Children of God - Mary Doria Russell

Children of God (Mary Doria Russell, 1998)

I was excited to learn The Sparrow had a sequel, though it's not so much a sequel as a direct narrative continuation. It starts where the first novel leaves off, and early on I was just as entranced as I had been by The Sparrow. However, where The Sparrow is powerfully focused, Children of God suffers from multiple personality disorder. The scattershot plot and jumpy timeline prevent a high level of character development, and the characters we have left over from The Sparrow change almost beyond recognition.

I do think it's worth a read if you've read The Sparrow, so I won't spoil any of the better parts, but I will say this: the book lost me when Sandoz withdraws from the priesthood and starts a romance. To me, that seems completely out of character, and it gives the lie to the otherwise debilitating side effects of his interplanetary experience, which, though they were letting up at the end of The Sparrow, persist throughout Children of God to the point of artificiality. Sure, bad things happened to the guy, but he doesn't have a monopoly on suffering by any means.

The plot starts out promising. The Jesuits are preparing to send a second mission to the planet Rakhat, and they want Emilio to teach the languages to the new group, secretly hoping he will consent to return with them. Meanwhile on Rakhat, the legacy of the first mission results in serious changes to the structure of the society. Traveling at the speed of light, the second mission will arrive on a Rakhat that is thirty-five years removed from Emilio's departure, and those thirty-five years play out in ways the first mission could never have foreseen.

I think I would have enjoyed the book more if it had a clear direction. The problem is, it's about too many things: loneliness, regret, violence, political upheaval, revolution, survival, destruction of one culture, evolution of another. Even autism, genetics, and music play significant roles in the narrative, not to mention a whole host of new characters we barely have time to meet. With so many disparate and competing elements, it's more a catalog of events than a story. Still, it is well-written, and I did enjoy it for the most part, despite the character dissonance mentioned earlier.

Arbitrary rating: 3.5 out of 5 apostate Jesuits

Rock Bottom - Robert Wyatt

Rock Bottom (Robert Wyatt, 1974)

1. Sea Song - 6:31

2. A Last Straw - 5:46

3. Little Red Riding Hood Hit the Road - 7:40

4. Alifib - 6:55
5. Alife - 6:31
6. Little Red Robin Hood Hit the Road - 6:08

After a fall from a window left former Soft Machine/Matching Mole drummer Robert Wyatt paralyzed from the waist down, his career as a rock drummer was ended, but his songwriting muse reasserted itself. For the set of songs that would form Rock Bottom, he trimmed back musical excess, creating simple yet moving songs with oblique, charming melodies, impressionistic lyrics, and a few touches of the outré.

The songs flow together nicely. “Sea Song” is an ode to girlfriend Alfreda Benge (“Your lunacy fits nicely with my own”) sung over warm synthesizer and haunting Mellotron voices. It ends with a trademark Wyatt scat, yet the performance is harrowing, almost like he's crying forth emotions that can't be put into words, instead of just singing “la-la”s. “A Last Straw” features more straightforward lyrics and a climbing chord progression, building slowly to the Latin rhythms of “Little Red Riding Hood Hit the Road,” complete with horn section. The singing is hard-core British, though, including an “Oh blimey!” and even a monologue by Scottish poet/comic Ivor Cutler about hedgehogs and sleeping in traffic. The words are delightfully insane, calling up the image of someone trying to hang onto the tattered shreds of a mind, seeking solace in silliness in the face of despair.

The second half starts with “Alifib,” the spare instrumental arrangements shrouding a solitary vocal, singing mostly nonsense syllables to a melancholic yet classical melody. The nonsense is strangely moving, especially after repeated listens: “Nit not nit, nit no not / Nit nit folly bololey / Alifi my larder / Alifi my larder / I can't forsake you / or forsqueak you / Alifi my larder / Alifi my larder.” It transitions smoothly to “Alife,” which has the same lyrics, only spoken in fitful starts over some sort of brittle keyboard setting. The sequence ends in Alfreda's spoken word response, which is a delightful combination of reproof and coddling: “I'm not your larder / jammy jars and mustard / I'm not your dinner / you soppy old custard. / And what's a bololey / when it's a folly? / I'm not your larder / you dear little dolly.”

The final track starts as a fairly traditional rock song, with some searing lead guitar and harmony vocals. The focus of the lyrics finally turns outward to the “garden of England,” and there is a hint that the tattered mind is collecting itself and looking around again. It's just for the first half, though, as Ivor Cutler reprises his earlier role and expands the monologue to the heights of a Brit's quiet desperation, rolling his r's and over-pronouncing like a true Shakespearean:

I fight with the handle of my little brown broom
I pull out the wires of the telephone
I hurt in the head and I hurt in the acting bone
Now I smash up the telly with remains of the broken phone
I fighting for the crust of the little brown loaf
I want it I want it I want it give it to me
I give it you back when I finish the lunchtea.

For me, the lyrics make this album. The music is pleasant enough, but it's true purpose is to provide a framework for the lyrical play. Admittedly, the lyrics are bizarre, disjointed, and rambling, but they provide a moving portrait of a man trying to hold on to humor and melody after literally hitting rock bottom.

Arbitrary rating: 5 out of 5 crusts of the little brown loaf

The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell

The Sparrow (Mary Doria Russell, 1997)

Extra-terrestrial radio messages have been received on Earth, and the technology to travel to the source exists. Whom do we send? While the governments of the world debate, the Jesuits assemble a team of four priests and four laypeople, sending them into the unknown to know God's other children.

Thirty years later, Emilio Sandoz, the lone survivor, arrives back at Earth in disgrace, accused of murder, prostitution, and disrupting the fabric of the alien civilization on the planet Rakhat.

The Sparrow, the first novel by Mary Doria Russell, is a barn burner of a book. After you're hooked, it's hard to put down. Told in a back-and-forth style, it traces the history of the ill-fated mission, the lives of the people involved, and the attempted rehabilitation and debriefing of Sandoz by the Society of Jesus, who want to know the facts behind the accusations. As pure science fiction, it succeeds wildly, and the characters are distinct, complex, and living. But the book doesn't just tell a good story. It presents a new view of an old problem: if God is real, why does he allow unspeakable evil?

Russell grew up Catholic and converted to Judaism, so she brings a very interesting perspective to the question. As with many powerful works of literature, she doesn't answer the question outright, she just lets it play out in the lives of her characters. It unfolds with the urgency of a thriller and the inevitability of the best tragic plays. Yet it isn't a sad book; rather, it is full of the vibrancy of adventure and life lived to the fullest. The characters are so real that their experience becomes our own, which makes the moral issue all the more immediate.

Tied to the question of evil is a powerful study of good intentions. The team does everything right when it comes into contact with the natives of Rakhat, and for a long time they enjoy a mutually instructive harmony. Yet a fundamental difference in cultures allows innocent actions to trigger catastrophic results. As Emilio and his therapists/interrogators wrestle with the questions and the consequences, we are carried along with them into the darker regions of human experience before emerging on the other side.

Arbitrary rating: 5 out of 5 double-irised eyes