(courtesy Hachette Australia)
Back cover blurbs are written with a singular purpose in mind – to entice a reader, with thousands of reading possibilities at their bookstore-packed disposal, to pick a particular book and take it home to be read (or in the case of this reviewer, to be added to a TBR where it will eventually be read).
But you have to be good to snare someone who’s reads a LOT and who b**ls**t detector when it comes to over-egged or too flowery prose is finely poised and easily tripped, and if there’s one thing The Road to Roswell by Connie Willis has going for it, among MABY things, it’s a back cover blurb that’s equal parts funny, heartfelt and blockbuster epic, and which, rather happily, for this is not a given, accurately reflects the novel it is hawking.
It helps, of course, that The Road to Roswell is written by Willis, recipient of eleven Hugo Awards and seven Nebula Awards and a member, since 2009, of the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, who knows not only how to craft an utterly beguiling story but how to make it mean something.
And The Road to Roswell comes to mean a great deal indeed.
Styled as a “delightful novel about alien invasions, conspiracies, and the incredibly silly things people are willing to believe”, this story of one woman’s trip to Roswell, New Mexico for a wedding she’s only attending because it’s for her best friend in the world, is a brilliantly realised joy in a thousand compelling ways.
A tentacle came flashing out of nowhere with blinding speed to encircle her wrist, another to strap itself around her waist, and a third to grasp the phone.
‘Don’t–‘ she said, but the alien had already sent it spinning far out into the darkness.
Take the fact that its slightly off-the-wall premise of Francie, the wedding attendee in question, being abducted by an alien, along with four other disparate souls including a con man named Wade, an old lady who lives for trips to local casinos, a retiree with a RV the size of Texas and UFO-believing devotee with more than a few conspiracy theories in his pocket, ends up feeling incredibly involving and deeply heartfelt.
That’s hinted at in the back cover blurb but these bits of salesperson-y prose are geared to making things seem bigger than they are; the exciting part of The Road to Roswell is that all that hinting and suggesting of emotional heft actually turns out to be true.
As the alien, nicknamed Indy, takes them on a merry dance around New Mexico, searching for god-knows-what, Francie gets to actually know him and it one thing becomes clear – he is not the invading spearhead that Lyle, the UFO nutjob, makes him out to be, and his reason for being on our fair, blue planet has far more to do with something quite personal and desperate.
As Francie and Wade, and most of the others bond with Indy – Lyle keeps his distance because long-ingrained wafty belief trumps actual lived experience in his case – it becomes apparent that whatever the hell this is, it’s not a situation where they are in trouble and in fact, they may the ones to help the alien, preposterous though that sounds.
(courtesy Wikipedia)
The Road to Roswell is also a novel that never puts a foot wrong.
From start to finish, the novel is full to its thoughtfully, fun, alien-believing brim with a fulsome narrative, characters who are so fully realised that you feel like you’ve known them all your life, and all kind of very cool ideas on the various ways in which being human, and yes, alien, manifests itself from the sublime to the ridiculous.
There’s a sense all the way through that The Road to Roswell is leading to somewhere meaningful and worthwhile, and the novel absolutely delivers on all fronts, it’s story culminating in a brilliant final act, its characters finding some rather lovely resolution, and its thoughts on how weird and strange but how wonderfully kind and self-sacrificial people can be coming alive in some delightfully heartfelt ways.
It somehow manages to be both FUN and to really mean something to, and there’s never a point where the story tips in either of those two directions to too great an extent and loses its way.
In fact, as its puts the RV pedal to the metal, it keeps the two in deliriously wonderful tension, offering a story where some rather loopy things happen, but also where some real fears are faced, missions agreed on and hopes realised.
It’s a brilliant realisation of an audaciously out-there idea that knows you can write about pretty much anything, including a tentacled alien abducting five people at a UFO festival, or near it anyway, and still knock the emotional impact well and truly out of the park.
Indy flattened himself across the doors, holding them shut and scrolling, ‘NO NO NO NO NO!’ and a stream of purple-red hieroglyphics interspersed with words. ‘SRENNOM AOODINIIH TSINIBITAI’ he scrolled, followed by hieroglyphics that probably meant no more to the whatever-they-weres than they did to her and Wade.
That this happens quickly effectively and in a sustained way that doesn’t let up until the final page is reflected in the fact that you come to really LOVE these characters, that you are DEEPLY invested in what happens to all of them and that you don’t want this fun-filled but highly emotional journey to come to an end.
So adroitly does Willis mix its various elements together that while you are undeniably sad to come to the end of your time with Francie, Wade, Indy and the others – though you can help help hoping that the rather definitive ending might still have some openendeness to it, the kind that allows for an equally well-written sequel – you feel satisfied that such a great story has been told and that it has ended in such a good place.
One where the world is saved, the galaxy it back where it should be, and one plucky, intuitive and thoughtfully caring woman in a neon green bridemaid’s dress not only manages to fix a whole lot of broken things but also finds some fairly impactful personal resolution for herself.
It’s enormous fun, it’s wildly imaginative and original and it’s quite simply one of the best, most perfectly-formed novels you will read, one where the good guys might actually win, where the old earth vs aliens dynamic may not be as predictable as the true believers believe, and where some fairly out of this world narrative drivers find some very earthly realisation, the kind that validate everything the back cover blurb promises and then some.