Over at The Book Book, I’ve posted my recent review. This time around, the subject is Mary Doria Russell’s novel The Sparrow, first published in 1996.

Russell seems one of those novelists in the enviable position of writing whatever she wants, irrespective of genre. The Sparrow (and its 1998 sequel, Children of God) are frank science fiction. Since then, she has to my knowledge written no science fiction at all. Instead, she’s written a novel about Jews in World War II-era Italy; one about an unlikely participant in the 1921 Cairo Peace Conference; and, most recently, a Western/mystery about Doc Holliday. I mention this because (among other implications) it shows her to have a wide-ranging mind and an awareness of the importance of history — even in the writing of fiction.

In bare-bones form, The Sparrow‘s plot might be described thusly:

• We meet aliens.
• Some very pleasant and some very unpleasant things happen.

But there’s nothing bare-bones about the book. It’s well-researched. It’s well-written. It tugs in multiple directions at once — sympathy, laughter, wonder, horror. It provokes thought as well as sensation. When you turn the last page you may think (as I did): Damn. Now that was a read! It won numerous awards, and sold — continues to sell — quite well.

Yet somehow I’d managed to get through the last 15 years without ever hearing of it, or Russell,until Marta mentioned it and its sequel in an offhand comment back in January (with intriguing follow-up comments both from her and from a/b). Weird.

Anyhow, it’s great. Put aside any qualms you might harbor about science fiction or, for that matter, about theology. Brace yourself for confronting some of those very unpleasant things. And dive in.