Theodicy

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Father Sandoz, the sole survivor of a Jesuit mission to an alien planet, grapples with his faith as he reluctantly confesses the disastrous consequences of meeting "God's other children."*

This is a book you have to allow to sink into your brain and heart, where it will certainly take root. It is a character study of Father Sandoz and his closest friends as well as a chilling first contact story of the impossibility of entering a truly foreign culture without suffering from dangerous ignorance and misunderstanding.

I admit to feeling impatient with Sandoz as he mopes and avoids telling his story (which is recounted VERY slowly in parallel flashback chapters, told in third person), but by the revelations at the end I was completely on his side - the horrors he suffered are every bit as soul-shattering as his reticence suggests.

Russell sees no conflict between religion and science, and for this I am profoundly grateful: her characters encompass a range of belief (from priests to atheists), but each person is educated, intelligent, and articulate. The Jesuit mission on Rakhat is to learn, not to proselytize, and the portrayal of the priests is human and sympathetic.

There are no other books quite like this one, but science fiction does have more than its fair share of thoughtful books about first contact by brilliant writers: Contact by Carl Sagan, China Mieville's Embassytown, A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge, The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin...I could go on.

SPOILER(ISH)

P.S. There are traces of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine here, too, for anyone who remembers the Eloi and the terrifying Morlocks.

* This annotation was a joint effort by students, created in class for "Adult Reader's Services" taught by Nancy Pearl (Spring 2013).

East of the Sun, West of the Moon

East by Edith Pattou
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When a white bear offers to help her family if she will come away with him, Rose finds herself traveling farther than she ever expected to go - all the way to a cold place east of the sun and west of the moon.

This is a retelling of the Norwegian fairy tale "East of the Sun and West of the Moon." Rose's journey to the enchanted castle and then to the frozen north retains the fairy-tale simplicity and strangeness of the original while being grounded in the real world of 16th-century Norway. I love polar journeys, and Rose's travels in Gronland with the Inuit woman Malmo was my favorite part (and a scaled-down version of the journey in the science fiction novel The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin).

There are plenty of YA fairy tale retellings to choose from, and authors like Donna Jo Napoli and Marissa Meyer are easy to find and will satisfy anyone seeking readalikes for East.

I would also encourage anyone who enjoys the folk tale "East of the Sun and West of the Moon" to check out one of C.S. Lewis's less-known works, Till We Have Faces, which is a beautiful, moving retelling of Psyche and Cupid.