The Wanderers by Meg Howrey #BookReview

Title: The Wanderers

Author: Meg Howrey

Published 2017

Adult Science Fiction, Family Life

My Review

Told from multiple perspectives, The Wanderers, is about three astronauts in a 17-month-long space training simulation that will help them prepare to be the first people on Mars.

› Characters
Helen: 53-years-old. Her husband Eric died five years ago. After 21 years and 3 space missions, she retired from NASA a year ago. She’s been feeling irrelevant, and gladly accepts the offer from Prime Space to participate in a new training program called Eidolon. At one point Helen’s daughter calls Helen an “aspy”, meaning Helen is on the Autism Spectrum (displaying symptoms of what was once called Aspberger’s).

“For Helen, the initial flame had been a book. Men on the Moon. But it wasn’t Neil or Buzz that had interested her, or even the moon itself. She had been attracted to the mission’s most unsung hero: Michael Collins, alone in Columbia, drifting around the moon in exquisite solitary splendor while Buzz and Neil had gone about the terrestrial work of putting down a plaque, erecting a flag, and gathering rocks. Every two hours Michael Collins had gone out of radio contact for forty-eight minutes when the moon stood between himself and Earth, and during those minutes he was the most alone person in the history of people. Helen still liked to think about that. That had always been her dream: space, not a location within it, just space.”

Mireille: Helen’s daughter. She’s an actor and works at a spa as a massage therapist.

Sergei: 45-year-old cosmonaut training with Helen at Eidolon. He’s a strange man who at one time shares the pros & cons of hiring a prostitute, and yet, he’s incredibly proud of his children and all he truly wants is to be their role model.

Dmitri: Sergei’s son, discovering his homosexuality and worrying about his father’s reaction when he finds out his son is gay.

Yoshi: 37-year-old astronaut training with Helen and Sergei at Eidolon. He’s serious, yet easy-going, a romantic who fell in love with his wife when they met.

“Everything you say matters,” Yoshi’s father had once said to him. “Whenever you say something, you are now the person who has said that.”

Madoka: Yoshi’s wife. She’s one of the head salespeople at a company that makes robotic caregivers. Guiltily enjoying her alone-time while Yoshi is away, she’s questioning their marriage and her true feelings.

Luke: psychologist responsible for tracking the astronaut’s emotional health while they’re in training.

› The Wanderers is about the balance between career + family, ambition, isolation, and truth.

“But people like my grandmother knew the truth. They knew the truth about how fragile everything is, because they had stitched every stitch of that fragile truth.”

› Dislikes
The character fell flat for me. They felt one-dimensional, lacking any real personal growth or arc. I don’t enjoy the chapters told from Sergei’s perspective. The way his internal dialogue is written is disjointed and sometimes confusing. I REALLY don’t like the use of the word “fag”.

There’s too much going on in this book, which I think stems from having too many voices. The family-member perspectives didn’t really add much to the story for me.

I didn’t FEEL anything. How could a book about space travel feel so BLAH?

› Final Thoughts
– The Wanderers is a character-driven, introspective that reads like a literary novel about space training, self-discovery, and family drama. I recommend this one to readers who don’t mind a slow story with little plot.

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About The Author

“Meg Howrey is the author of the novels The Wanderers , The Cranes Dance , and Blind Sight . She is also the coauthor, writing under the pen-name Magnus Flyte, of the New York Times Bestseller City of Dark Magic and City of Lost Dreams . Her non-fiction has appeared in Vogue and The Los Angeles Review of Books. She currently lives in Los Angeles.

Meg was a professional dancer who performed with the Joffrey Ballet and City Ballet of Los Angeles, among others. She made her theatrical debut in James Lapine’s Twelve Dreams at Lincoln Center, and received the 2001 Ovation Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Musical for her role in the Broadway National Tour of Contact.”

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4228949.Meg_Howrey