The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Gentlemen of Space, by Ira Sher
reviewed by Laird Hunt

Ira Sher. Gentlemen of Space. Free Press, 2003. 291 pp. $23.00.

Ira Sher’s excellent first novel, Gentlemen of Space, inscribes itself in the tradition of those works—e.g., Kazuo Ishiguro’s When We Were Orphans—in which, according to the narrative designs of its sufferer, the weight of personal loss is borne by many. Florida high-school science teacher Jerry Finch wins an essay competition that allows him to join NASA’s last mission to the moon. He blasts off with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, hops around and collects rocks, is made a national hero, then goes missing. Jerry’s housing complex, already besieged by well-wishers and hangers-on, becomes the site of a round-the-clock vigil. After a desperate search, the astronauts return empty-handed. However, like the citizens camping out near Jerry’s apartment (whom they join), they keep the faith that Jerry is still alive and, in solidarity, vow not to take off their spacesuits until he is found . . . or so our narrator, Georgie Finch, Jerry’s son, nine at the time of these events, would have us believe. It may be the case that in the fictional world so handsomely sculpted by Sher, NASA sent astronauts to the moon in 1976 and that one of them, Jerry Finch, went missing, but as things get stranger and stranger—with astronauts going crazy, Georgie getting phone calls from his father in space, so many people believing someone could stay alive for weeks on the moon, Neil Armstrong courting Georgie’s mother—it becomes clear that something else, something ultimately more devastating, is going on. This book-length projection of Georgie’s grief, anger, and uncertainty onto a national screen is beautifully handled, carefully paced, and freighted with mystery. Gentlemen of Space is one of those books you wish the author had found a way not to end.