(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?
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.
What do You think about A Trip To The Stars (2001)?
this is then closest thing to a one-size-fits-all book that ive come across. whenever someone asks me "just for something good". "i dont 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 like it. thats the problem. i dont. 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 im 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. its 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!
—karen
So.Mir fehlen die Worte.Neben unzähligen anderen vergessenen Büchern stand 'Eine Reise zu den Sternen'plötzlich in einem Regal im indischen Kinderheim, in dem ich ein Jahr als Freiwillige verbringe. Bei einer großen Aufräumaktion aufgetaucht und mir völlig unbekannt erschien der Klappentext nicht vielversprechend und ich hatte keine Erwartungen. Trotzdem fing ich an es zu lesen und innerhalb der ersten Kapiteln hing ich mittendrin und war wie verzaubert. Ja es hört sich kitschig an, aber ja, es war einfach so.Die Menschen, ganz eigen mit ihren seltsamen Lebensgeschichte, magisch und realistisch zugleich, alle so individuell, wobei sie eines verbindet: Ihre Suche nach dem Verlorenen. Und ich fieberte mit, war selten von zwei Lebensgeschichten so gefesselt und bin froh Mala und Enzo kennengelernt zu haben. Ein außergewöhnlicher Roman, der so ganz anders ist als gewohnt und mich sehr berührt hat.Egal wie sehr ich es liebe Goodreads zu durchstöbern, wie wundersam und schön ist es einen wundervollen Roman auf diese Art und Weise zu entdecken?
—Niksche
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...
—Mariel
