A Trip To The Stars: A Novel Nicholas Christopher,
Publisher: Touchstone
ISBN: 0743203305
Edition: Paperback; 2001-02-20
Summary:
A Trip to the Stars opens with a kidnapping at a New York planetarium
in 1965 and ends exactly 15 years later at a Hawaiian observatory. In
the 500 intervening and absurdly readable pages, its two narrators
undergo equal parts heartache and discovery--not to mention a fine
excess of things astronomical. As Nicholas Christopher's exhilarating
third novel begins, 10-year-old Loren reaches for his aunt Alma's
hand while the crowd surges around them. Alas, he's in for the first
of many jolts: The woman, who was pulling me hard now to a blue sedan
idling at the curb, was not my aunt. Until she opened the rear door
and pushed me in, I thought she must have mistaken me for another
child. Then, before stepping in after me, she looked me full in the
face and betrayed no surprise. Already twice orphaned, Loren is
spirited away from the young woman he considers his only relative and
finds himself in a strange building on the edge of the Mojave Desert.
Inhabited by "people looking for lost things" and, as he later
realizes, "people who had once been lost--like me," the Hotel Canopus
is the life work of his uncle, the collector and pomologist Junius
Samax. (Let it be known that A Trip to the Stars features the most
fanciful monikers this side of Howard Norman's novels.) Now restored
to his real name, Enzo, and assured that his aunt has been informed
of his fate, the boy is given the sort of home schooling only
Nicholas Christopher could dream up--the usual academic suspects
enhanced by ancient languages, Zuni wisdom, mnemonics, and, of
course, astronomy. (In this novel of multiple stargazers, even Enzo's
wolf dog, Sirius, has a head for the heavens.) Meanwhile, Alma,
having failed to find her nephew, attempts to rid herself of her
past: she changes her name to Mala and, following the most compelling
spider bite in all fiction, joins the Navy Nursing Corps and heads
for Vietnam. As the author alternates between Enzo and Mala's very
separate universes, he packs his book with suspense and arcana.
Echoes and parallels prevail, as do demons and eccentrics. The Hotel
Canopus is filled with exotic individuals, including an
eight-fingered pianist-arachnologist, an art historian in hot pursuit
of Adam's navel, and women named Desirée, Della, Dolores,
Denise, and Dalia. But it also houses a resentful relative or two. A
Trip to the Stars is so grounded that all its magic, coincidence, and
mystery seem hyper-real, from a girl who becomes a vampire to Mala's
lover, a soldier whose shrapnel wounds mirror the Andromeda galaxy.
Despite the intricacy of his novel, Nicholas Christopher has wisely
declined to preface it with a family tree or a list of dramatis
personae. For this we can be grateful, since much of the book's
pleasure comes from watching him weave destinies, miracles, and more
than a few blood feuds as he proffers the ultimate celestial fix.
--Kerry Fried
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