TimMason reviewed The Fresco by Sheri S. Tepper
Review of 'The Fresco' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
Sheri S Tepper is one of my favourite authors - but this is not one of my favourite books. She seems to have attempted to write a moral fable à la Kurt Vonnegut, in which an earthling encounters aliens who show her all that is wrong with the world, and show her how to fix it. The result is both preachy and fatuous.
It's not that I reject the picture of our wrongs that she paints out of hand. I assent to the idea that we life in a patriarchy, an oppression of women that varies from place to place, but is everywhere intolerable. I agree that humans have messed up the planet. And politicians are corrupt, in democracies and elsewhere. But Tepper reduces these problems to their most simple expression, and offers solutions that are both impossible (you need alien magic/scientific powers to carry them out) and terribly, terribly …
Sheri S Tepper is one of my favourite authors - but this is not one of my favourite books. She seems to have attempted to write a moral fable à la Kurt Vonnegut, in which an earthling encounters aliens who show her all that is wrong with the world, and show her how to fix it. The result is both preachy and fatuous.
It's not that I reject the picture of our wrongs that she paints out of hand. I assent to the idea that we life in a patriarchy, an oppression of women that varies from place to place, but is everywhere intolerable. I agree that humans have messed up the planet. And politicians are corrupt, in democracies and elsewhere. But Tepper reduces these problems to their most simple expression, and offers solutions that are both impossible (you need alien magic/scientific powers to carry them out) and terribly, terribly silly (The oppression of women in Afghanistan is brought to an end by magically making them all so repulsive that no man covets them at all)
In a move that echoes 'Mr Deeds Goes To Town', Tepper's heroine is sent by aliens with a message for the President of the United States. She meets him and his First Lady (clearly the Clintons, who are treated with great sympathy). Tepper alternates chapters of story-telling with chapters of sociopolitical diatribe - the former are marginally less boring than the latter, and considerably less irritating. In the end, the world is saved, and most of the characters achieve some form of redemption.
Tepper's ideal society is one in which there is a place for everyone, and everyone knows their place. To this end, the lower orders should be prevented from breeding and the incompetent should be encouraged to Darwin themselves to death - her politics are more Ayn Rand than Vonnegut.
