I was asked, in an interview last week, what my favourite books were – and shortly thereafter, what book I’d choose to gift to others.
While, ordinarily, I would try not to overlap my answers, in this instance I couldn’t bring myself to come up with something for the sake of it, when the answer was staring me right in the face: Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow, a book I never would have read if a woman from Seattle hadn’t moved to Ireland with her then husband and set up a business offering something no one else in Ireland had heard of at the time.
I was working at The Irish Times then, writing a weekly fashion column and also operating Fash Mob, a play on the term “flash mob” that seemed very clever (to me) at a time when Bruno Mars was being used liberally as a method not only to propose marriage but to ensure YouTube virality.
Lindsay Reid Leggett, also known as the Sugarist, also known as the woman who would introduce to me not only The Sparrow but the concept of “emotional labour”, reached out to me via email. She was offering a free service at her salon; sugaring was, she told me, akin to waxing but more environmentally friendly, kinder to the follicles, less likely to result in the ingrown hairs with which any woman who chooses to remove or otherwise tame her pubic hair will be all too familiar.
I took her up on the offer; my last waxing experience, during which I had lain, face down and held my bum cheeks apart while trying not to suffocate myself on the soft surface of the sweaty, plastic-covered bed, had resulted in an array of ingrowns from which I had, six months later, barely recovered.
Not to mention the fact that I was, then (as I am, now) very fond of a freebie.
The sugaring itself was an experience. “I call this the horseshoe of hell,” she told me, as she carefully removed each and every hair from the upside-down U shape of my labia. We talked as she worked – about identity politics; vulval diversity (“look at this book, it’s fascinating!”), what it was like to live in Ireland, as an American; Oregon as an outlier, hippy state; the products we each used to make the most of our curly hair.
I wrote about the experience on Fash Mob, in a post Lindsay would later tell me gave her the most referrals of any piece of press coverage to feature her sugaring services (although, I will concede, that may be what she tells all the girls).
Before long we were friends. She came to my birthday drinks; we went for lunch together; we formed an ill-fated book club (I’m not sure we even met once) wherein, for her book club pick, she chose Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow, a book none of us had ever heard of.
“It’s about a Jesuit priest who goes into space,” said Lindsay, a sentence that seems as incongruous, written down, as it did, then, coming from this tattooed Seattleite with a penchant for cold-pressed juices and sustainably sourced loofahs.
I didn’t know much about Jesuits, then. I don’t know much about Jesuits, now. My mother always said they were “very well educated”, but in a tone that implied that, in this case at least, that was not a compliment.
My Dad, for his part, was very into sci-fi but almost religiously anti-religion, so he had not read the book and, therefore, had no insights to impart. I supposed I’d have to read it.
In my experience, there is a certain amount of politics that goes into the form and function of a book club. If it’s to be held in a house, whose house? And why? Do we rotate locations? If not, why not? Who gets to decide?
As for the choice of book, of the handful of book clubs I have been in, that has operated one of two ways: by democratic vote, from a selection of books nominated by the group, or chosen by each member in turn. In the case of the latter book-choosing method, there will inevitably come a month when a book will be chosen that you would not choose for yourself, or even that you don’t particularly want to read.
But because this is a democracy, and that person read your book the month you chose the deeply dull feminist diatribe (as a rule I tried to choose a book by a woman, and which was likely to make me look, or feel, intelligent – ideally both), you feel beholden unto them and so you buy a copy of The Sparrow and think to yourself, I’m going to hate this.
I’m going to hate this is not the attitude with which anyone should enter the reading of any book, or the watching of any film, or really the anything of anything, because, in an ideal world, we should be open to new ideas and not stuck in our beliefs about ourselves or others, but this world is far from ideal and so, here I was, thinking I would hate this book about this Jesuit priest who goes into space.
As it happens, Lindsay was both wrong and right about the book. On the surface of things, it is about a Jesuit priest who goes into space, but it’s not really about that at all. The fact of him being a Jesuit priest is slightly beside the point, except that it’s the wealth of the Jesuits that facilitates the journey (a wealth that is, I suspect, what my mother was talking about when she said “well educated”). And that they go into space is also slightly beside the point; The Sparrow has more in common with Conrad’s Heart of Darkness than it does with, say, Dune or The Martian.
It’s a book about exploration. It’s about colonialism and discovery and xenophobia and racism, although in Doria Russell’s world that racism takes the form more of speciesism, and it’s about ingenuity and survival and love and relationships. It’s about good and evil, morality and immorality, ethics and anarchy.
It’s about faith, too, and in a way it’s about god but more than anything else it’s about unwavering beliefs – like my I’m going to hate this – and how they colour our view of the world.
In another way it’s about autonomy, or lack thereof, and the notion of destiny or fate as taking any and all control away from the individual.
It didn’t last, but after reading The Sparrow, I decided to become vegetarian. That’s how affected I was by the ideas around human superiority that formed so much of the driving force behind a plot that was both hopeful and horrifying, life-affirming and utterly heartbreaking.
The worst part of it all is that The Sparrow was Doria Russell’s first book (although it is heartening – to me – to note that she published it at the age of 46). The rights to the book were purchased by Brad Pitt’s production company, with Pitt planning to play the role of Emilio Sandoz, the (er, Latin American) priest in question, but Doria Russell subsequently revoked the film rights because, she writes, in an essay published on her own site, entitled Turning Down Hollywood “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life apologizing to people who would feel betrayed by a screen adaptation that didn’t face up to the central issues of the story”.
She’s right, of course; The Sparrow is the kind of book that will change you, and I can’t see how a Hollywood version starring Brad Pitt could possibly do the same.
If you read one book this year… let it be this one.
(If you read two books this year, let the second one be mine.)
For a more religious-based perspective on The Sparrow, Sarah Southern has you covered.
In case you’ve wondered, what in the world could Rosemary be spending her money on these days? here’s your answer: I just spent $200-odd on bulbs for autumn planting from Eden Brothers’ “fall planting” selection.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve realised just how much joy the flowers in my garden bring me. Right now, I’m smugly admiring my coneflowers, inhaling the aroma of my bee balm (and ignoring the powdery mildew, ugh) and cutting my zinnias regularly, in the hopes that they’ll continue to bloom well into the autumn.
I bought mostly daffodils today (yes, Beatrice, to share with you) but also treated myself to three of these Sarah Bernhardt peony bulbs, in the hopes that I will, one day, have stunning, lush peony bushes to call my own.
I can but dream…
And it's 99p on kindle.... Thank you!