The Fresco
Registered by avanta7 on 11/11/2002
2 journalers for this copy...
This one is back in the TBR pile along with the rest of Tepper's novels to be re-read before releasing.
Badgered the releaser into giving me this one too. She says I am cut off now.
Just finished The Fresco by Sheri S. Tepper, which I had snagged off of [info]avanta7 at the 2005 Convention in Fort Worth. I absolutely loved it--it was one of those I ended up reading slowly, because I knew I would miss it when it was done.
Amazon.com:
Part thriller, part social SF, prolific novelist Sheri S. Tepper's latest follows the adventures of Benita Alvarez-Shipton, an empty nester in her mid-30s, whose life is changed when two aliens ask her to carry their greetings to Washington, D.C. Chosen as intermediary because she is both ordinary and beyond political reproach, Benita seizes the opportunity to leave her abusive, alcoholic husband and start a new life in D.C. However, she doesn't count on her role extending beyond the initial delivery of the alien greetings, or on the dangers it will attract to her and her children.
Chiddy and Vess, ethical representatives of the benevolent Pistach, come to offer earth inclusion in a multirace Confederation--but on condition that earth clean up its societal woes. Earth has also attracted the attention of a subgroup of predatory races, who view the overpopulated planet as a rich hunting ground. Humanity must choose--either adopt the Pistach principal of Neighborliness and be ushered into the Confederation or refuse and be left at the mercy of the predators.
Interwoven with the earth-based action are excerpts from Chiddy's diary, written as a letter to Benita, that describe the complex Pistach society and the Pistach religion documented by the eponymous Fresco. The 17-panel, divinely inspired painting has for centuries been obscured by smoke from votive candles. Tradition dictates the events and symbols that lie hidden beneath the grime, and it is taboo to ever clean the Fresco. When Chiddy accidentally clears away part of the soot, revealing images that contradict Pistach dogma, it sets into motion a chain of events that undermine racial self-perception and threaten both Pistach and human survival.
Though some of the characters are drawn with such broad strokes as to render them caricatures, and there are elements of Pistach social engineering to alarm readers of just about any political stripe, The Fresco is nonetheless an engrossing, sometimes wickedly funny read. --Eddy Avery
From Publishers Weekly:
HSo what do women really, really want? Elementary, Dr. Freud, according to Tepper's enchantingly sly feminist tale of Earthlings' first contact with alien starfarers: nothing that "virile, arbitrary, egocentric, and often belligerent" human males can supply. Abused wife to a feckless alcoholic, orphaned child of a wise Latina lady and her salvage-yard husband, Benita Alvarez-Shipton finds herself at 36 chosen by Chiddy and Vess, ambassadors from the galactic Pistach-Home, to introduce their message of peace to a largely skeptical, male-dominated U.S. government. Tepper intersperses episodes of Benita's struggle to help Chiddy and Vess with entries from the journal Chiddy keeps for her, an explanation of the Pistach moral-ethical religion centered upon a sacred fresco. To punctuate the many wrongs men in charge have committed, Tepper also inserts some headlines excruciatingly close to today's political scene: "Baptists claim ETs possible demonic invasion; Falwell says ETs more likely gay." Among other fitting punishments, the Pistach envoys see to it that rigid male right-to-life senators are impregnated by sentient wasps, whose larvae chew themselves out of righteous, unanesthetized senatorial bellies. As a clever roman clef and the stuff of secret female dreams, this novel succeeds brilliantly. Better yet, as a commentary on the capacity of women to endure, to achieve and to overcome, it shines as brightly as the stars that one day may provide what Tepper's women really want: true peace. Tepper's novel will sell to wide range of SF readers, but special targeting to women, for instance in feminist bookstores, will increase sales. (Nov.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
A passage I particularly liked:
"You reminded me of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The reason there was such a tizzy was that many religious groups really don't worship God, they worship the Scriptures. Christians, Jews, they both do it. So do the Moslems. Even though the commandment says 'You shall have no other God before me', the Scripture worshippers put the writings ahead of God. Instead of interpreting God's actions in nature, for example, they interpret nature in the light of the Scripture. Nature says the rock is billions of years old, but the book says different, so even though men wrote the book, and God made the rock and God gave us minds that have found ways to tell how old it is, we still choose to believe the Scripture."
A light went on in my head when I read that...
Amazon.com:
Part thriller, part social SF, prolific novelist Sheri S. Tepper's latest follows the adventures of Benita Alvarez-Shipton, an empty nester in her mid-30s, whose life is changed when two aliens ask her to carry their greetings to Washington, D.C. Chosen as intermediary because she is both ordinary and beyond political reproach, Benita seizes the opportunity to leave her abusive, alcoholic husband and start a new life in D.C. However, she doesn't count on her role extending beyond the initial delivery of the alien greetings, or on the dangers it will attract to her and her children.
Chiddy and Vess, ethical representatives of the benevolent Pistach, come to offer earth inclusion in a multirace Confederation--but on condition that earth clean up its societal woes. Earth has also attracted the attention of a subgroup of predatory races, who view the overpopulated planet as a rich hunting ground. Humanity must choose--either adopt the Pistach principal of Neighborliness and be ushered into the Confederation or refuse and be left at the mercy of the predators.
Interwoven with the earth-based action are excerpts from Chiddy's diary, written as a letter to Benita, that describe the complex Pistach society and the Pistach religion documented by the eponymous Fresco. The 17-panel, divinely inspired painting has for centuries been obscured by smoke from votive candles. Tradition dictates the events and symbols that lie hidden beneath the grime, and it is taboo to ever clean the Fresco. When Chiddy accidentally clears away part of the soot, revealing images that contradict Pistach dogma, it sets into motion a chain of events that undermine racial self-perception and threaten both Pistach and human survival.
Though some of the characters are drawn with such broad strokes as to render them caricatures, and there are elements of Pistach social engineering to alarm readers of just about any political stripe, The Fresco is nonetheless an engrossing, sometimes wickedly funny read. --Eddy Avery
From Publishers Weekly:
HSo what do women really, really want? Elementary, Dr. Freud, according to Tepper's enchantingly sly feminist tale of Earthlings' first contact with alien starfarers: nothing that "virile, arbitrary, egocentric, and often belligerent" human males can supply. Abused wife to a feckless alcoholic, orphaned child of a wise Latina lady and her salvage-yard husband, Benita Alvarez-Shipton finds herself at 36 chosen by Chiddy and Vess, ambassadors from the galactic Pistach-Home, to introduce their message of peace to a largely skeptical, male-dominated U.S. government. Tepper intersperses episodes of Benita's struggle to help Chiddy and Vess with entries from the journal Chiddy keeps for her, an explanation of the Pistach moral-ethical religion centered upon a sacred fresco. To punctuate the many wrongs men in charge have committed, Tepper also inserts some headlines excruciatingly close to today's political scene: "Baptists claim ETs possible demonic invasion; Falwell says ETs more likely gay." Among other fitting punishments, the Pistach envoys see to it that rigid male right-to-life senators are impregnated by sentient wasps, whose larvae chew themselves out of righteous, unanesthetized senatorial bellies. As a clever roman clef and the stuff of secret female dreams, this novel succeeds brilliantly. Better yet, as a commentary on the capacity of women to endure, to achieve and to overcome, it shines as brightly as the stars that one day may provide what Tepper's women really want: true peace. Tepper's novel will sell to wide range of SF readers, but special targeting to women, for instance in feminist bookstores, will increase sales. (Nov.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
A passage I particularly liked:
"You reminded me of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The reason there was such a tizzy was that many religious groups really don't worship God, they worship the Scriptures. Christians, Jews, they both do it. So do the Moslems. Even though the commandment says 'You shall have no other God before me', the Scripture worshippers put the writings ahead of God. Instead of interpreting God's actions in nature, for example, they interpret nature in the light of the Scripture. Nature says the rock is billions of years old, but the book says different, so even though men wrote the book, and God made the rock and God gave us minds that have found ways to tell how old it is, we still choose to believe the Scripture."
A light went on in my head when I read that...
As I ordered a hardcover copy for my own collection (whoever said BC doesn't raise an author's revenue?), this one goes off in the mail to live with MartiP. Salud!
