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Challenger Park
by Stephen Harrigan
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Knopf (2006-04-04)
ISBN: 0375412050
EAN: 9780375412059
Dewey Decimal #: 813.54
Binding/Media: Hardcover - 416 pages
Edition: First Edition. states
Release Date: 2006-04-04
SKU: 01HB-039-7-0108
Condition: Near Fine
Comments: PAPERBACK ARC (ADVANCE READING COPY); Clean copy, no markings by previous owners; Includes a small poster advertising the work, Near Fine; Covers show minimal shelfwear, corners lightly bumped - else Fine. *International Buyers Welcome!* (except for prohibitively heavy items, as noted) - Satisfied customers in over 40 countries! We ship quickly and guarantee satisfaction. Your purchase helps support a U. Chicago student
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
From the author of the acclaimed and best-selling The Gates of the Alamo, a novel of extraordinary power about what it’s like, and what it means, to journey into space as one of today’s astronauts.
At the novel’s center: Lucy Kincheloe, an astronaut married to an astronaut, the loving mother of two young children, with a fierce ambition to excel in the space program. Her husband, Brian, a rigorous man whose dreams of glory have been blighted by two star-crossed missions. Walt Womack, the steady, unflappable leader of the training team that prepares Lucy for her first shuttle flight.
Lucy has devoted years of intense and focused effort to win her place on a mission, but as her lifelong dream of flying in space comes true, her familiar world appears to be falling apart around her. Her marriage is deteriorating. Her son’s asthma is growing more serious. Her relationship with Walt Womack is becoming dangerously intimate. And when at last she is in space, 240 miles above the earth, and an accident renders the world she left behind appallingly distant—perhaps unreachable—her spirit is tested in gripping and unexpected ways.
In The Gates of the Alamo, Stephen Harrigan’s narrative authority brought a vanished nineteenth-century Texas to vibrant life. In Challenger Park, he does the same with the world of space flight, bringing us up close to the lives—the risks, the friendships, the rituals, the training—of the astronauts and the people who work with them. Harrigan has written an exciting—indeed a thrilling—novel about the contrary pulls of home and adventure, reality and dreams, and the unimaginable experience, the joys and terrors and revelations, of space flight itself.
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Customer Reviews
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Exceptionally Good
Rating  (5)
Date: 2009-12-05
A smart, nuanced, and emotionally powerful novel. As always, Harrigan's writing is terrific, his subtle sense of humor engaging, and the narrative compelling.
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A slow, plotless read
Rating  (2)
Date: 2008-01-08
I'm giving Challenger Park two stars because the writing is good, but the story is bad. There is no real plot, and nothing happens until 3/4 of the way in. The last paragraph, however, is the best of the entire book - not because it solves any plot(less) issues, but because it's just a nice slice of writing. So read the last paragraph at your library and don't bother with the rest of the book.
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Subtle, nuanced, frustratingly engaging
Rating (5)
Date: 2007-11-17
11 out of 11 customers found this reveiw helpful
I came to this book as someone very interested in the space program, and generally not someone that reads novels focusing on characters in relationships. I found the novel a worthwhile read. I suspect that not everyone will like it, and it will depend a lot upon personal taste - but it kept me engaged, even if personally a little frustrated by the ending.
Harrigan has a very understated, unhurried writing style that I enjoyed. Not similar to, but clever in the same way as, the writings of Gabriel García Márquez and Thomas Mallon. The novel's premise - an affair set against the backdrop of the space program - could (and probably has) been horribly done in the wrong hands. But this isn't a romance-novel-genre book. Harrigan slowly builds his story carefully and deliberately, with a subtle and elegant interweaving of the space program and personal relationships. Both plot elements drive each other without doing so too obviously. I suspect it may be too slow and nuanced for some people's tastes, but it kept me engaged and interested in reading new chapters every night.
Not being a NASA insider, it's hard for me to truly know how accurate this book is, but there seems to be an effort by Harrigan to truly reflect the lives lived by families working in Houston (both of astronauts and their co-workers), and it comes across as realistic. It vividly depicts how, while us non-astronauts probably imagine a spaceflight to be the defining moment of a life with the rest of life flowing up to and after it, life isn't lived that way: instead, a spaceflight finds a peculiar place in the middle of all-too-human demands of work, family and personal details. This book shows not only what a surreal job it must be to be an occasional spacefarer, but also the realities of spaceflight - the physical toll, the occasional boredom and isolation - it felt like a very real depiction of events that can often be overglamorized by others. It was interesting to compare to the works of Michael Cassutt, who with thrillers like "Missing Man" has used the same backdrop to very different effect.
My only real negative - and this was a personal perception - was that, having built up the story over 350 pages to a place where I was eager to see what happens, Harrigan wraps up the major plot points in 2-3 pages. That was in fact all he truly needed, and to stretch it out more may have been belaboring - yet it seemed like a rather sudden end. This may even be a hidden positive - he had me invested enough in the story that I wanted more, a longer resolution. But I was not frustrated enough to be annoyed to have read it, and in fact must respect Harrigan for taking the less predictable path, and ending the book in a way that most readers may not expect, but probably makes for a more original novel.
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Not nearly as good as the industry reviews claim.
Rating (2)
Date: 2007-11-06
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
When the New York Times Book Review talks about "emotional precision" and "the exactitude of its prose", I don't expect to be unimpressed, but this book has little suspense and no emotional content. The "affair" is unexciting and anticlimactic and the ending is abrupt and unsatisfying. I never truly cared about the main characters, nor could I relate to Lucy, perhaps because her point of view was being explored by a man in a bold but unsuccessful effort.
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Very slow pace and depressing
Rating  (3)
Date: 2007-07-30
1 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
although well-written, this book is pretty boring and monotonous. I understand Lucy is an astronaut who has a burning desire to go to space, just like all the other astronauts but she is also tied to her children. This is not enough of a draw for me. I didn't care much about the kids or her unhappy husband or the people in the NASA program. It is a fairly long book and just not worth it because those who are interested in space will be disappointed in the amount of time spent on Lucy's personal relationships and those interested in the breakdown of a marriage will find the space part boring plus the breakdown itself not that interesting.
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