Catholic Fiction

Reviewed by Debra Murphy

How’s this for a “high-concept” premise for a bestselling sci-fi novel: The Jesuits in outer space. While the scenario may sound at first a mite odd—think First Contact meets Blackrobe—on second thought the notion is so obvious that one wonders why no one has thought of it before. (Actually, James Blish apparently used the idea in a 1958 short story.) Either way, the entire history of the Jesuit order would suggest that Jesuits would be among the first, certainly among the first missionaries, to attempt contact with intelligent aliens, were any such ever discovered. This intriguing concept, coupled with the fact that The Sparrow, first published in 1996. has already become something of a sci-fi “classic”, induced me to think that the book would be worth a go.

Well, it is worth a go, easily one of the better sci-fi novels I have read in some time. The Sparrow is a story about a “first contact” that goes horribly awry, not because of any evil or ill-will among the Jesuit party, whose mission is far more scientific than missionary, but simply because of the inevitable clash that occurs between two enormously different cultures, neither of which can possibly understand the other in time to prevent catastrophe. At the same time, however, perhaps because of my unusually high expectations, the book eventually proved something of a disappointment to me. The novel is compelling, to be sure; the writing suspenseful and thoughtful; but in the end, the story, especially the wimpy dénouement, did not fulfill the expectations that the book’s zinger of a an opening (read it here) built in me.

I can’t help but think that part of the frustration I felt upon reading the last page was due to the fact that the author, a cradle Catholic who turned atheist at 16, then converted to Judaism as an adult, has a great deal of intellectual respect for the Jesuits, but no interior experience, at least in any mature sense, of Catholic faith. Ergo, her Jesuit portrayals struck me as well-meaning but superficial, and her theological musings rather cool and abstract. There is no sense of Christ in this tale, only “God” in what seems to me a very distant, theoretical sense. Even if one chalks up the inner turmoil of the protagonist to a crisis of faith, I can’t think that any Jesuit would think of it in Christ-less terms Russell describes.

And yes, this book is, ultimately, about a crisis of faith, brought about by an inability to square God’s providence (even for a “sparrow falling to the ground”) with the experience of great evil and suffering. In fact, I’d go so far as to describe The Sparrow, given the author’s Jewish faith, as a “post-Holocaust” novel. It’s certainly about how one deals with belief (often by abandoning it) in the face of horrifying circumstances.

The novel also left me hanging terribly in terms of what such a “First Contact” between Jesuits and alien “natives” would ultimately conjure in terms of cultural change on the planet in question. Apparently Russell’s sequel, Children of God, picks up that thread, so perhaps I will get more satisfaction from the story upon reading that.

In the end, however, both in terms of story and theme, I couldn’t help but be reminded, rather too frequently, of another Jesuits-in-a-foreign-culture novel, Shusaku Endo’s masterpiece Silence. The Sparrow, alas, must lose in such a comparison.