enita Alvarez-Shipton is a battered woman living in New Mexico. She has been at
loose ends ever since her children left home to attend college, and she is
just
beginning to put together a plan to leave her abuser. Then fate intervenes
in the most dramatic way possible--aliens called the Pistach approach
Benita, offering to pay her if she will help them contact the appropriate
government authorities.
Her acceptance of the Pistach proposition transforms Benita's life. She is soon
in Washington, lunching with the first lady and neck-deep in government
intrigue. The aliens are taking action around the world to ameliorate
humanity's various problems--forcing peace in the Middle East and
developing unusual solutions to the oppression of women in Afghanistan.
Closer to home, they are healing disabled children and cooperating with
law
enforcement in America's stalemated war against drugs. This benevolent
behavior is guided by a Pistach do-gooder code first laid out in a
painting
called the Fresco. For religious reasons, the smoke-covered Fresco has not
been seen in its original form--or even cleaned--for generations.
The Pistach intervention, however, is far from an instant success.
Other
aliens are also interested in Earth, predators who see the massive human
population as a herd in need of thinning--not to mention a tasty and
challenging source of game. These predators are in league with the
political enemies of the U.S. government, and they kidnap Benita's family.
They also give military aid to a Pistach revolutionary who wants to clean
the Fresco, undercutting the benign aliens' entire belief system.
If Benita cannot stop both the rogue politicians and the Pistach coup,
her children and all of humanity will find themselves on the banquet
tables
of the predatory aliens.
A funny but flawed first contact
As first-contact novels go, Sheri Tepper's The Fresco has some
tremendous strengths. It is not idealistic--her good aliens, the Pistach,
show little respect for human customs. Instead, they force changes on
society; life-saving and benevolent changes, but ones imposed without even a nod
to democratic ideals. Also, there are many alien races
besides the Pistach, and they don't all agree. This gives a pleasing
sense of an interstellar civilization which is complex and riddled with
politics of its own.
What's more, some of the passages in The Fresco are outright
hilarious. Two of the alien interventions into human affairs are
hysterically funny, and the book is at its strongest when Tepper is
carrying on in this humorous vein, tongue firmly in cheek. In general,
Benita makes an appealing heroine, and her story is suspenseful, a genuine
page-turner.
Unfortunately, the tone of The Fresco varies wildly. Dark
moments
and stalking scenes worthy of Stephen King are mixed with diatribes about
current U.S. problems, a sprinkling of whimsical alien behavior and
snatches of profound bitterness. Benita's eventual solution to the Pistach
spiritual crisis is achieved with what amounts to an amusing deception,
but
this finale does not mix believably with the viciously cruel events
preceding it. The novel's characterization, while in places more layered
than in other Tepper books, still often defaults into one-dimensional
depictions of wholly good heroines who face irredeemably evil men. Most
disturbing of all, the author never fully acknowledges the moral reality
of
Pistach intervention in human affairs. This book can be read as an
endorsement of colonialism. The Fresco does contain numerous compelling moments, though, and
will be worthwhile to many readers because of its humorous passages and
plotlines.
