It's the personal implications of first contact that Sawyer (Illegal Alien) dramatizes in his disturbing and uneven new novel. Set in Canada, circa 2017, the story focuses on Heather and her computer-scientist husband, Kyle, who have separated following the suicide of their daughter Mary. When younger daughter Rebecca confronts her parents and accuses her father of molesting her, the family starts to shake apart. Redemption comes in the unlikely form of alien altruism: the messages from Alpha Centauri that psychologist Heather has studied for years prove to be blueprints for a "psychospace" device that enables her to see into the overmind of humanity, and to know anyones deepest thoughts. In a flash, Kyle is exonerated, Rebecca apologizesAand her nasty, manipulative therapist is blamed for the false accusation. Although the novel ends with Heather greeting the first starship from Alpha Centauri, the bulk of the plot centers around the family's own mystery, and so the conclusion comes off as anti-climactic. Sawyer also includes too many digressions about the cultural significance of Seinfeld, Star Trek bloopers and quantum physics, delivering a tale that ultimately works more as a study of the human heart than as believable story of alien encounter. (Publishers Weekly)
What is mind? No matter.
What is matter? Never mind.
Heather Davis took a sip of her coffee and looked at the brass clock on the mantelpiece. Her nineteen-year-old daughter Rebecca had said she’d be here by 8:00 P.M., and it was already eight-twenty.
Surely Becky knew how awkward this was. She had said she’d wanted a meeting with her parents — both of them, simultaneously. That Heather Davis and Kyle Graves had been separated for almost a year now didn’t enter into the equation. They could have met at a restaurant, but no, Heather had volunteered the house — the one in which she and Kyle had raised Becky and her older sister Mary, the one Kyle had moved out of last August. Now, though, with the silence between her and Kyle having stretched on for yet another minute, she was regretting that spontaneous offer.
Although Heather hadn’t seen Becky for almost four months, she had a hunch about what Becky wanted to say. When they spoke over the phone, Becky often talked about her boyfriend Zack. No doubt she was about to announce an engagement.
Of course, Heather wished her daughter would wait a few more years. But then again, it wasn’t as if she was going to university. Becky worked in a clothing store on Spadina. Both Heather and Kyle taught at the University of Toronto — she in psychology, he in computer science. It pained them that Becky wasn’t pursuing higher education. In fact, under the Faculty Association agreement, their children were entitled to free tuition at U of T. At least Mary had taken advantage of that for one year before…
No.
No, this was a time of celebration. Becky was getting married! That was what mattered today.
