Customer Reviews

Fresco (Gollancz Sf S.)

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

The Fresco will probably not take a place among my favorite Tepper novels. (I like Grass, Shadow's End, and Gibbon's Decline and Fall best.) Nevertheless, I did very little but read the book the Friday after Thanksgiving - it held my attention well, I wanted to find out what would happen to the characters, and I was at least mildly intrigued by several of the novel's driving ideas.

The book "suffers" (if you're inclined to call it suffering - I think that I am not) the usual infusion of very blatant social and political philosophy. This is a strange thing for me to get used to (even after reading more than half a dozen Tepper novels); I tend to agree (often passionately) with the essential social and political ideas Tepper works with, but I often find myself uncomfortable with her very direct use of these ideas in fiction. Something about very explicit politics seems to limit the power of great fiction. (And I'm not discriminating here - much as I love John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and Charles Dickens's Hard Times, the authors' forthright use of politics always diminishes the feeling I take away from these books.)

Anyway, the usual ideas are present in The Fresco: a rather common woman becomes rather uncommon as she discoverers a greater sense of worth, or purpose, and so on. I really like this character, and I must say she is one of the reasons I did not take many breaks while reading the novel - she is not a terribly complex creation, but she is attractive, likable, and a generally useful protagonist.

Hm - I should have planned this review before I started writing! I'll close with a general recommendation: if you enjoyed Gibbon's Decline and Fall, please read The Fresco. The two novels have much common ground, and they go well together. If you have not yet read Sheri S. Tepper, I would start with Grass or Shadow's End, both of which exist in a slightly less political "realm."

I've never been able to pin down exactly what it is I like so much about Tepper's books, but I haven't missed one in many, many years. I'll look forward to the next!

Tepper sure has a large collection of axes to grind. This could've been a much better book if she'd left the axes in the shed.

I liked the protagonist, Benita Alvarez-Shipton, a self-educated mom from New Mexico who has an abusive, alcoholic husband. I liked the main aliens and their culture and their mission to Earth. And I liked the touches of humor, like when the aliens cause an "ugly plague" among women in Afghanistan so that the men won't have an excuse to keep them covered and cloistered.

I expect a feminist agenda from Tepper, usually handled with a fair degree of subtlety and creativity, but in this book, we get heavy-handed polemics on practically every political and social issue in the U.S.--the environment, education, the "drug war," the legal system, the ACLU, abortion, conservative religion, you name it. Yeesh!

And yet, I liked the characters enough and was curious enough to find out what happened that I read the whole book and mostly enjoyed it. But Tepper has written many books that are better than this one, with "Grass" and "The Gate to Women's Country" at the top of my list.

As a liberal feminist I've never really been able to stomach dated SciFi authors like Heinlein. So I was happy when I discovered Tepper's "Gate to Women's Country" about a dozen years ago. Aside from her stoggy descriptions of less-than-interesting sub plots (a Greek play) and her brush off of some big social debates (homosexuality), Tepper does alright for an old gal who's a former Planned Parenthood administrator.

But I never really bought into "The Fresco", mostly because so much of the writing read like an outline and/or like it was never really edited by Eos Publishing. In "The Fresco", Tepper has an answer for everything from drug abuse to rape in the form of polite, beetle-like aliens who come to our planet to fix us and appoint a middle-aged Hispanic housewife as their go-between with the People of Earth.

While "The Fresco" outlines some witty, sardonic SciFi answers to today's problems, it failed to really draw me into the various scenarios. Tepper never even really bothered to physically describe some of the villan aliens and eeks by with sketchy physical descriptions that would leave Steven Spielberg scratching his head.

If you're craving SciFi from a woman's perspective, I'd suggest N. Lee Wood ("Master of None", "Faraday's Orphans") who's tough characters, quick dialogue and a deft description paint a more serious picture of a future matriarchy.

I don't know about the rest of you out there, but the reason I read Sheri S. Tepper books is because of the similiar theme she uses. I enjoy reading about women held down be society and then how she goes about resolving the problem in some thought provoking way that just leaves me in giggles. I can't say there is really anything about her stories that disappoints me. "The Fresco" was well worth the wait. Once again, she makes the unbelieveable, believable. I loved the characters, both human and alien. Benita, as with all her heroines, was a very normal, day-to-day gal with her set of very human problems. The different worlds were delicious and the various alien characters were interesting to visualize. I poured through this book much faster then I would have liked...but my hands just kept turning the pages (despite the fact that I had to get up early the next morning). The only sad thing about this book is the wait I have to endure for her next one. I happen to be one of those pathetic beings that has pretty much read everything she has written. Keep up the good work, Ms. Tepper (And please hurry and write another one!! I can hardly wait!)

This is a good read. Some plot holes that bugged me, but certainly worth reading. Great, vivid alien cultures! It isn't ham-handed unless you don't read past the surface. It's an idea book more than an emotional, character-driven book, but so is a lot of literature.

Also, the reviewers of this book who whine about how all the men in the book are evil just didn't READ it! I can think of three important male characters (Chad, Simon, President) who were VERY positive, and two more who learn to be positive, plus several other minor characters who are certainly not stupid or evil. Is this a book with a liberal, feminist POV? In some ways it is, but there's some opinions pretty far from those of liberals.

The central theme seems to me to be about religion and belief and the relationship between that and morality.

And Tepper doesn't give you easy answers, not unless you stop thinking when her words run out. I always assume a good writer doesn't expect me to accept all her ideas after "the end." This book made me think, and I thoroughly enjoyed it

After taking us to other planets and the far future in her past two novels and a far-future, wildly changed Earth in The Family Tree, Tepper takes up the thread of contemporary socio/political issues and contemplates, "What could be done to change society? The story background is right from today's headlines, as in Gibbon's Decline and Fall, but is overall much less grim. Of course, there always has to be something drastic to effect change and in this case it is alien intervention. A sometime battered spouse struggling to 'find herself' has an encounter right out of the X-Files, which takes her straight to Washington, DC! The aliens quickly begin meddling - finding a drastic solution to the Middle East crisis, for instance. Perhaps Tepper is getting less callous than in the past; at least this one doesn't involve killing anybody! Meanwhile, however, another faction of aliens has taken up with a "bad-guy" faction of humans -and this bunch wants to eat us for dinner! So there is, as usual, a threat of retribution if mankind does not repent of its sins (against women, ecology and so forth) but it will not come at the hands of our alien friends, who only want to help out - not that every reader will care for their brand of "help."

The aliens, however, are more than plot devices; interspresed through the book is the private journal of one alien, addressed to one human, through which we learn facsinating insights about the alien biology, sociology and what drives them to intervene in other cultures. This is no Star Trek Prime Directive - it's about as opposite as you can get. At the book's climax everything revoles around the Fresco of the title, what it means to the aliens, and what it means to us.

Tepper's pet obsessions with eco-feminism and the horror of male dominated religions oppressing women (eg purdah, genital mutilation) come across clearly as always, but here they are part of a much more detailed and specific political agenda, as implemented by the aliens - it's clear we are learning a lot of the author's political/social opinions here, with which the reader may or may not agree. And of course, alien intervention is a disturbing concept even when "for our own good," but the alternative is clearly worse. I tend to share Tepper's pessimism about our being able to solve our problems on our own, due to the political and economic obstacles one character outlines late in the book.

The human characters are well-developed as always; the heroine Benita begins a journey of self-discovery when she meets the extraterrestrial envoys and becomes an interplanetary diplomat, her children are believable and even Bart, her alcoholic, abusive husband, is ultimately more an object of pity than a monster. Tepper is still Darwinian in that she believes the suicidal and self-destructive should be allowed to destruct ("let the non-survivors go" to quote from Family Tree) but she seems less callous overall in this book; there is room for kindness and compassion even for the most unfortunate. Still, some characters are rather cardboard - the (male of course) human villains. As for what she does with the pro-life fanatics...let's just say it's perhaps a trite feminist revenge fantasy, but one I giggled at anyway.

Oh - and the Bug Eyed Monsters: Having read several earlier books where Tepper seemed to be saying "kill them all and let the Goddess sort them out," perhaps they represent a dark or angry side of the author. However, she is not presenting them as good guys, and this is important. Perhaps she does have hope that billions of humans *could* learn to live in peace with each other and with other species. I hope so - the novel does end on a note of hope rather than despair.

If you know Tepper, you know the drill: well-drawn aliens smugly shaking their heads at human foibles, put-upon heroines faced with a brick wall of male intransigence, the environment in peril...

And that, I think, is the point. This isn't merely formulaic Tepper; it's Tepper poking fun at her own formula. Yes, really.

There are still serious points being made here: about self-abuse and the harm it does to others, about humankind's obsessive pursuit of short-term gratification over long-term prudence, about the place of women in a world still dominated by male concerns. But it's all wrapped up in a delicious, and deliciously silly, tale of first contact.

The covering story is pure, paper-thin froth, and apparently intended so: benevolent aliens with a penchant for social engineering hook up with a virtuous working mother (fleeing, of course, an abusive alcoholic husband), and together they set about Making The World A Better Place. Ranged against them are the usual motley collection of pro-life senators, conservative religious figures, and nasty hunter aliens.

The aliens' approach to improving human society reads like the Hobb's Land gods of Tepper's earlier novel _Raising the Stones_ run through the Hollywood anti-subtlety machine: harmful anti-social behaviour is simply prevented at source with what is effectively a wave of a magic wand (well, nanobots. Allegedly). There's no libertarian messing about here: castration for rapists is high on the agenda. Possibly Tepper is growing impatient with the world's problems; either way, solutions are achieved in record time, once everyone starts being 'sensible'...

Haven chosen to go with this light-hearted exaggeration, though, Tepper has immense fun with her scenario, and in doing so she subverts all expectations. The kidnapping of Jerusalem is priceless ("When you can all get along, you can have it back"); the impregnation of the pro-lifers with alien spawn is genius, and laugh-out-loud funny. Even the swipes at organised religions are amusing rather than stridently critical.

And if I'm not mistaken, the final few pages are a hilarious send-up of _Grass_...

There seems to be much comment in reviews posted here about this book and all the men in the book being evil. First I want to say that this is a well written book, it keeps you entertained, on the edge waiting for more, and makes you think. The story starts out with Benita a woman in her late thirties, married young to an unsuccesful artist who has become an alcholic with two children. (Gee this has happened many times). She is met by aliens and she becomes an important link between the aliens and our government (some of who are not nice men - which has happened many times).

There are also other "bad men" in the novel, but there are also good ones, Chad, the FBI Agent, the President., etc. Instead of looking at this book as a book written by a feminist about feminism, everyone should look at it as an entertaining sci-fi novel with interesting ideas pointing out some very realistic problems in our society (drinking, guns, rape, etc) and how one alien culture helps us to change these problems.

I give this book 4 stars, yes there are some plot holes, but it is well written,imaginative, and a bit like a Robert A. Heinlein novel from a woman's view. The social commentary is similair to what Heinlein did in some of his novels. Who cares if this is a book with a liberal, feminist point of view, in this day and age it should not be an issue. Is it really written from a feminist point of view or is there too much reality in it to make some people comfortable? Read it and judge it for yourself. Teplper did a great job on this!

However, if you are contemplating this as the first book you've ever read by her, I would suggest that you start with the loosely knit "Grass" trilogy (Grass, Raising the Stones, Side Show). (I love that trilogy - have gone through several copies of each of the books -- they are very poignant and redeeming)

In The Fresco, Benita is a wonderful, sympathetic character, an "everywoman" who sees her way clear to becoming her own person. She is a heroine to root for. I loved the protagonist aliens, as they altered their appearances to be more "friendly" looking.

As always, I enjoyed the philosophy and theology which is present in all of the books that I have read by Ms. Tepper. It is thought provoking to think what would happen if someone or something came along and completely disproved our various holy books (bible, koran, rig veda etc.). Would we patch them back together and do what we could, or would we take the best of them, and approach the violent, ugly, "evil" parts with a grain of salt? Or would that someone/thing that disproved them, help us regain our sense of self?

Even if you are agnostic, or atheistic, you will enjoy the religious/philosophical commentaries woven into Ms. Tepper's books.

I have only read two of Tepper's books - "Six Moon Dance" and "A Plaque of Angels." Both were very different from mainstream sci-fi, I liked them both very much.

"The Fresco" reads more like a mainstream sci-fi novel - less convoluted and alien than the other works.

I agree with other reviewers that it seemed a bit more "preachy", but I have to say I agree with Tepper's assessment of how to fix things. Laws certainly aren't helping. And yes, her male characters were a bit one dimensional, but they were also wholly believable. And the descriptions of what women go through in this country - simply because we don't have male genitals - are right on!

There are parts that I absolutely loved, like where the pro-life senators get what they deserve! Also, some of the writing is absolutely gorgeous. For instance, right after Benita meets the aliens, the author describes her: "her brain skipped here and there like a dud kernel of popcorn, badly overexcited but unable to explode."

Later: "Wonder grazes you like a bullet; it zips by and is gone, and all you really perceive is the zing as it goes past, or maybe the pain if it comes too close."

Well worth reading.