Thursday, August 22, 2019

The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell

I read The Sparrow on a recommendation from Mark's sister, Kelly, who said it is her favorite book. WOW! It is a masterpiece. Totally brutal without being vulgar, and wholly fresh and unexpected.

The story is told from both ends - an idealistic Jesuit monk bonding with his close-knit group of friends, and this same monk, broken almost beyond recognition, after his return from a first-contact mission gone horribly awry.

I don't want to say too much lest I spoil anything, but this is definitely a first-rate book, which I highly recommend! It is rough but very powerful and poignant.

Jesse's review here
Dad's review here

2 comments:

  1. Agree with your comments! And you have forgotten that, in this family, this book was first read by Jesse (who reviewed it) and then I read it and posted a separate review - so who needs "Comments" when we can have full reviews!

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  2. I was surprised to see that "searing" is one of the labels that we have adopted for the blog...so I clicked on it and was further surprised to see how many books we have read that are tagged this way. Finally, I was amused to find a recounting of the humorous way in which "searing" came to be a label here - see comments to Ironweed!

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