What do you think?
Rate this book
A Trip to the Stars
“A large, lavishly inventive novel... an American descendant of The Arabian Nights... erudite and artful entertainment.”—The New York Times Book Review
At a Manhattan planetarium in 1965, ten-year-old Enzo is whisked away from his young adoptive aunt, Mala. His abductor turns out to be a blood relative: his great-uncle Junius Samax, a wealthy former gambler who lives in a converted Las Vegas hotel surrounded by a priceless art collection and a host of fascinating, idiosyncratic guests. In Samax’s magical world, Enzo receives a unique education and pieces together the mystery of his mother’s life and the complicated history of his adoption. Back in New York, Mala only knows that Enzo has disappeared. After a yearlong search proves fruitless, she enlists in the Navy Nursing Corps and on a hospital ship off Vietnam falls in love with a wounded B-52 navigator, who disappears on his next mission. Devastated again, Mala embarks on a restless, adventurous journey around the world, hoping to overcome the losses that have transformed her life.
Fusing imagination, scholarship, and suspense with remarkable narrative skill, Nicholas Christopher builds a story of tremendous scope, an epic tale of love and destiny, as he traces the intricate latticework of Mala’s and Enzo’s lives. Each remains separate from each other but tied in ways they cannot imagine—until the final miraculous chapter of this extraordinary novel.
“A writer of remarkable gifts.”—The Washington Post Book World
“This labyrinthine novel... is animated by an encompassing lust for beauty.”—The New Yorker
“[Nicholas] Christopher is North America’s García Márquez; Borges with emotional weight... This is one of those rare books that, by connecting the stars, catches you in its web.”—The Globe and Mail
At a Manhattan planetarium in 1965, ten-year-old Enzo is whisked away from his young adoptive aunt, Mala. His abductor turns out to be a blood relative: his great-uncle Junius Samax, a wealthy former gambler who lives in a converted Las Vegas hotel surrounded by a priceless art collection and a host of fascinating, idiosyncratic guests. In Samax’s magical world, Enzo receives a unique education and pieces together the mystery of his mother’s life and the complicated history of his adoption. Back in New York, Mala only knows that Enzo has disappeared. After a yearlong search proves fruitless, she enlists in the Navy Nursing Corps and on a hospital ship off Vietnam falls in love with a wounded B-52 navigator, who disappears on his next mission. Devastated again, Mala embarks on a restless, adventurous journey around the world, hoping to overcome the losses that have transformed her life.
Fusing imagination, scholarship, and suspense with remarkable narrative skill, Nicholas Christopher builds a story of tremendous scope, an epic tale of love and destiny, as he traces the intricate latticework of Mala’s and Enzo’s lives. Each remains separate from each other but tied in ways they cannot imagine—until the final miraculous chapter of this extraordinary novel.
“A writer of remarkable gifts.”—The Washington Post Book World
“This labyrinthine novel... is animated by an encompassing lust for beauty.”—The New Yorker
“[Nicholas] Christopher is North America’s García Márquez; Borges with emotional weight... This is one of those rare books that, by connecting the stars, catches you in its web.”—The Globe and Mail
528 pages, Paperback
First published February 15, 2000
184 people are currently reading
7134 people want to read
About the author
Nicholas Christopher
36 books176 followersNicholas Christopher was born and raised in New York City. He was educated at Harvard College, where he studied with Robert Lowell and Anthony Hecht. Afterward, he traveled and lived in Europe. He became a regular contributor to the New Yorker in his early twenties, and began publishing his work in other leading magazines, both in the United States and abroad, including Esquire, the New Republic, the New York Review of Books, the Nation, and the Paris Review. He has appeared in numerous anthologies, including the Norton Anthology of Poetry, the Paris Review 50th Anniversary Anthology, the Best American Poetry, Poet's Choice, the Everyman's Library Poems of New York and Conversation Pieces, the Norton Anthology of Love, the Faber Book of Movie Verse, and the Grand Street Reader. He has edited two major anthologies himself, Under 35: The New Generation of American Poets (Anchor, 1989) and Walk on the Wild Side: Urban American Poetry Since 1975 (Scribner, 1994) and has translated Martial and Catullus and several modern Greek poets, including George Seferis and Yannis Ritsos. His books have been translated and published many other countries, and he is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships from various institutions, including the Guggenheim Foundation, the Academy of American Poets, the Poetry Society of America, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has taught at Yale, Barnard College, and New York University, and is now a Professor on the permanent faculty of the Writing Division of the School of the Arts at Columbia University. He lives in New York City with his wife, Constance Christopher, and continues to travel widely, most frequently to Venice, the Hawaiian island of Kauai, and the Grenadines.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 401 reviews
May 17, 2020
this is the closest thing to a one-size-fits-all book that i've ever come across. whenever someone asks me for "something good," "i don't know, just with a good story," "whatever," i just give them this. even when they are much more helpful with what they are looking for—i give them this. and i have had a number of people come back and tell me how much they loved it, and do i have anything else like it. that's the problem. i don't. there are shades of it in other books—millhauser, harington, carroll. all are amazing authors who have elements of what is successful in this book in them, and are probably better authors overall, but this book has something i'm not able to pin down that just makes it so satisfying and engrossing. and he has not been able to do it again. stay far far away from Veronica, because it is not good. The Bestiary started out very good, but was not even close to the way this book gives the shivers. this book is strong on all fronts: character, plot, style. it's a book i definitely need to revisit, and i think a good book for fall. and if you buy it from union square this month, lesley can win her own staffie!
come to my blog!
come to my blog!
February 19, 2014
“We had voyaged far into space and now we were returning. Before leaving the solar system, we orbited the moon and several planets – skating along Saturn’s rings, probing Jupiter’s red spot, and skimming the icy mountain ranges of Uranus. We trailed a comet and threaded a swarm of meteors. And after Pluto, we were among the stars: glittering clusters, bracelets, and crescents that swirled around us.” (page 1 – A Trip to the Stars)
This is a story about fate, and yes, in this story the fate is written in the stars. It is a multifaceted story about so many things and so many people. It is about lost things and the lost people searching for those things or for each other. You will find unsuspecting friendships, and that the meaning of family is not just being related. There are complicated relationships; some based on love and others on festering animosity. But for me, it was most of all a coming of age story and a beautiful love story.
You will be taken to the stars as there so are many, many, astrological and astronomical references. I gave up after a while trying to decipher the symbolism and decided to just enjoy the language. Your trip will also span the globe – from New York to Las Vegas to Vietnam, Guam, Hawaii and Greece.
A cast of eclectic characters and so many things going on at once at times distracted and frustrated me. But I never stopped for a minute hoping that Alma and Loren would find what they had lost. I was frustrated because I wanted everything to make sense and I wanted to know the significance of everything related to the stars and then there were the spiders. So many times I thought - how can this be? At some point, I didn’t care about what I was having trouble believing in, because I believed in Loren and Alma, and Geza. So I just sat back and enjoyed the ride. The writing in many places is beautifully descriptive of things and places and feelings. The story is so very compelling.
It’s “magical realism” and the magic is well – magical. The “real” part is a story with so much heart and wonderful characters whose lives I became so involved in and I didn’t want it to end, even though I had to find out their fate. The three time orphan Loren/Enzo given his early life, and sometimes chaotic life he lives, grows into an intelligent and caring man. Alma/Mala manages to escape her demons and finds herself.
4 stars. (4.5 if it were possible)
(Tracey , thanks so much for inviting me to do this as a read along with you. I have absolutely enjoyed our conversations and am so glad to have had the opportunity to get to know you a little more.)
This is a story about fate, and yes, in this story the fate is written in the stars. It is a multifaceted story about so many things and so many people. It is about lost things and the lost people searching for those things or for each other. You will find unsuspecting friendships, and that the meaning of family is not just being related. There are complicated relationships; some based on love and others on festering animosity. But for me, it was most of all a coming of age story and a beautiful love story.
You will be taken to the stars as there so are many, many, astrological and astronomical references. I gave up after a while trying to decipher the symbolism and decided to just enjoy the language. Your trip will also span the globe – from New York to Las Vegas to Vietnam, Guam, Hawaii and Greece.
A cast of eclectic characters and so many things going on at once at times distracted and frustrated me. But I never stopped for a minute hoping that Alma and Loren would find what they had lost. I was frustrated because I wanted everything to make sense and I wanted to know the significance of everything related to the stars and then there were the spiders. So many times I thought - how can this be? At some point, I didn’t care about what I was having trouble believing in, because I believed in Loren and Alma, and Geza. So I just sat back and enjoyed the ride. The writing in many places is beautifully descriptive of things and places and feelings. The story is so very compelling.
It’s “magical realism” and the magic is well – magical. The “real” part is a story with so much heart and wonderful characters whose lives I became so involved in and I didn’t want it to end, even though I had to find out their fate. The three time orphan Loren/Enzo given his early life, and sometimes chaotic life he lives, grows into an intelligent and caring man. Alma/Mala manages to escape her demons and finds herself.
4 stars. (4.5 if it were possible)
(Tracey , thanks so much for inviting me to do this as a read along with you. I have absolutely enjoyed our conversations and am so glad to have had the opportunity to get to know you a little more.)
December 26, 2014
This may just be the best book I've ever read. A pretty lofty declaration, given how many classics and sentimental favorites are on my list, but a true one nonetheless. This is not a quick read--you have to be patient with it as it weaves its tapestry of overlapping fates. Nicholas Christopher rushes nothing as he establishes the complex web of connections between his characters. In the meantime, you will learn about philosophy, history, astronomy, arachnology, art, architecture, vampirology, and the lost Atlantis civilization. Among other things. If you have a heart, this deeply moving book will tug at it. If you have a brain, this well-researched book will tease it. There truly is something for everybody within its pages.
Also, I had a monstrous crush on Geza Cassiel. He is one of my favorite book characters ever.
Also, I had a monstrous crush on Geza Cassiel. He is one of my favorite book characters ever.
April 19, 2009
Wow. I don't remember what I was expecting when I started reading this book, but A Trip to the Stars far exceeded those expectations. The story is intricate, beautifully written, and totally engrossing. Very different than what I have read recently. I read a review somewhere that said the storylines of the two main characters, Mala and Enzo, are like separate wide spirals that get tighter and tighter as they overlap -- and I really agree with that assessment.
I am so glad I invested the time I did in reading this book -- it was so worth it!
I am so glad I invested the time I did in reading this book -- it was so worth it!
October 14, 2019
Nicholas Christopher benim çok sevdiğim yazarlardan birisi. Yıldızlara Yolculuk ise benim için çok özel kitaplardan biri. Kitabı ilk olarak ingilizce okuyup, keşke Türkçe'ye çevrilseymiş dediğimde ne yazık ki Turkuvaz Kitap iflas etmişti ve kitap piyasada bulunmuyordu. Aradan 3 yıl sonra nadir kitapta son derece pahalı denecek bir fiyata kıyıp aldığım ilk koleksiyon kitabımdır.
Ne güzel bir histir ki hala değişmeyen bir keyifle tekrardan okudum Yıldızlara Yolculuğu. Çok üzücü ki, Nicholas Christopher'in kitapları Türk okuru tarafından fazla bilinmiyor ve Yıldızlara Yolculuğun yaşadığı bahtsızlığı Christopher'in diğer 2 kitabı da Franklin Flyer ve Veronica da ne yazık ki yaşıyor. Yani basımları artık yapılmıyor.
Yıldızlara Yolculuk , Maza ve Enzo'nun öykülerini paralel olarak anlatan bir kaçırılma öyküsü. Christopher'in hem bu paralel öyküyü inanılmaz bir hayal gücü içinde anlatıp; hem de kader, şans, tesadüfler ve mitoloji gibi bilindik konuları kendisine has harika bir hayal güçü içinde okuru sürekli merak içinde tutan anlatım içinde harmanlıyor.
Son söz olarak, kitap benim için duruşunu hiçbir zaman değiştirmeyecek. Christopher inanılmaz bir anlatıcı ve hayal gücü hala bana çok iyi geliyor.Bunun yanında, tabii ki kitapta eleştirdiğim ve aslında 5/4 olması gerektiği gerçeğini bildiğim kısımlar var. Ama bunu görmemezliğe geliyorum:)
Okuma şansınız olursa bir göz atın derim.
İyi okumalar,
5/5
Ne güzel bir histir ki hala değişmeyen bir keyifle tekrardan okudum Yıldızlara Yolculuğu. Çok üzücü ki, Nicholas Christopher'in kitapları Türk okuru tarafından fazla bilinmiyor ve Yıldızlara Yolculuğun yaşadığı bahtsızlığı Christopher'in diğer 2 kitabı da Franklin Flyer ve Veronica da ne yazık ki yaşıyor. Yani basımları artık yapılmıyor.
Yıldızlara Yolculuk , Maza ve Enzo'nun öykülerini paralel olarak anlatan bir kaçırılma öyküsü. Christopher'in hem bu paralel öyküyü inanılmaz bir hayal gücü içinde anlatıp; hem de kader, şans, tesadüfler ve mitoloji gibi bilindik konuları kendisine has harika bir hayal güçü içinde okuru sürekli merak içinde tutan anlatım içinde harmanlıyor.
Son söz olarak, kitap benim için duruşunu hiçbir zaman değiştirmeyecek. Christopher inanılmaz bir anlatıcı ve hayal gücü hala bana çok iyi geliyor.Bunun yanında, tabii ki kitapta eleştirdiğim ve aslında 5/4 olması gerektiği gerçeğini bildiğim kısımlar var. Ama bunu görmemezliğe geliyorum:)
Okuma şansınız olursa bir göz atın derim.
İyi okumalar,
5/5
December 26, 2008
I absolutely loved Christopher’s The Bestiary so I was really looking forward to this book; this might explain why I was less than thrilled by it. I really enjoy his imagination and the unusual characters he creates but something in this book just fell flat for me. I kept thinking to myself, ‘this could be amazing.’ And I don’t think this review will be helpful at all because I can’t exactly decide what was wrong with the book because on a lot of levels it was captivating and exciting (I loved the Hotel Canopus, the memory palace, and the whole underlying theme of searching for lost things). But by the end, I felt too much distance from the characters (they fascinated me but I did not love them), I was frustrated by the continual references to stars and spiders as well as the endless coincidences (they would have meant more if there were less of them), and the ending left me cold.
February 16, 2011
The Book of Life, Love, Dreams and Epicness Beyond that did not read to me. I wanted to like A Trip to the Stars more than I did. You know that feeling of hearing about the very detailed dream someone has and you feel like you're probably missing a freaking ton of back story? The symbols that represent so much don't mean anything to you? People are people who wear masks of other people? It must mean an awful lot to the person having it. It ties in all of those things that they've been thinking about in their conscious and unconscious waking and dreaming hours. There will be answers if they can remember it all to write it down. If only you were there too...
July 9, 2014
With apologies to my friend who recommended this book, I hated it. After searching for the correct word or words to describe it, I think I finally hit on it: ponderous.
Christopher spends page after page describing locations and surroundings in detail but in the end, you don't feel immersed in the scene.
He also spends many pages telling us what each character is thinking or the meaning in each situation. But it never seems to get us closer to the next step in the plot. I would rather he spent half as many pages showing us what the character is thinking through dialogue and action.
I have to say I did not finish this book. It is 499 pages. Maybe it got better after page 220, which is as far as I read, but I'm never going to find out.
Christopher spends page after page describing locations and surroundings in detail but in the end, you don't feel immersed in the scene.
He also spends many pages telling us what each character is thinking or the meaning in each situation. But it never seems to get us closer to the next step in the plot. I would rather he spent half as many pages showing us what the character is thinking through dialogue and action.
I have to say I did not finish this book. It is 499 pages. Maybe it got better after page 220, which is as far as I read, but I'm never going to find out.
November 10, 2024
Menschen, die eine Reise zu den Sternen lieben, sind einfach komplett fabelhaft. Ein unsagbar schönes Buch 💙
November 4, 2008
Right from the start, the author lets us know that the characters, events, and physical items in the parallel stories of Loren/Enzo and Alma/Mala, which diverge in the first chapter, will fit together like a puzzle at the end. The reader can easily figure some things out; yet that did not keep me from wanting to follow all the paths as they moved to their inevitable conclusion.
On one level this book is a soap opera about several interrelated dysfunctional families falling apart and colliding in a messy dysfunctional world. And as the title indicates, the stars, from both a scientific and a spiritual or occult viewpoint, seem to influence everyone and everything involved. But Christopher has also woven many historical references into the narrative to comment on knowledge, fate, the limitations of structure, and the inability of humans to control and predict both life and death. The characters have many different ways of approaching life: science, philosophy, art, music, politics, religion, ancient tradition, mystery, and magic. Lost pieces and people are everywhere; everyone is searching. And it's a believable, if sometimes fantastical, world.
One mystery remained for me at the end: why did Luna and Milo, young and wishing to be free, want a baby in the first place? And why would an agency ever have allowed such rootless and irresponsible people to adopt a child?
A whim, a bureaucrat's carelessness--and this particular intersection of space and time is set in motion. Certainly life feels like it often hinges on such tenuous decisions. So maybe not so mysterious; but instead, depressingly real.
On one level this book is a soap opera about several interrelated dysfunctional families falling apart and colliding in a messy dysfunctional world. And as the title indicates, the stars, from both a scientific and a spiritual or occult viewpoint, seem to influence everyone and everything involved. But Christopher has also woven many historical references into the narrative to comment on knowledge, fate, the limitations of structure, and the inability of humans to control and predict both life and death. The characters have many different ways of approaching life: science, philosophy, art, music, politics, religion, ancient tradition, mystery, and magic. Lost pieces and people are everywhere; everyone is searching. And it's a believable, if sometimes fantastical, world.
One mystery remained for me at the end: why did Luna and Milo, young and wishing to be free, want a baby in the first place? And why would an agency ever have allowed such rootless and irresponsible people to adopt a child?
A whim, a bureaucrat's carelessness--and this particular intersection of space and time is set in motion. Certainly life feels like it often hinges on such tenuous decisions. So maybe not so mysterious; but instead, depressingly real.
April 19, 2015
I really wanted to love this book. At first I was enchanted by all the star and spider references, the magical realism, the underlying theme of the search for lost things…. but after a couple of hundred pages it just seemed to fizzle out. I think it was the overly detailed descriptions of the inhabitants of The Hotel Canopus. I couldn’t keep straight the convoluted relationships of 3 generations of women, all of whom had names which started with the letter “D”. I just kept wondering why I should care about these minor characters, and the hundreds of pages spent on them made very little difference in the plot. And Mala’s temporary career as a clairvoyant was just bizarre and unnecessary. I gritted my teeth and finished, but I’m kind of sorry I did.
Update: while I was dissatisfied overall with this book, I am haunted by some of the images of Vietnam and the Cook Islands and every time I hear a lot of classic rock songs from this era I picture the stars over the South Pacific.
Update: while I was dissatisfied overall with this book, I am haunted by some of the images of Vietnam and the Cook Islands and every time I hear a lot of classic rock songs from this era I picture the stars over the South Pacific.
February 15, 2021
I loved every word and every character. This book feels like home, it immerses you in culture, arts, philosophy, architecture, and the universe, stars and navigation. I did not want it to finish and once I did I cried. I read that book for the first time when I was 14ish and now with 24 it spoke to me in different but the same magnificent ways. I will return to it when I am 34. Thank you for this book Mr. Christopher. Honestly.
July 2, 2020
What a beautiful,complex, entertaining, rich, and wonderful book this is! I had no idea what to expect, as it was a gift from a friend and I'd never heard about it or the author before.
I am so happy to have read it and highly recommend it!
It would take to long to describe what it is about, so its best to look at the cover description, but know its so much more than that.
I am so happy to have read it and highly recommend it!
It would take to long to describe what it is about, so its best to look at the cover description, but know its so much more than that.
August 6, 2022
I am still reeling from this ending (the epitome of perfect in every way) and am without exaggeration leaving this novel so SO reluctantly. I loved this so incredibly much and am convinced it is the absolute best thing I have ever and will ever read. (In case it wasn’t obvious new all time favorite without a doubt.)
August 31, 2023
When a reading friend presses a book into my hands with raves, I just have to read it. However, A Trip to the Stars was a mixed experience for me. It took me over a week to read its 500 pages. For some reason (small print, about a million characters, a strange tone to the writing?) I could rarely get through more than 30 pages a day though I would read for a couple hours. I finally came to the end after a long, circuitous adventure that almost rewarded the time spent.
In the opening chapter, a 10-year-old adopted orphan is kidnapped from a planetarium in 1965. As he grows up in an exclusive and unusual hotel outside Las Vegas, owned by an uncle who orchestrated the kidnapping, Loren gets a new name, an amazing education and finally learns the complicated story of his identity.
The tale was reminiscent for me of The Shadow of the Wind, The Count of Monte Cristo, Winter's Tale, Cloud Cuckoo Land. It should have entranced me as much as those epics did but the writing never quite lives up to that of those other authors.
It does live up to its title as the final scene involves a space ship launch that will carry one of the main characters beyond the dark side of the moon.
As I read about the many characters losing and finding each other again, I sometimes lost and found them again myself while I struggled to recall who some of them were. Not one had an easy or even remotely normal life, leaving me hopelessly entangled in their passions, enmities, achievements and failures.
If it makes any sense, I suppose I loved the story but wished for better writing. Somehow I liked it more when I looked back on the book than I did while I read it.
In the opening chapter, a 10-year-old adopted orphan is kidnapped from a planetarium in 1965. As he grows up in an exclusive and unusual hotel outside Las Vegas, owned by an uncle who orchestrated the kidnapping, Loren gets a new name, an amazing education and finally learns the complicated story of his identity.
The tale was reminiscent for me of The Shadow of the Wind, The Count of Monte Cristo, Winter's Tale, Cloud Cuckoo Land. It should have entranced me as much as those epics did but the writing never quite lives up to that of those other authors.
It does live up to its title as the final scene involves a space ship launch that will carry one of the main characters beyond the dark side of the moon.
As I read about the many characters losing and finding each other again, I sometimes lost and found them again myself while I struggled to recall who some of them were. Not one had an easy or even remotely normal life, leaving me hopelessly entangled in their passions, enmities, achievements and failures.
If it makes any sense, I suppose I loved the story but wished for better writing. Somehow I liked it more when I looked back on the book than I did while I read it.
August 20, 2015
3.5
A Trip to the Stars is an epic in the truest sense of the world - it tells the story of multiple journeys across the globe, and beyond, and the intersections of our lives that have a profound impact on ourselves and our future.
While I admired the sheer imaginative scope of this novel - it was like travelling the world from the comfort of my own bed - I felt a detachment from the prose, like an outsider looking in. Part of the reason is that most of the story is narrated to us by the two main characters, which means that there's a lot more telling and a lot less showing. So as much as I could enjoy this ambitious book, I could never truly get into it.
The novel includes everything from astronomy to history and folk tales to the study of spiders - it's an absolute amalgamation of everything that makes the world interesting. The characters themselves are quite self-destructive in their own way, and dare I say - vain?
Nevertheless, if you're looking for something outside of your usual fare, then give this one a go. It can be a challenging read at times, but oh how well worth it for the way things come together in the end.
A Trip to the Stars is an epic in the truest sense of the world - it tells the story of multiple journeys across the globe, and beyond, and the intersections of our lives that have a profound impact on ourselves and our future.
While I admired the sheer imaginative scope of this novel - it was like travelling the world from the comfort of my own bed - I felt a detachment from the prose, like an outsider looking in. Part of the reason is that most of the story is narrated to us by the two main characters, which means that there's a lot more telling and a lot less showing. So as much as I could enjoy this ambitious book, I could never truly get into it.
The novel includes everything from astronomy to history and folk tales to the study of spiders - it's an absolute amalgamation of everything that makes the world interesting. The characters themselves are quite self-destructive in their own way, and dare I say - vain?
Nevertheless, if you're looking for something outside of your usual fare, then give this one a go. It can be a challenging read at times, but oh how well worth it for the way things come together in the end.
October 14, 2009
Why do we continue to read books that we consider terrible? Do other people have enough discipline to stop reading?
This book ia pretty ambitious, and tries to tell lots of semi-related stories that cross a variety of genres from within the lens of two protagonists.
The stories though with few exceptions are of a couple varieties: "rich, super-interesting people live their awesome self-satisfied existences" and "poor, super-gorgeous people drink themselves into stupor and pursue pleasure until they accidentally find love"
The constant story hopping robs the characters of any depth so you feel very little connection to them. The parts of the characters that are revealed to the reader make the characters seem shallow and superficial and generally unrelatable.
Worse the author constantly tells us how awesome people are rather than shows us through telling a story. I.e. this person is the best architect in the world...
This book ia pretty ambitious, and tries to tell lots of semi-related stories that cross a variety of genres from within the lens of two protagonists.
The stories though with few exceptions are of a couple varieties: "rich, super-interesting people live their awesome self-satisfied existences" and "poor, super-gorgeous people drink themselves into stupor and pursue pleasure until they accidentally find love"
The constant story hopping robs the characters of any depth so you feel very little connection to them. The parts of the characters that are revealed to the reader make the characters seem shallow and superficial and generally unrelatable.
Worse the author constantly tells us how awesome people are rather than shows us through telling a story. I.e. this person is the best architect in the world...
October 30, 2010
This was a wild ride! I don't even know what shelves to put it on. Magic mushrooms are entirely optional, but they could enhance your enjoyment of this escapade. Put on your psychedelic 3-D glasses and enjoy the trip. See you when you touch down.
May 2, 2009
Oh! I love this so far...
Now that I am finished I still love it. The last third got a bit slow for me, and I was left still peckish at the ending until a friend pointed out that perhaps NC was making room for a sequel. Harrumph. I still feel there was a key meeting missing, but I'd be willing to forgive this if NC delivers more of this world and its people.
The story is imaginative and just plain fun. The bazillion star references mostly made me smile. Only a few were ill-placed, causing some sighing and "Yes, yes, I GET IT! 'Hidden' star references EVERYWHERE, but there is such a thing as overdoing it!" The whole vampire bit was blended so well into this semi-fantastical world that it was entirely intriguing, and I was hoping *someone* would trot out to the desert or island dwellings of these creatures who walk among us in diners and at dusty gas station pumps, just so I could hear more about them.
I always love the writers who make me feel strong emotion toward their characters. This falls shy of the mark because for the most part, I took most everything in stride as I was reading, and there are some truly terrible things that happen to decent people. Instead, the true pleasure of this read for me is the magical world itself, and the dreamy quality to the lives we're following across decades. It's an attic fantasist's delight from page one to the last and you've got to love a story that has you running to research some casually dropped reference to see if it's real or made up. At least, I do.
Now that I am finished I still love it. The last third got a bit slow for me, and I was left still peckish at the ending until a friend pointed out that perhaps NC was making room for a sequel. Harrumph. I still feel there was a key meeting missing, but I'd be willing to forgive this if NC delivers more of this world and its people.
The story is imaginative and just plain fun. The bazillion star references mostly made me smile. Only a few were ill-placed, causing some sighing and "Yes, yes, I GET IT! 'Hidden' star references EVERYWHERE, but there is such a thing as overdoing it!" The whole vampire bit was blended so well into this semi-fantastical world that it was entirely intriguing, and I was hoping *someone* would trot out to the desert or island dwellings of these creatures who walk among us in diners and at dusty gas station pumps, just so I could hear more about them.
I always love the writers who make me feel strong emotion toward their characters. This falls shy of the mark because for the most part, I took most everything in stride as I was reading, and there are some truly terrible things that happen to decent people. Instead, the true pleasure of this read for me is the magical world itself, and the dreamy quality to the lives we're following across decades. It's an attic fantasist's delight from page one to the last and you've got to love a story that has you running to research some casually dropped reference to see if it's real or made up. At least, I do.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 28, 2022
a new favourite!! so immersive and mesmerizing i’m so glad i finally got around to reading this :)
July 31, 2018
A genuinely astonishing piece of work. For much of the time I was reading it I thought it was one for the ages, the best book I'd read this year and perhaps for several years; but a number of niggles built up toward the end, and then finally a true howler meant it was knocked from the pedestal it had come to occupy in my mind. Even so, this long novel represents a splendid achievement.
It's 1965. Given up for adoption as a baby, orphaned by his adoptive parents and now orphaned by the adoptive grandmother who took him in, young Loren has no one left but his adoptive aunt Alma who, a university student, barely knows him and doesn't know what to do with this child who's suddenly her responsibility. While she's still panicking, she takes him as a birthday treat to a small planetarium. There, among the jostling crowds, he's snatched from her. It'll be fifteen years before the pair are reunited.
No, this isn't a crime novel, although there are crimes a-plenty in it.
Loren, as he soon learns, is really Enzo Samax. His abductors are led by his fabulously rich great-uncle Junius, a polymath and obsessive (who for some reason I imagined throughout as being played by Morgan Freeman). Junius takes Enzo to the Canopus Hotel, a building on the outskirts of Las Vegas that the old man has bought and made his home, where he entertains a changing group of house-guests whose interests are as varied and eccentric as one could imagine. They, and Junius himself, give Enzo the kind of home-schooling one might wish for in one's wildest dreams. Junius's -- and soon Enzo's -- fascinations are also the novel's: astronomy, cartography, navigation, arachnology, pomology, planetaria . . .
We spend alternate chapters with Alma who, having renamed herself Mala to get away from her old self, becomes a nurse in the Vietnam War, falls in love with a wounded airman and then, when he disappears, carves out a life that seems never to come together for her and sometimes plumbs the depths of dissolution. Given paranormal powers first by a deliberately induced spider bite and then again, when those have waned, by a spectacular car crash, Mala spends some while as a stage clairvoyant before returning to her own fascinations, with stars, with islands, with observatories . . .
The two lives, Mala's and Enzo's, are widely separated, and yet every now and then there are tantalizing overlaps between them, little coincidences that the participants generally don't notice. Obviously fate will eventually bring Mala and Enzo back together -- one of those coincidences is not so little -- but, until it does, we're treated in effect to two novels linked primarily by their shared obsessions.
Chief among those is astronomy. As you may have guessed, most of the non-real-world proper nouns are astronomical terms, mainly star names. The pieces of shrapnel pulled from Mala's lover in the hospital ship off Vietnam form a constellation, and he incorporates it into an astronomical bracelet for her. When Enzo is given a puppy called Sirius, the star of that name -- the Dog Star -- seems to have disappeared from the night sky, as if it had come to earth temporarily to be Enzo's companion. One of Junius's eccentric guests at the Canopus Hotel believes that Atlantis was destroyed when an asteroid plummeted into the ocean alongside it. There are astronomical links studded throughout the book like, well, stars studded in the night sky.
I'd be hard-pressed to say that A Trip to the Stars is a magic-realist novel, but it certainly contains a healthy dash of magic realism and there's a sort of magic-realist sense throughout it, even during the straightforwardly mimetic sections. This air of imagination is one of the reasons why I found the novel so infernally readable: even the most mundane things were given a sense of wonder.
At the same time, I didn't find A Trip to the Stars a quick read -- quite the opposite. It's a longer book than the page-count might suggest (biggish pages, smallish print), but what slowed my progress was really that I found it impossible to skim passages. The pages are so full of images and thoughts (I was going to say "ideas," which would have been true, too, but less to the point) that I needed to follow every word to properly absorb them. At one stage I said to my wife, "I'm finding this book quite hard work." She said, "Why not give up on it, then?" I had to explain to her that the hard work was one of the reasons I was enjoying the book so much, was finding it so very rewarding.
But then there were those niggles. Some are tiny: except in one instance, where he gets it right, the author gives taxonomic names as Genus Species rather than Genus species, which probably wouldn't bother most people but irritated me as if it were a recurring spelling error. Some are less so: up to about page 300 the nuts and bolts of the writing are pretty impeccable, with only a couple of tiny flaws that I assumed were merely proofing oopsies, but thereafter things get a bit sloppier, the odd little grammatical errors more frequent, as if the copyeditor had been told to get a move on, don't you know we have a deadline to meet?
And then there's that howler I mentioned, which came close to bringing the whole edifice of the novel tumbling down for me -- like a sudden bum note two minutes from the end can wreck a whole symphony. An astronaut among the cast is going to be part of NASA's first manned expedition to the far side of the moon, and
Huh? The following paragraph digs the hole deeper, with technical details of the conditions that might pertain if this were in fact true. But of course it isn't. Presumably influenced by Pink Floyd, the author seems to think the moon has a dark side, which it obviously doesn't. The area of the lunar surface that we don't see gets (give or take) exactly as much sunlight during the month as the part that faces earth.
This schoolboy error, coming just forty pages from the end, made me reassess everything that had come before. Magic realism works because of the "realism" part, the foundation upon which the magic flourishes. I was fairly certain there hadn't been any similar ghastlinesses in the other bits of astronomy thrown into the text, and was to a lesser extent confident about the cartography, but what about the arachnology? The pomology?
So I came away from A Trip to the Stars seeing it as a flawed masterpiece. On the other hand, even flawed masterpieces are fairly few and far between in our age of corporate fiction, so we should be grateful for them.
It's 1965. Given up for adoption as a baby, orphaned by his adoptive parents and now orphaned by the adoptive grandmother who took him in, young Loren has no one left but his adoptive aunt Alma who, a university student, barely knows him and doesn't know what to do with this child who's suddenly her responsibility. While she's still panicking, she takes him as a birthday treat to a small planetarium. There, among the jostling crowds, he's snatched from her. It'll be fifteen years before the pair are reunited.
No, this isn't a crime novel, although there are crimes a-plenty in it.
Loren, as he soon learns, is really Enzo Samax. His abductors are led by his fabulously rich great-uncle Junius, a polymath and obsessive (who for some reason I imagined throughout as being played by Morgan Freeman). Junius takes Enzo to the Canopus Hotel, a building on the outskirts of Las Vegas that the old man has bought and made his home, where he entertains a changing group of house-guests whose interests are as varied and eccentric as one could imagine. They, and Junius himself, give Enzo the kind of home-schooling one might wish for in one's wildest dreams. Junius's -- and soon Enzo's -- fascinations are also the novel's: astronomy, cartography, navigation, arachnology, pomology, planetaria . . .
We spend alternate chapters with Alma who, having renamed herself Mala to get away from her old self, becomes a nurse in the Vietnam War, falls in love with a wounded airman and then, when he disappears, carves out a life that seems never to come together for her and sometimes plumbs the depths of dissolution. Given paranormal powers first by a deliberately induced spider bite and then again, when those have waned, by a spectacular car crash, Mala spends some while as a stage clairvoyant before returning to her own fascinations, with stars, with islands, with observatories . . .
The two lives, Mala's and Enzo's, are widely separated, and yet every now and then there are tantalizing overlaps between them, little coincidences that the participants generally don't notice. Obviously fate will eventually bring Mala and Enzo back together -- one of those coincidences is not so little -- but, until it does, we're treated in effect to two novels linked primarily by their shared obsessions.
Chief among those is astronomy. As you may have guessed, most of the non-real-world proper nouns are astronomical terms, mainly star names. The pieces of shrapnel pulled from Mala's lover in the hospital ship off Vietnam form a constellation, and he incorporates it into an astronomical bracelet for her. When Enzo is given a puppy called Sirius, the star of that name -- the Dog Star -- seems to have disappeared from the night sky, as if it had come to earth temporarily to be Enzo's companion. One of Junius's eccentric guests at the Canopus Hotel believes that Atlantis was destroyed when an asteroid plummeted into the ocean alongside it. There are astronomical links studded throughout the book like, well, stars studded in the night sky.
I'd be hard-pressed to say that A Trip to the Stars is a magic-realist novel, but it certainly contains a healthy dash of magic realism and there's a sort of magic-realist sense throughout it, even during the straightforwardly mimetic sections. This air of imagination is one of the reasons why I found the novel so infernally readable: even the most mundane things were given a sense of wonder.
At the same time, I didn't find A Trip to the Stars a quick read -- quite the opposite. It's a longer book than the page-count might suggest (biggish pages, smallish print), but what slowed my progress was really that I found it impossible to skim passages. The pages are so full of images and thoughts (I was going to say "ideas," which would have been true, too, but less to the point) that I needed to follow every word to properly absorb them. At one stage I said to my wife, "I'm finding this book quite hard work." She said, "Why not give up on it, then?" I had to explain to her that the hard work was one of the reasons I was enjoying the book so much, was finding it so very rewarding.
But then there were those niggles. Some are tiny: except in one instance, where he gets it right, the author gives taxonomic names as Genus Species rather than Genus species, which probably wouldn't bother most people but irritated me as if it were a recurring spelling error. Some are less so: up to about page 300 the nuts and bolts of the writing are pretty impeccable, with only a couple of tiny flaws that I assumed were merely proofing oopsies, but thereafter things get a bit sloppier, the odd little grammatical errors more frequent, as if the copyeditor had been told to get a move on, don't you know we have a deadline to meet?
And then there's that howler I mentioned, which came close to bringing the whole edifice of the novel tumbling down for me -- like a sudden bum note two minutes from the end can wreck a whole symphony. An astronaut among the cast is going to be part of NASA's first manned expedition to the far side of the moon, and
The only natural source of illumination on the far side is starlight . . . [page 458 of the Dial Press first edition]
Huh? The following paragraph digs the hole deeper, with technical details of the conditions that might pertain if this were in fact true. But of course it isn't. Presumably influenced by Pink Floyd, the author seems to think the moon has a dark side, which it obviously doesn't. The area of the lunar surface that we don't see gets (give or take) exactly as much sunlight during the month as the part that faces earth.
This schoolboy error, coming just forty pages from the end, made me reassess everything that had come before. Magic realism works because of the "realism" part, the foundation upon which the magic flourishes. I was fairly certain there hadn't been any similar ghastlinesses in the other bits of astronomy thrown into the text, and was to a lesser extent confident about the cartography, but what about the arachnology? The pomology?
So I came away from A Trip to the Stars seeing it as a flawed masterpiece. On the other hand, even flawed masterpieces are fairly few and far between in our age of corporate fiction, so we should be grateful for them.
Currently reading
January 14, 2009I'm a little befuddled by some of the rave reviews of this book. I'm not sure if I'll finish it. I was enjoying it as some very light reading, but moving very slowly though it, and not really caring that much about the characters. Mala's love affair is pretty standard man-fantasy stuff (incredible sexual connection, woman doesn't have emotional needs, they don't need to talk) but it's not the amazing connection that NC apparently wants us to believe. I mean, they don't feel comfortable talking to each other about some pretty important stuff. And he kind of clubs the reader over the head with the star/spider/etc. motifs and encyclopedic dialogue. Does anyone actually talk like that?
Then again, it's an OK distraction. I may finish it.
Then again, it's an OK distraction. I may finish it.
May 18, 2020
Sophisticated mix of reality and fantasy. Action takes place from the 1950's through the 1980s. Setting is mostly at a "hotel" on the outskirts of Las Vegas and the surrounding desert. Other locations include a Viet Nam War era hospital ship, tiny Pacific islands, NYC, New Orleans, and more. Has an abundance of characters to keep track of - with my bad memory I sometimes became confused who was who. But that didn't detract from my enjoyment of this book. This was a roller coaster ride with lots of action and a swoon-worthy love story. "Coincidences" abound in this book but the author leads readers to believe they are part of the mysterious character of the protagonists.
November 18, 2013
A great story as long as you are able to not get tired of 57,000 'coincidences'. Quiet injections of implausibility. Funny how you can accept vampires on the Rio Puerco, NM magic tiger warriors among the Người dân tộc thiếu số, and tarantulas that can imbue psychic powers through their venom but become frustrated when the author falsely describes local vegetation like mesquites and Bursura's in Reno, NV and Ironwoods in Las Vegas- It's the Mohave Desert! It gets way too cold there in the winter for Bursura that's impossible!
January 20, 2022
absolutely loved this book more than anything
February 16, 2023
The novel "A Trip to the Stars" is a startling find, especially given that I found it on the bargain table at Chapters for 2.50. The novel chronicles Mala and Enzo an aunt and her 10 year old nephew who are seperated one fateful day at a planetarium. The remainder of the book follows their seperated paths and their various quests to get back to one another. The book is filled with lost people, who are seeking lost things. It was this description of the lost people looking for lost things that drew me to the book. I was pleased to find such an exciting steal and spent my whole vacation week reading the novel at any spare opportunity I had. It has now moved to the top of my list of favorite novels and I want to read it again because their is so much packed into it. As I usually do in movie and book reviews I will do a numbered description of some of my favorite points.
1) This book is too smart for me! I had to read it with a dictionary sitting beside me because there were a few words that I didn't know. The ones that stick out include natatorium, quincunx, and palimpsest. Do you know what these are?
Heres the definitions:
Natatorium: Swimming pool
Quincunx: a grouping of five objects or people. One in each corner and one in the middle. In the novel this refered to the way the garden was structured
Palimpsest: a piece of parchment or something similar where text has been erased completely or partially to make room for new text. In the novel this refers to a scar that had partially healed and could barely be seen.
The book is filled with references to explorers, philosophers, famous works of literature and a description of several constellations I had never heard of. I felt like I was missing a lot of really important references to things that I should know. For instance, the book makes reference to The Arabian Nights several times and I have a suspicion that parts of the book parallel stories in the Arabian nights. Makes me want to read it now! Several characters, locations and buildings are named after constellations. I caught a few of these because I know some constellations and others I caught becuase I was told by the author.
2) The author loves names. I got the impression that every item and person in the book was named that way for a very specific reason. I had a suspicion that if I had looked up the names in a dictionary or found out their meaning in a foreign language it would have told me something about the nature of that character. For instance Alma (the aunt in the story) changes her name to Mala after she loses her nephew. The author clues us in that this means "bad" in a different language. Mala is racked with guilt over the loss of her young nephew and sorts this out as the book goes on. Several of the characters are named after constellations and two mute characters are named Aleph and Aym which are the two characters in the arabaic alphabet that don't have sounds. I have always loved naming for character and if I ever right a book my characters will have names that hint very subtly at the nature of their character. I love how God changes names in the bible when a person's character goes through a significant switch.
3)There is my favorite kind of puzzle and mystery in this book. It is a story that chronicles the lives of two people and shows how their lives work out for good in the end. The message of the story as I see it is that everything happens for a reason and that people come into our lives just when we need them. Also, the events in the story are bleak and hopeless at times but every instance of things that happen in the story eventually work out for the main characters good. The author is kind enough to let us see how Mala and Enzo are connected even though they are miles apart. It is exciting to know that Mala runs into a hotel owner named Canopus in Thailand, while Enzo stays at his former hotel in Las Vegas. And it is exciting to know that the spider collector who Mala works for in the first year seperated from Enzo is the same spider collector who arrives at the Hotel Canopus and lives with Enzo, years before a connection is ever made. There are more little things like this but the biggest and most suprising of all would be a shame for me to ruin. It fills me with glee just thinking about it and leads to Mala's revelation that everything happens for a reason.
4) This book is set in a childhood dream location of mine. Enzo lives in a hotel with well over a hundred rooms. When I was little this was one of my dreams: to own a house with at least a hundred rooms. As a child I thought it would be great to have a room for every purpose or activity that you might ever want to engage in. The author does a fantastic job of showing us the fine details of many of the hotels rooms. It is a place filled with great mystery and I so wish it was real so that I could explore it at leisure. The other location that the book is set in is the desert. The desert has a very deep meaning for me after God did some major healing work around the desert. I love the desert and the wide open spaces. Much of Enzo's life is surrounded by the desert both in Las Vegas and in Acoma.
5) This book shows in painful detail what happens when a person tries to run from themselves. I have done this and know the feelings that fill you when you are trying to escape your own brain. Mala is filled with guilt over losing Enzo and she travels far and wide trying to escape herself. She stays on various Islands all over the world and also gets involved in some mind altering substances to numb the feelings she is feeling. I have seen both of these methods played out in people around me and know well that people physically remove themselves to far of places as well as mentally remove themselves when their realities are too painful. For a brief time after university I tried to escape myself but was unsuccessful. Thankful our God is a god of love and I was eventually able to stop running.
6) This book has a beautiful love story attached to it and it makes me want to cry even thinking about it. Mala and Cassiel meet in Vietnam during the war and through a series of events are torn apart. He leaves her with a bracelet made out of shrapnel removed from his body and formed into the shape of stars and isn't seen again for many years. He also leaves her with a sign for a celestial fix which is what navigators use to show they have found the right path. At the end of the book he asks him to marry her and gives her a ring with a diamond in the shape of a star and the symbol for the celestial fix etched in the bottom. I love the intimacy and uniquenss that implies and would love to have piece of jewelery that had that much intimate meaning attached to it. This book is great for showing the importance of having symbols to show where you have been and how you have changed. Enzo carrys items left over his mom when she was younger, Mala has a necklace she found right before she left for vietnam and the shrapnel bracelet and Cassiel keeps a leaf that Mala wrote both of their names on. I am a huge fan of symbols and can't wait to have a wedding ring and all that it symbolizes. In the meantime, especially while reading this book (which left me with a huge sense of longing and looking for something...only I don't know what) I have my ring that I bought myself at Creation Fest that says in Hebrew "your maker is your husband". I am wearing it right now actually, as I am still suffering from some post valentines depression.
7) I love that this book doesn't have a neat and tidy ending. It ends on an unfinished note, much like our lives. For a book that is very much about life, it is a fitting ending one that leaves me feeling satisfied and happy. (I know that many people will likely not feel this way however).
All right I think that is enough. I do sugggest that everyone reads this book as it is just so beautiful. It is the kind of book I would want to write if I ever had the motivation to spend that long plotting one out. Here are some quotes:
""And hte halfway house, I also realized, was an natural outgrowth of my uncles pre-occupation with lost people and lost things" pg 137
"For exampe, the fact that English word desert comes from the Latin desertare, as in "to desert", and means not an empty, but an abandoned place" pg 113
"That when you find what you really want, you know that losing it would be worse than losing your life. That makes me afraid" pg 86
"The worse thing about fear is what it does to you when you try to hide it" pg 86
1) This book is too smart for me! I had to read it with a dictionary sitting beside me because there were a few words that I didn't know. The ones that stick out include natatorium, quincunx, and palimpsest. Do you know what these are?
Heres the definitions:
Natatorium: Swimming pool
Quincunx: a grouping of five objects or people. One in each corner and one in the middle. In the novel this refered to the way the garden was structured
Palimpsest: a piece of parchment or something similar where text has been erased completely or partially to make room for new text. In the novel this refers to a scar that had partially healed and could barely be seen.
The book is filled with references to explorers, philosophers, famous works of literature and a description of several constellations I had never heard of. I felt like I was missing a lot of really important references to things that I should know. For instance, the book makes reference to The Arabian Nights several times and I have a suspicion that parts of the book parallel stories in the Arabian nights. Makes me want to read it now! Several characters, locations and buildings are named after constellations. I caught a few of these because I know some constellations and others I caught becuase I was told by the author.
2) The author loves names. I got the impression that every item and person in the book was named that way for a very specific reason. I had a suspicion that if I had looked up the names in a dictionary or found out their meaning in a foreign language it would have told me something about the nature of that character. For instance Alma (the aunt in the story) changes her name to Mala after she loses her nephew. The author clues us in that this means "bad" in a different language. Mala is racked with guilt over the loss of her young nephew and sorts this out as the book goes on. Several of the characters are named after constellations and two mute characters are named Aleph and Aym which are the two characters in the arabaic alphabet that don't have sounds. I have always loved naming for character and if I ever right a book my characters will have names that hint very subtly at the nature of their character. I love how God changes names in the bible when a person's character goes through a significant switch.
3)There is my favorite kind of puzzle and mystery in this book. It is a story that chronicles the lives of two people and shows how their lives work out for good in the end. The message of the story as I see it is that everything happens for a reason and that people come into our lives just when we need them. Also, the events in the story are bleak and hopeless at times but every instance of things that happen in the story eventually work out for the main characters good. The author is kind enough to let us see how Mala and Enzo are connected even though they are miles apart. It is exciting to know that Mala runs into a hotel owner named Canopus in Thailand, while Enzo stays at his former hotel in Las Vegas. And it is exciting to know that the spider collector who Mala works for in the first year seperated from Enzo is the same spider collector who arrives at the Hotel Canopus and lives with Enzo, years before a connection is ever made. There are more little things like this but the biggest and most suprising of all would be a shame for me to ruin. It fills me with glee just thinking about it and leads to Mala's revelation that everything happens for a reason.
4) This book is set in a childhood dream location of mine. Enzo lives in a hotel with well over a hundred rooms. When I was little this was one of my dreams: to own a house with at least a hundred rooms. As a child I thought it would be great to have a room for every purpose or activity that you might ever want to engage in. The author does a fantastic job of showing us the fine details of many of the hotels rooms. It is a place filled with great mystery and I so wish it was real so that I could explore it at leisure. The other location that the book is set in is the desert. The desert has a very deep meaning for me after God did some major healing work around the desert. I love the desert and the wide open spaces. Much of Enzo's life is surrounded by the desert both in Las Vegas and in Acoma.
5) This book shows in painful detail what happens when a person tries to run from themselves. I have done this and know the feelings that fill you when you are trying to escape your own brain. Mala is filled with guilt over losing Enzo and she travels far and wide trying to escape herself. She stays on various Islands all over the world and also gets involved in some mind altering substances to numb the feelings she is feeling. I have seen both of these methods played out in people around me and know well that people physically remove themselves to far of places as well as mentally remove themselves when their realities are too painful. For a brief time after university I tried to escape myself but was unsuccessful. Thankful our God is a god of love and I was eventually able to stop running.
6) This book has a beautiful love story attached to it and it makes me want to cry even thinking about it. Mala and Cassiel meet in Vietnam during the war and through a series of events are torn apart. He leaves her with a bracelet made out of shrapnel removed from his body and formed into the shape of stars and isn't seen again for many years. He also leaves her with a sign for a celestial fix which is what navigators use to show they have found the right path. At the end of the book he asks him to marry her and gives her a ring with a diamond in the shape of a star and the symbol for the celestial fix etched in the bottom. I love the intimacy and uniquenss that implies and would love to have piece of jewelery that had that much intimate meaning attached to it. This book is great for showing the importance of having symbols to show where you have been and how you have changed. Enzo carrys items left over his mom when she was younger, Mala has a necklace she found right before she left for vietnam and the shrapnel bracelet and Cassiel keeps a leaf that Mala wrote both of their names on. I am a huge fan of symbols and can't wait to have a wedding ring and all that it symbolizes. In the meantime, especially while reading this book (which left me with a huge sense of longing and looking for something...only I don't know what) I have my ring that I bought myself at Creation Fest that says in Hebrew "your maker is your husband". I am wearing it right now actually, as I am still suffering from some post valentines depression.
7) I love that this book doesn't have a neat and tidy ending. It ends on an unfinished note, much like our lives. For a book that is very much about life, it is a fitting ending one that leaves me feeling satisfied and happy. (I know that many people will likely not feel this way however).
All right I think that is enough. I do sugggest that everyone reads this book as it is just so beautiful. It is the kind of book I would want to write if I ever had the motivation to spend that long plotting one out. Here are some quotes:
""And hte halfway house, I also realized, was an natural outgrowth of my uncles pre-occupation with lost people and lost things" pg 137
"For exampe, the fact that English word desert comes from the Latin desertare, as in "to desert", and means not an empty, but an abandoned place" pg 113
"That when you find what you really want, you know that losing it would be worse than losing your life. That makes me afraid" pg 86
"The worse thing about fear is what it does to you when you try to hide it" pg 86
July 22, 2009
(This review attempts to avoid spoilers while presenting something of a synopsis of the plot. Personally I don't think it needs spoiler warnings but if you like going into a book knowing nothing about it then let me just say that I very much enjoyed this book and highly recommend it.)
I wish I had written it. I could give a story higher praise but not much. A Trip to the Stars is an extremely engaging, well-researched story with a lively cast of unforgettable characters.
The plot spans the 15 years from 1965 to 1980 and travels from New York City to Las Vegas to Vietnam to a series of islands scattered all over the globe. The two main characters are Enzo Samax and his adopted aunt Mala Revell. (Who begin the book with the names Loren and Alma Revell, respectively.) Their story begins in a planetarium in New York City and will end in a Hawaiian planetarium – which should give a clue as to the importance of symmetry, coincidence, and all things stellar in this novel. While at the NYC observatory 10 year old Loren is kidnapped, completely devastating his 20 year old aunt and sending her on a search that will end up changing her in surprising and fantastic ways.
In alternating chapters we are given first-person accounts of Loren and Alma and what happens to them over the next decade and a half. Alma of course searches frantically for Loren but the trail is stone cold. She barely knows Loren herself but found herself the boy’s only guardian after his adopted parents and then grandmother died. After coming to terms with the fruitlessness of her search and with a deep sense of guilt, she changes her name to Mala Revell, enlists in the Army as an x-ray technician and goes to Vietnam even though she has moral misgivings about the war itself. It is there that she meets and then loses the love of her life. She then dives deep into despair and tries to assuage her guilt and depression over losing two loved ones. She spirals into a life of alcohol and drugs while island-hopping around the South Pacific and even serves some time as a mind reader’s assistant.
Loren meanwhile finds out that his “kidnapper” is actually his uncle – his real uncle, a man by the name of Junius Samax. Samax tells the boy that his real name is Enzo and offers him a chance live in his uncle’s austere Hotel Canopus outside Las Vegas. Loren is told that a letter explaining what happened will be sent to his aunt – a letter which never gets delivered. Since Loren is precocious enough to realize that his young aunt cannot really afford to make a life for both of them he figures that living with his uncle would be the best idea for all concerned. Living in the Hotel Canopus Loren begins going by the name on his birth certificate, Enzo, and finds himself in a truly magical place peopled with exotic characters. Over the years he learns about his mother but of his father little or nothing is known.
The main theme of the novel is the search for lost people, places, or things. Enzo searches for his father, Mala searches first for Enzo then for her lover Geza Cassiel, and other characters search for such far-flung things as Atlantis, a lost moon pendant, vampires, and even the dark side of the moon. The novel’s symbology is primarily concerned with, as I mentioned earlier, astronomy and even delves into astrology and other supernatural things. Christopher has no qualms in making the numinous real. After separate spider bites both Enzo and Mala present with supernaturally heightened senses for a while. And Mala goes through a phase where she can share a person’s memories as that person is having them. Not to mention that coincidences occur with a precision that makes one think that the invisible hand of fate is directing events.
In fact the frequency of coincidences is my only real gripe with the novel. One or two occurrences at the end of the story stretched my suspension of disbelief to the breaking point in a deus ex machina kind of way. But honestly, these characters are so believable that I can almost assume they really do have some sort of latent supernatural power so that events seem to bend around them.
Even with that caveat I would definitely recommend this novel to anyone looking for a good read. I got emotionally involved with these people, even the ancillary characters and never once got tired of reading about them. And really, what more could you ask for in a novel?
I wish I had written it. I could give a story higher praise but not much. A Trip to the Stars is an extremely engaging, well-researched story with a lively cast of unforgettable characters.
The plot spans the 15 years from 1965 to 1980 and travels from New York City to Las Vegas to Vietnam to a series of islands scattered all over the globe. The two main characters are Enzo Samax and his adopted aunt Mala Revell. (Who begin the book with the names Loren and Alma Revell, respectively.) Their story begins in a planetarium in New York City and will end in a Hawaiian planetarium – which should give a clue as to the importance of symmetry, coincidence, and all things stellar in this novel. While at the NYC observatory 10 year old Loren is kidnapped, completely devastating his 20 year old aunt and sending her on a search that will end up changing her in surprising and fantastic ways.
In alternating chapters we are given first-person accounts of Loren and Alma and what happens to them over the next decade and a half. Alma of course searches frantically for Loren but the trail is stone cold. She barely knows Loren herself but found herself the boy’s only guardian after his adopted parents and then grandmother died. After coming to terms with the fruitlessness of her search and with a deep sense of guilt, she changes her name to Mala Revell, enlists in the Army as an x-ray technician and goes to Vietnam even though she has moral misgivings about the war itself. It is there that she meets and then loses the love of her life. She then dives deep into despair and tries to assuage her guilt and depression over losing two loved ones. She spirals into a life of alcohol and drugs while island-hopping around the South Pacific and even serves some time as a mind reader’s assistant.
Loren meanwhile finds out that his “kidnapper” is actually his uncle – his real uncle, a man by the name of Junius Samax. Samax tells the boy that his real name is Enzo and offers him a chance live in his uncle’s austere Hotel Canopus outside Las Vegas. Loren is told that a letter explaining what happened will be sent to his aunt – a letter which never gets delivered. Since Loren is precocious enough to realize that his young aunt cannot really afford to make a life for both of them he figures that living with his uncle would be the best idea for all concerned. Living in the Hotel Canopus Loren begins going by the name on his birth certificate, Enzo, and finds himself in a truly magical place peopled with exotic characters. Over the years he learns about his mother but of his father little or nothing is known.
The main theme of the novel is the search for lost people, places, or things. Enzo searches for his father, Mala searches first for Enzo then for her lover Geza Cassiel, and other characters search for such far-flung things as Atlantis, a lost moon pendant, vampires, and even the dark side of the moon. The novel’s symbology is primarily concerned with, as I mentioned earlier, astronomy and even delves into astrology and other supernatural things. Christopher has no qualms in making the numinous real. After separate spider bites both Enzo and Mala present with supernaturally heightened senses for a while. And Mala goes through a phase where she can share a person’s memories as that person is having them. Not to mention that coincidences occur with a precision that makes one think that the invisible hand of fate is directing events.
In fact the frequency of coincidences is my only real gripe with the novel. One or two occurrences at the end of the story stretched my suspension of disbelief to the breaking point in a deus ex machina kind of way. But honestly, these characters are so believable that I can almost assume they really do have some sort of latent supernatural power so that events seem to bend around them.
Even with that caveat I would definitely recommend this novel to anyone looking for a good read. I got emotionally involved with these people, even the ancillary characters and never once got tired of reading about them. And really, what more could you ask for in a novel?
September 27, 2016
★★★★☆ 4 METEOR-SHOWER-STARS
Well, if I thought reviewing ASOIAF was a tough task, then I definitely know nothing. A Trip to the Stars by Nicholas Christopher was possibly the most difficult book to review yet, simply because it was such a tightly interwoven story of love, life, dreams, death, and the magic hidden around us and the universe. An epic, no doubt, with an underlying theme of searching for lost things.
Reading this book left me overwhelmed. It took me a year to finish it just because it was too 'elaborate' for me to handle. It's not everyday that I got to read about the city of Atlantis, astrology, Pythagorean principle, arachnology, vampires and anthropology all in one book, so you get the idea. Throughout the book you'd see countless references to spiders and stars and how the universe played its tricks on the characters' melancholic lives.
While it was fascinating how these topics has interwoven into the creation of such a powerful story, it is unfortunate that the verbose left the characters flat and boring. The portrayal of the parallel in two protagonists' lives over the course of fifteen years apart was somewhat overambitious and at times dragging. After a while, you'd most likely lost interest on the characters. While they're all fascinating in their own ways, there's no solid ground for the readers to relate and have sympathy upon. I couldn't care less about them by the time I entered the last 3 chapters that concentrated on the final revelation.
A great book to read at least once without feeling like a complete waste. But I won't be picking this up again in a very long time, because then it'd be too "excruciating" to experience such elaborate, dragging, overwhelmed plots over again.
Find out more at:
https://thebleedingeyes.wordpress.com/
We had voyaged far into space and now we were returning. Before leaving the solar system, we orbited the moon and several planets – skating along Saturn’s rings, probing Jupiter’s red spot, and skimming the icy mountain ranges of Uranus. We trailed a comet and threaded a swarm of meteors. And after Pluto, we were among the stars: glittering clusters, bracelets, and crescents that swirled around us.
Well, if I thought reviewing ASOIAF was a tough task, then I definitely know nothing. A Trip to the Stars by Nicholas Christopher was possibly the most difficult book to review yet, simply because it was such a tightly interwoven story of love, life, dreams, death, and the magic hidden around us and the universe. An epic, no doubt, with an underlying theme of searching for lost things.
“We are all of us accidents of nature, refined by thousands of graftings … some that take, some that don’t.”
Reading this book left me overwhelmed. It took me a year to finish it just because it was too 'elaborate' for me to handle. It's not everyday that I got to read about the city of Atlantis, astrology, Pythagorean principle, arachnology, vampires and anthropology all in one book, so you get the idea. Throughout the book you'd see countless references to spiders and stars and how the universe played its tricks on the characters' melancholic lives.
As often happens, the worst thing that ever happened to me was at the same time the luckiest thing. Fortunately, I realized this soon enough to make the most of it.
While it was fascinating how these topics has interwoven into the creation of such a powerful story, it is unfortunate that the verbose left the characters flat and boring. The portrayal of the parallel in two protagonists' lives over the course of fifteen years apart was somewhat overambitious and at times dragging. After a while, you'd most likely lost interest on the characters. While they're all fascinating in their own ways, there's no solid ground for the readers to relate and have sympathy upon. I couldn't care less about them by the time I entered the last 3 chapters that concentrated on the final revelation.
A great book to read at least once without feeling like a complete waste. But I won't be picking this up again in a very long time, because then it'd be too "excruciating" to experience such elaborate, dragging, overwhelmed plots over again.
Find out more at:
https://thebleedingeyes.wordpress.com/
January 20, 2023
Yıldızlara Yolculuk, bir kayboluşun, kaybetmenin, savrulmanın, bulmanın, bulunmanın ve kavuşmanın öyküsü. Hikayemiz 1968 yılında başlıyor. Kahramanımız Loren, evlatlık verildiği ailesini bir trafik kazasında kaybettikten sonra üvey anneannesiyle birlikte yaşamaya başlamıştır. Kısa süre sonra, anneannesinin de ölmesi üzerine, Boston’ da yaşayan ve üniversitede okuyan üvey teyzesi Alma, Loren’le birlikte bir hayat kurmak üzere çocuğu almaya gelir. Loren, teyzesi Alma ile izlediği bir gösterinin çıkışında, kalabalık içerisinde kaybolur. Alma kaçırıldığını düşündüğü üvey yeğenini her yerde arayacaktır.
Kitap bu olaydan sonra, 15 yıllık bir zaman diliminde, yaşananları hem Loren’in hem de Alma’nın gözünden anlatan çift katmanlı bir roman haline dönüşüyor. Alma, üst üste yaşadığı kayıpların arkasından hayatın içinde savrularak, kayıplarını ve yaşadığı suçluluk duygunu unutmaya çalışırken yolu, önce bir örümcek bilimcisiyle kesişecek, oradan da Vietnam savaşında, röntgen hemşiresi olarak çalışacağı bir hastane gemisine düşecektir. Savaşın en ağır yıkımlarını her gün tekrar tekrar yaşamak zorunda kaldığı bu gemide, hayatının en büyük aşkına da rastlayacaktır. O güne dek yitirmek konusunda uzmanlaşan Alma, bir şekilde sevgilisinin izini de savaşta kaybederek, tüm yitenlerin ardından, yıllarca sürecek gezgin bir hayata başlayacaktır.
Diğer tarafta Loren, geçmişinden çıkıp gelen akrabaları ile birlikte Las Vegas’ta, çölde kendine yeni bir hayat kuracaktır. Aslında Loren de uzun bir yolculuğa çıkmıştır ama onun yolculuğu geçmişe ve geçmişindeki sırlara doğru yapılan bir yolculuktur.
Ayrıca bu güne kadar okuduğum en inanılmaz ve sıra dışı kavuşma sahnesine de bu kitapta rastladım. Her şeye rağmen hiç de abartılı gelmedi. İçimi sıcak bir mutlulukla doldurdu. O anda hayatta her şey mümkündü. Sırf o satırlar için bile okumaya değerdi.
Romanın yumuşacık bir anlatımı var. Daha ilk sayfadan insanı sarıp sarmalıyor ve kitabın içine hapsediyor. Ana hikayenin yanında, romanın bonusu olarak, hikayenin içine serpiştirilmiş, çeşitli efsane ve masallardan kopup gelmiş mistik kahramanlar da okuyucunun dikkatini her daim taze tutuyor. Ve en önemlisi de tüm bunlar hep yıldızların altında oluyor. Kahramanlarımızın kaderlerinin üzerine ışıklarını düşüren yıldızlar, size de satırların arasından göz kırpıyorlar.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 401 reviews