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Right, I'm just going to say it. It's Sunday night, and if anyone disagrees they'll hopefully only reply in a few hours time after the demons have settled down and my invisible friend, Adrian (the inadvertently violent gibbon) has stopped repeating everything I'm saying ("...everything I'm saying...") while tousling my hair like I'm the "baby brother" in this relationship and the voices that aren't in my head (they're in my fingers, and my left big toe) are no longer telling me to kill you all with bananas, and I will be normal and it will be Monday and I can apologise for my behaviour, so I'll just say...
"The Sparrow" is an interesting if slightly plain bit of "first contact" scifi covering for the fact that it's a "woe is me" tract for "like, you know, whatever"-type god-bothering teenagers who've read way too much (and yet not enough) Gerard Manley Hopkins and think "religion" means "Christianity [preferably RC like me, or at least like the RC I was born into] with a nod to Judaism" and that losing god is a worse fate that hating Him. It shows atheism only as a harmless, unthinking aside that naturally gets along with children really well, and tortures sexuality and love in twists of soap-opera-like confusion and angst and restraint (and heaven forbid "aberrant" sexuality be portrayed in anyone or in any way that is not violent, loathsome or "nobly" abstaining).
Fortunately for those who loved it, the author continued the themes through "Children of God", only progressing the plot (though, admittedly in the aforementioned "interesting" manner).
I read them through. I felt what I should feel. I can admire the author (and, at this point, I will cede that I can never put my own desired themes, yet alone plot, down on paper as well as her), but I still think that if "The Sparrow" changed your life, read something else and change it back. As someone once said, (or maybe it was that road sign I just passed sailing down the rampway onto the Bruce Motorway, one hand on the wheel, one hand tappin' away on the keyboard keeping up with my homies on MobileRead, singing along top-of-the-lungs-until-I-cough-up-blood my second-favourite band's - The The - Mercy Beat) "WRONG WAY. GO BACK."
I'll apologise tomorrow. I did think it (and the sequel) sucked though.
Cheers (mmm, cocktails.....)
Marc
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