Russell says in an interview at the back that the "central theme is an exploration of the risks and beauties of religious faith." The author is a Jewish convert (though raised as a Catholic) and the spiritual crises of a Jesuit missionary is at the core of the book. I'm not really drawn to that theme, but because this was recommended on The Ultimate Reading List, I gave it a try, but within a hundred pages I considered abandoning the read.
Lots of things about the initial setup struck me as ludicrous. First, its vision of the near future isn't credible. Science fiction often doesn't age well, but she really should have left herself more leeway. This was published in 1996 and has two narrative strands. We learn from the start there has been a mission to Alpha Centauri that involved first contact with aliens--and that the mission failed scandalously leaving only one survivor--Jesuit Father Emilio Sandoz--returned to Earth in 2059. The other narrative line deals with the mission from its origins, and that thread begins in 2014. That's 18 years away from the time of publication and only two years away from the time I read this, and Russell posits some pretty major developments. On this Earth, the United States is no longer a superpower--the world is dominated by Japan. There is advanced, developed interplanetary travel and colonies on the Moon and Mars and mining of asteroids. Artificial intelligence is eliminating human jobs and there's a market in gifted children who, in return for an education, become indentured servants. And on the 2060 end, we're supposed to believe that using wood for construction, furnishings, or a wood fire is a thing of the past. But of all the things I found hardest to swallow was that a group of five friends, a married couple consisting of a physician and engineer, a Jesuit linguist, a computer specialist and an astronomer could between them cook up a mission that would involve first contact of an alien species and the first interstellar voyage--and bring it off under Jesuit sponsorship.
Still, Russell is a decent writer, and the weaving together of the two threads left me wanting to find out just what had gone wrong. I'm sorry I continued. Oh, so, very, very sorry. The aliens themselves start out as well done. Russell has a background in anthropology and you can see it in the way she showed how cultural assumptions could lead to tragedy. But...and there's just no way to explain why without spoilers--but gad, the climax left me wanting to scrub my brain with bleach. There are several brilliant science fiction authors that deal with spiritual themes: James Blish, Octavia Butler, Orson Scott Card, Arthur C. Clarke, C.S. Lewis, Walter M. Miller Jr. among others. I'd recommend their works over The Sparrow if you want to explore such themes. (You might especially want to look up James Blish's A Case of Conscience--a book very similar in plot and theme written decades before involving a Jesuit and his encounter with an alien culture--and so much better.)
