Gentlemen of Space: A Novel

by Ira Sher

Magnolia Court is not the most magical place in Florida, but to young Georgie Finch, this outsized housing project in the heart of the suburbs is the center of the universe. In this superbly crafted, imaginative, and intelligent novel, Georgie tells us the story of when his father, Jerry, won a competition in 1976 to become the first civilian man on the moon. He also tells us about his beautiful babysitter, who has a crush on Jerry; his Jackie O-like mother, Barbara, the long-suffering wife to an everyday genius; Jerry's high school friend Lyle Barnes, running for local office on his coattails; and the mysterious journalist Bob Nightly, who seems the only person determined to get to the bottom of who Jerry Finch really is.
Once Jerry is shot into space, Magnolia Court turns into the worst sort of American media circus, replete with card tables, Winnebagos, cookouts, and telescopes. Georgie tentatively navigates this space, dodging the starstruck commoners who have come to worship at the astronauts' feet. When Jerry goes missing, the camp turns into a vigil, punctuated by potluck suppers and banners. Eventually the astronauts come back without Jerry and likewise descend on Magnolia Court - in their spacesuits - to show their respect. All the while Georgie gets phone calls from his father in space, but no one will believe him. Should we? Or is his entire story just that, a story?

Genres: Fiction

304 pages, Hardcover

First published March 25, 2003

Reviews

[Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the more remarkable books I've read in a looong time. Weirdly compelling and subtly surreal until it creeps into a surreality that suspends all disbelief and just carries you along. Not an easy read, but enjoyable nonetheless.

[Jade Dove · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven't read this novel in several years but I vividly remember certain characters and scenes from it, and I also remember the dreamy atmosphere of the story and the spellbinding tone it maintains throughout.
The scenes of the young boy observing his parents, the babysitter being her lonely outcast self and the flashback to the fairy tale-esque part where the boy's mother and father have a magical evening where the father-as-a-teen dives down to the bottom of a lake to retrieve a forgotten treasure for his beloved. I remember it being a commentary on family, society, the media circus surrounding news events, the eyes of childhood and life in the 1970s.
I'd love to reread it again sometime and rediscover it. As of now it feels so distant that I can only recall snatches of it like a half-remembered dream. Fitting.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ira Sher’s Gentlemen of Space, is one of those tough-to-explain novels. It’s about an everyman sent to the moon on a NASA mission and goes missing. But of course, it’s about more than that. Most of the book is told from the perspective of the astronaut’s nine-year-old son as he looks out on and lives through the spectacle of media and space fanatics encamped outside his apartment building. It’s about hero-worship, and it’s about disillusionment, and it’s about escape, and a lot of other things and probably even more stuff that I missed.

It is not an easy book to read. Everything is described in such a poetic way that if you try to fly over any sentence you only end up having to read it again. The reader must stop and absorb one line before tackling the next. It’s a dreamlike story where anything is bound to happen. The author somehow makes even the most absurd events, like the remaining astronauts camping outside the apartment building in their spacesuits, seem very believable. This often takes even more deep prose to illustrate what is happening. I understood the author’s desire to say something deeper with his story but such wordiness got to be a burden on the flow of the story.

Which is not to say I didn’t like the book. It was a good story and, again, somehow very believable. It was Sher’s debut novel and it would be interesting to see if he learns to streamline his writing in his next work.

[Tex · Rating 4 out of 5]

After struggling like crazy to get started with this book, I was delighted...no that's not the right word...pleased...to read this first novel by the NPR contributor (which was, by the by, my main reason for picking it up in the first place). It was dreamy and surreal which was part of why it was so difficult to get started (put it down twice before sitting with it for good). In the end, the dreamlike qualities and the fantastic situations become as real as the US space program was to Americans who grew up in the 1960s. One reviewer called it "gentle" and that is the word that seems the most apt.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't like that the author used the names Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin for his characters. I think he should have created fictitious characters for the story.

[Beth · Rating 2 out of 5]

Cannot get into this book! I like the plot idea and am generally accepting of super descriptive writing, but it's a little too much here.