A Trip To The Stars: A Novel (Paperback)

~ (Author) "WE HAD VOYAGED far into space and now we were returning..." (more)
Key Phrases: zinc sink, memory palace, Vitale Cassiel, Las Vegas, Nicholas Christopher (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Breathtaking coincidences, magical occurrences, dramatic confrontations, mystical beliefs, the influence of astronomical phenomenon and the intriguing confluence of fate and chance are plot elements that bubble like champagne in Christopher's (Veronica) brilliantly labyrinthine new novel. The theme of lost and found--people, opportunities, knowledge, cultures--permeates the two stories that run parallel in a buoyant, suspenseful narrative that spans 15 tumultuous years. In 1965, an orphan named Loren is celebrating his 10th birthday by visiting a New York planetarium with his adoptive aunt, Alma Verell, when he is kidnapped. He is taken to meet his wealthy, benevolent great-uncle, Junius Samax, who whisks him off to his home in the opulent Hotel Canopus in Las Vegas, where Loren learns his true name, Enzo, and some clues about his maternal parentage. Under Samax's genial protection and tutelage, Enzo enjoys a privileged life and a rich education, as he meets the distinguished scholars who come to stay with Samax, a patron of the arts and an indefatigable searcher after arcane knowledge. But Enzo remains tensely aware that another resident of the hotel, Samax's niece, Ivy, is determined to destroy him. Meanwhile, 20-year-old college classics major Alma, an orphan herself, is frantic at Loren's disappearance. After a police investigation reaches a dead end, she flees to New Orleans, changes her name to Mala Revell, and allows herself to be bitten by a rare Stellarum spider, whose venom endows her with psychic ability. Enlisting in the navy, Mala goes to Vietnam as a nurse, where she falls in love with Geza Cassiel, a wounded airman. After an idyllic few days together, Cassiel is given a new, secret assignment--and disappears. Having now lost two people in her life, Mala begins years of island-hopping in the South Pacific, throwing herself into the '70s counterculture of drugs, booze and promiscuous sex. A tragic accident halts her downward spiral, and her spirit is ready for renewal when fate sends radiant proof of cosmic inevitability, closing one of the concentric circles that gird this complex story. Enzo's quest, which has been a mirror image of Mala's, as the same people have entered both their lives over the years, comes full circle a short time later, in a series of shocking revelations and a regenerating reunion. As background to this intricate narrative, Christopher interweaves erudite details of such subjects as arachnology, vampire lore, quincunxes, architecture, celestial navigation and space exploration, Zuni legends, Greek philosophy--to touch on only a few; despite a few didactic lapses, this material proves intriguingly relevant. Fans of Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale will discover a kindred spirit in Christopher's literate prose and exuberant storytelling techniques. Author tour. (Feb.) FYI: Harcourt Brace will publish Christopher's seventh book of poetry in April.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 512 pages
• Publisher: Touchstone; 1st Scribner Paperback Fiction Ed edition (February 20, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743203305
• ISBN-13: 978-0743203302
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #217,659 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Could not put this book down, June 25, 2002

By	Karen Bierman Hirsh (Greenwich, CT) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Although I had to wait several (ok, more than several) years for Nicholas Christopher to write A Trip to the Stars, the wait was well worth it. Christopher obviously spent the time wisely, researching numerous topics, ideas and folklore. He let his fabulous imagination run wild.

A Trip to the Stars is the fantastic (and fantasy) journey of Loren (who is renamed Enzo) and his aunt Alma (who renames herself Mala). As Amazon has done a wonderful job trying to encapsulate the beauty, wonder and joy of this book in their description above, I won't waste my time trying to do the
same.

Christopher has a melodic voice and an imagination that does not quit. Readers will find themselves transported from New York, to the desert outside of the Las Vegas, to New Orleans and Vietmam and to the mysteries of the extraordinary Hotel Canopus and somewhere in between they will fall in love with Enzo and the unique characters that inhabit his world, a world
that the reader will not want to return from.

Much like Neil Gaiman, Christopher is unique with his novels, not an easy feat in this day and age where a good idea gets reproduced in a hundred different ways. I highly recommend this book - it can be read over and over again and the reader will still feel the excitement and wonderment that they felt the first time they discovered A Trip to the Stars. If you purchase
this book - I promise that you will not regret it.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Somewhere to sink a stone", April 28, 2002

By	lb136 "lb136" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

Magic realism that's truly magic. Nicholas Christopher's stunning novel has none of the overweening cuteness that is often found in this genre. Instead, you'll encounter in "A Trip to the Stars" a lush, shimmering novel--its prose hypnotic, its characters and settings unforgettable--that you won't want to come to an end. It's the story of Alma and Loren, separated by a kidnapping at a planetarium in New York, who become Enzo and Mala and spend 15 years wondering what happened to each other--she needs an island, he thrives in deserts--all the while having adventures and meeting interesting people (among them an eight-fingered piano-playing arachnophile, a woman who turns into a vampire, and a wheelchair-bound pool hustler).

And the tale is instructional too: you'll learn something about the habits of spiders, go behind the scenes at a mentalists' act, and you'll also be presented with two differing theories on the fate of Atlantis.

The tale is told in first-person narratives by Enzo and Mala, in alternating chapters (plus an epistolary interlude that evokes Conrad). The two are writing at some unspecified time in the future of events that take place between 1965 and 1980. A few of the characters turn up in both Enzo's and Mala's narratives, which helps unify the tale.

It's a long trip, but it's one that charms as it thrills, and you'll not quickly forget it. And of course if you find that you are forgetting parts, you can always read it again. So the advice here would be: do _not_ loan this book to anyone who isn't likely to return it.

Notes and asides: the sun _does_ shine on the dark side of the moon (it's the earth that doesn't); Alfred Hitchcock's wife was named Alma Reville; there was never a planetarium at Manhattan's northern end. Best read outdoors as spring turns into summer, with Heather Nova's "Oyster" on your portable CD player.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb storytelling and enchanting story, March 21, 2001

By A Customer

In Nicholas Christopher's latest novel, we have storytelling at its best. Layers of plots and sub-plots weave this magical story together, and take the reader on an incredible journey.

NH's writing style is gifted and the themes in A Trip to The Stars are also compelling. This book is written in the most accessible style of magical realism I have ever encountered. Many of the stories of the different characters mirror those of the person missing from their life. This technique doesn't seem forced, and only reinforces the strong feeling that fate controls your destiny, and that even if a twist of fate seemingly alters your course, you really will end up with the right people and doing that which is predestined for you.

The characters populating this novel are intriguing and believable (although to believe most of them live under one roof maybe pushes the envelope). These are the sort of people you wish you could dine with every night, just to listen to their stories, and hope a fraction of their incredible intelligence will stay with you. As each resident has 'lost' a piece of their life, they are all inextricably linked to one another, and possess pivotal answers for questions which are never asked of them.

This is by the far one of the best five books I've read in the past year (Several Deceptions by Jane Stevenson is another). This is strong and thoughtful writing, and I eagerly await reading his other novels.