Summary: A returning missionary has to work through the problem of evil in light of the death of his whole team and what he previously understood as God’s clear direction and guidance.
I have mentioned before that I subscribe to the online magazine Christ and Pop Culture. Their private Facebook group is the best thing about Facebook right now. Marion Hill (an author and book blogger) is one of the active participants in the group and frequently talks about books he is reading. So, several books that are on my radar are directly a result of his advocacy.
The Sparrow is not a new book—it will be 20 years old next month—but I had not heard of it prior to Marion’s suggestion. The Sparrow is the story of a group of people, mostly Jesuit priests, who travel to the first new alien world discovered to understand the population and eventually evangelize it.
The story starts at the end. We know that Emilio Sandoz (one of the Jesuits who specialized in linguistics) was the only survivor of the trip. He was found by a team from a follow-up United Nations mission and sent back to Earth. Once the initial introduction to the story occurs, then we start at the beginning of Sandoz’s journey out of poverty through the priesthood. We see how God appears to have gathered together a team of people put at the right place and time to providentially be prepared to take on a first-contact mission.
Theodicy, or how a good God can permit evil, is the book’s main focus. It takes until the very end of the book to really get the story of what happened to the mission, how everyone else died, and why Sandoz was found in the status that he was found in. Sandoz, at the start of the book, is a completely broken man, physically, mentally, and spiritually. The telling of the story is in part about the care of the man who has been brutalized (in ways that are not completely unique to other missionaries in history.)
The Sparrow is the first of two books, and it feels incomplete. I have not picked up the second book, so maybe it will fully round out the story. But most reviews suggest that the second book is not quite as good as the first.
Mary Doria Russell, I would have assumed, was Catholic. It is interesting that like The Book of Strange New Things, which The Sparrow is often compared to, neither was written by Christians. Mary Doria Russell is Jewish and is one of the main characters. The question of theodicy is both a Jewish and Christian question. In many ways, fiction seems to be a better place to handle the question than straight theology. (Note: I later found out that Russell was Catholic until the writing of this book. In the process of writing the book, she decided to convert to Judaism.)
I think this was a very engaging novel. The method of going back and forth in time makes sense given the author’s apparent desire to reveal the story, but I did find it a bit annoying at times. I was also annoyed that after more than 15 hours of audiobook, it still felt like an unfinished story (and I do think that was intentional).
I am somewhat surprised that I have not seen anyone compare it to Endo’s Silence. Both books are about Jesuit missionaries, both have to deal with the reality of faith in the face of grave evil perpetrated not only on themselves but on those around them. They are much more alike than The Book of Strange New Things is similar to The Sparrow. The Book of Strange New Things and The Sparrow are both about how Christianity relates to aliens as one of their themes, but other than the setting, the books are not related.
This is not a book you want to read if you want everything to work out nicely or without some fundamental questions. But it is a book that handles faith well, and for its weaknesses, I still strongly recommend it. It is yet another example of ‘secular’ books handling questions of faith better than most Christian fiction.
There is some real content warning in the book (violence, sex, torture, and language). But none of it is gratuitous, and it all makes sense in the context of the book and its themes.
(I have read Children of God, the second book)
The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell Purchase Links: Paperback, Kindle Edition, Audible.com Audiobook