emilio Sandoz was there. There are children born because of him, and children are always revolutionary. Things that we would put up with ourselves can become intolerable when we see our children forced to face the same circumstances.

  Q: What do you want readers to get out of this book?

  A: That you can’t know the answer to questions of faith but that the questions are worth asking and worth thinking about deeply.

  Reading Group Questions and Topics for Discussion

  1. How do faith, love, and the role of God in the world drive the plot of this story? One reviewer characterized this book as "a parable about faith— the search for God, in others as well as Out There." Do you agree? If so, why?

  2. This story takes place from the years 2019 to 2060. The United States is no longer the predominant world power, having lost two trade wars with Japan, which is now supreme in both space and on Earth. Poverty is rampant. Indentured. servitude is once more a common practice, and "future brokers" mine ghettos for promising children to educate in return for a large chunk of their lifetime income. What kinds of changes do you think will occur by the twenty-first century— with governments, technology, society, and so on? Do you think America will lose its predominant status in the world?

  3. Do you think it likely that we will make contact with extraterrestrials at some time in the future? What will the implications of such an event be? We’ve always viewed Earth, and human beings, as the center of the universe. Will that still be the case if we discover alien life forms? How will such a discovery change theology? Does God love us best? Will such a discovery confirm the existence of God or cause us to question his existence at all?

  4. If, sometime within the next century, we hear radio signals from a solar system less than a dozen light years away from our own, do you think humankind would mount an expedition to visit that place? Who do you think might lead such an expedition? If you had to send a group of people to a newly discovered planet to contact a totally unknown species, whom would you choose? Is the trip to Rakhat a sci
entific mission or a religious one?

  5. The Sparrow tells a story by interweaving two time periods— after the mission, to Rakhat and before. Do you think this makes the story more interesting and easier to follow or more difficult to follow? How does this story differ from other stories you have read?

  6. Why do you think Sandoz resists telling the story of what happened on Rakhat?

  7. A basic premise of this story is an evaluation of the harm that results from the explorer’s inability to assess a culture from the threshold of exploration. Do you see any parallels between the voyage of the eight explorers on the Rakhat mission and the voyages of other explorers from past history—Columbus, Magellan, Cortez, and others— who inaccurately assessed the cultures they discovered?

  8. Despite currently popular revisionism, many historians view the early discoverers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries not as imperialists or colonists but as intellectual idealists burning to know what God’s plan had hidden from them. Do you agree? Does this story make you reconsider the motives of those early explorers?

  9. One of the mainstays of the Star Trek universe is the "prime directive" which mandates the avoidance of interference in alien cultures at all costs. Would the "prime directive" have changed the outcome of events on Rakhat?

  10. In an interview, the author said, "I wanted readers to look philosophically at the idea that you can be seduced by the notion that God is leading you and that your actions have his approval." What do you think she means by that? In what way was Emilio Sandoz seduced by this notion?

  11. The discoverers of Rakhat seem to be connected by circumstances too odd to be explained by anything but a manifestation of God’s will. Do you think it was God’s will that led to the discovery of and mission to Rakhat, as Sandoz initially believes? If that’s the case, how could God let the terrible aftermath happen?

  12. How is Emitio Sandoz’s faith tested on Rakhat? One reviewer suggests that in his utter humiliation and in the annihilation of his spirit, Sandoz is reborn in faith. Do you agree? Consider Sandoz’s dilemma on Chapter 32 - NAPLES: AUGUST 2060. Did God lead the explorers to Rakhat—step by step—or was Sandoz responsible for what happened? If God was responsible for bringing the explorers to Rakhat, does that mean that God is vicious?

  13. One reviewer wrote, "It is neither celibacy, faith, exotics goods, nor (as Sandoz bitterly asserts) the introduction, of one of humanity’s oldest inventions that leads to the crisis between humans and aliens. The humans get into trouble because they fail to understand how Rakhat society controls reproduction. In shott, they fail because they fail to put themselves into the aliens’ shoes." Do you agree? If so, why? If not, why not?

  14. Is confession good for the soul? Do you think Emilio Sandoz will ultimately recover—both as a man and as a priest—from his ordeal?

  15. Why do you think it’s so important to Emilio to stand by his vow of celibacy when he so obviously loves Sofia Mendez?

  16. The Jesuits saw so many of their fellows martyred all over the world throughout history. Why aren’t they more sympathetic in dealing with Sandoz—a man victimized by his faith?

  17. What is this story about? Is it a story about coming face-to-face with a sentient race that is so alien as to be incomprehensible, or about putting up a mirror to our own inner selves?

  Excerpts from reviews of Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow

  "It is science fiction brought back to the project with which it began in the hands of a writer like Jules Verne: the necessity of wonder, the hope for moral rectitude, and the possibility of belief."

  —America

  "Russell’s debut novel … focuses on her characters, and it is here that the work truly shines. An entertaining infusion of humor keeps the book from becoming too dark, although some of the characters are so clever that they sometimes seem contrived. Readers who dislike an emphasis on moral dilemmas or spiritual quests may be turned off, but those who enjoy science fiction because it can create these things are in for a real treat."

  —Science Fiction Weekly

  "The Sparrow tackles a difficult subject with grace and intelligence."

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  "The Sparrow is an incredible novel, for one reason. Though it is set in the early twenty-first century, it is not written like most science fiction. Russell’s novel is driven by her characters, by their complex relationships and inner conflicts, not by aliens or technology,"

  —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

  "It is rare to find a book about interplanetary exploration that has this much insight into human nature and foresight into a possible future.

  —San Antonio Express News

  "Two narratives—the mission to the planet and its aftermath four decades later—interweave to create a suspenseful tate."

  —The Seattle Times

  "By alternating chapters that dramatize Sandoz’s tough-love interrogation with flashbacks to the mission’s genesis, flowering, and tragic collapse, The Sparrow casts a strange, unsettling emotional spell, bouncing readers from scenes of black despair to ones of wild euphoria, from the bracing simplicity of pure adventure to the complicated tangles of nonhuman culture and politics…. The smooth storytelling and gorgeous characterization can’t be faulted."

  —Entertainment Weekly

  Please read on for a preview of Mary Doria Russell’s latest novel

  A THREAD OF GRACE

  available wherever books are sold

  SAINTE-GISÈLE ON THE VESUBIE RIVER SOUTHEASTERN FRANCE

  WEST OF THE Maritime Alps, beyond what used to be the French border, soldiers of the Italian Fourth Army loiter on a street corner, pausing in their discussion of the armistice to watch a girl dash past. Sharing a match, they bend their heads over army-issue Milites and raise eyes narrowed by smoke. "Another year, and Diobon!" a Veronese private remarks. "That one’s going to be trouble."

  The others grunt agreement. The Italian Fourth has occupied this territory only since the end of ’42, but that’s been time enough to see her flower. "The features are still a bit too large for the face," a Florentine sergeant says appraisingly, "but the eyes are quite good, and she’ll grow into those ears."

  "Minchia!" a Sicilian swears. "If she was my sister, Papa would marry her off today."

  "To keep you from getting your hands on her?" a Roman corporal asks, smoothly ducking the Sicilian’s punch.

  Flushed with late-summer heat and the importance of her news, Claudette Blum is fourteen, and splendidly unaware of her effect on others. Boys and girls her own age cringe at her infantile exuberance as she pushes and skips and dodges through the crowds that jam the streets of this mountain resort. Old men grumble darkly in German, French, Polish, Yiddish. Their elderly wives shake fingers. Those who could be her parents shake their heads, wondering when that gawky, thoughtless child will settle down. Only the kindest bless her heedless elation. They felt it themselves, briefly, when they heard the news. The Axis has begun to crumble.

  They are all Jews—in the cafés and shops, the parks and pissoirs and bus stops of Sainte-Gisèle-Vesubie. The whole of Italian-occupied southern France is awash with Jews: the latest in the flood of refugees who’ve poured into Mussolini’s fragile empire since the early thirties. Word’s gone out, in whispers, and in letters passed from hand to Jewish hand. Italians don’t hate us. The soldiers are decent men. You can walk openly in the streets, live like a human being! You’re safe, if you can get behind Italian lines.

  A few months ago, those lines were still expanding. When the Fourth rushed across the border, Police Commissioner Guido Lospinoso arrived from Rome with orders to take care of the Jews in Italy’s French territory. Lospinoso did precisely that, commandeering hotels, filling tourist chalets and villas with refugees from across the continent. He encouraged the Hebrews to organize refectories and synagogues, schools for their children, nursing homes for their elderly and disabled. And then? Commissioner Lospinoso left France. He is, to this day, "on holiday,
" and therefore unavailable to countermand his orders placing all Jews under the protection of Italy’s elite military police. Specially selected for imposing size and commanding presence, the carabinieri are, to a man, disinclined to be intimidated by their French or German counterparts.

  When Vichy authorities wave Gestapo orders for the removal of undesirables, the carabinieri shrug diplomatically, all ersatz sympathy and counterfeit regret. Artistically inefficient, they shuffle papers and announce that another permit, or a letter from Rome, or some new stamp is required before they can process such a request, and no one has been deported. But now—

  Claudette Blum gathers one last burst of energy and sprints down a hotel hallway, schoolgirl socks bunched under her heels. "Papa!" she cries, flinging open the door. "General Eisenhower was on Radio London! Italy has surrendered!"

  She waits, breathless, for a whoop of joy, for her father to embrace her—perhaps even to weep with happiness. "Thank God you’re back" is all he says. The room is dotted by small piles of clothing. Two valises lay open on two narrow beds. He lifts a pair of his own shoes. "See if these fit."

  Deflated, she takes the worn black oxfords. "Papa, you never listen to me! Italy surrendered!"

  "I heard." He picks up a shirt, puts it down again. "One to wear, one to wash. If those shoes are too big, put on extra socks—. Wait! Go downstairs first. Borrow trousers from Duno."

  "Trousers from Duno? I wouldn’t ask him for the time of day! Why are you packing?"

  "I blame myself! Your mother wouldn’t tolerate this arguing!" her father mutters, reducing socks and underwear to tiny bundles. "Do as you’re told, Claudette! We have three, maybe four hours!"