Part thriller, part social SF, prolific novelist Sheri S. Tepper's latest follows the adventures of Benita Alvarez-Shipton, an empty nester in her mid-30s, whose life is changed when two aliens ask her to carry their greetings to Washington, D.C. Chosen as intermediary because she is both ordinary and beyond political reproach, Benita seizes the opportunity to leave her abusive, alcoholic husband and start a new life in D.C. However, she doesn't count on her role extending beyond the initial delivery of the alien greetings, or on the dangers it will attract to her and her children.

Chiddy and Vess, ethical representatives of the benevolent Pistach, come to offer earth inclusion in a multirace Confederation--but on condition that earth clean up its societal woes. Earth has also attracted the attention of a subgroup of predatory races, who view the overpopulated planet as a rich hunting ground. Humanity must choose--either adopt the Pistach principal of Neighborliness and be ushered into the Confederation or refuse and be left at the mercy of the predators.

Interwoven with the earth-based action are excerpts from Chiddy's diary, written as a letter to Benita, that describe the complex Pistach society and the Pistach religion documented by the eponymous Fresco. The 17-panel, divinely inspired painting has for centuries been obscured by smoke from votive candles. Tradition dictates the events and symbols that lie hidden beneath the grime, and it is taboo to ever clean the Fresco. When Chiddy accidentally clears away part of the soot, revealing images that contradict Pistach dogma, it sets into motion a chain of events that undermine racial self-perception and threaten both Pistach and human survival.

Though some of the characters are drawn with such broad strokes as to render them caricatures, and there are elements of Pistach social engineering to alarm readers of just about any political stripe, The Fresco is nonetheless an engrossing, sometimes wickedly funny read. --Eddy Avery


From Publishers Weekly
HSo what do women really, really want? Elementary, Dr. Freud, according to Tepper's enchantingly sly feminist tale of Earthlings' first contact with alien starfarers: nothing that "virile, arbitrary, egocentric, and often belligerent" human males can supply. Abused wife to a feckless alcoholic, orphaned child of a wise Latina lady and her salvage-yard husband, Benita Alvarez-Shipton finds herself at 36 chosen by Chiddy and Vess, ambassadors from the galactic Pistach-Home, to introduce their message of peace to a largely skeptical, male-dominated U.S. government. Tepper intersperses episodes of Benita's struggle to help Chiddy and Vess with entries from the journal Chiddy keeps for her, an explanation of the Pistach moral-ethical religion centered upon a sacred fresco. To punctuate the many wrongs men in charge have committed, Tepper also inserts some headlines excruciatingly close to today's political scene: "Baptists claim ETs possible demonic invasion; Falwell says ETs more likely gay." Among other fitting punishments, the Pistach envoys see to it that rigid male right-to-life senators are impregnated by sentient wasps, whose larvae chew themselves out of righteous, unanesthetized senatorial bellies. As a clever roman clef and the stuff of secret female dreams, this novel succeeds brilliantly. Better yet, as a commentary on the capacity of women to endure, to achieve and to overcome, it shines as brightly as the stars that one day may provide what Tepper's women really wantDtrue peace. Tepper's novel will sell to wide range of SF readers, but special targeting to women, for instance in feminist bookstores, will increase sales. (Nov.) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
While hunting for mushrooms in the mountains of New Mexico, Benita Alvarez-Shipton, abused wife of drunkard Bert Shipton, is greeted by Chiddy and Vess of the "Pistach people," a race of benevolent, nonhuman aliens intent on assisting Earthlings in resolving some longstanding problems (crime, abuse of women, etc.), so that they may join a confederation of galactic beings. Benita travels to Washington, D.C., and becomes the intermediary between the Pistach and the president. Meanwhile, a separate group of predatory aliens, looking to make humans into a new item in the galactic buffet, joins forces with extremist politicians who want to discredit the president. Tepper develops the characters and describes Pistach society excellently, and although she stretches the limits of credibility in the latter half of the book, provides a conclusion that should satisfy most readers. In all, she has created an overwhelmingly detailed scenario for humanity's first contact with aliens, one that could be a TV movie coproduction of the Lifetime and Sci-Fi channels. Bryan Baldus
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Locus
"One of SF's most distinctive voices."


Ursula K. Le Guin
"Sheri S. Tepper takes the mental risks that are the lifeblood of science fiction and all imaginative fiction."


Book Description
The bizarre events that have been occuring across the United States -- unexplained "oddities" tracked by Air Defense, mysterious disappearances, shocking deaths -- seem to have no bearing on Benita Alvarez-Shipton's life. That is, until the soft-spoken thirty-six-year-old bookstore manager is approached by a pair of aliens asking her to transmit their message of peace to the powers in Washington. An abused Albuquerque wife with low self-esteem, Benita has been chosen to act as the sole liaison between the human race and the Pistach, who have offered their human hosts a spectacular opportunity for knowledge and enrichment.But ultimately Benita will be called upon to do much more than deliver messages -- and may, in fact, be responsible for saving the Earth. Because the Pistach are not the only space-faring species currently making their presence known on her unsuspecting planet. And the others are not so benevolent.


About the Author
Sheri S. Tepper is the author of several resoundingly acclaimed novels, including The Fresco, Singer from the Sea, Six Moon Dance, The Family Tree, Gibbon's Decline and Fall, Shadow's End, A Plague of Angels, Sideshow and Beauty, which was voted Best Fantasy Novel of the Year by the readers of Locus magazine. Ms. Tepper lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
Sheri Tepper has been writing superb science fiction since 1983. Her adventurous plots are compulsively readable, her landscapes are stunningly imagined, and her chronicling of the ongoing battles between the sexes makes her books bold and controversial. In The Fresco, Tepper has created one of her most absorbing and provocative works.

Benita Alvarez-Shipton, an "ordinary person, a nobody," seeks escape from her abusive, alcoholic husband in her underpaid job at a bookstore. Everything changes the day she meets two aliens. Soft-spoken Chiddy and Vess instruct her to bring a mysterious red cube to the authorities so they may arrange peaceful contact. With mixed trepidation and excitement, Benita abandons her husband and travels to Washington, D.C., to tell the president the news.

The shape-changing aliens seem too good to be true -- they intend to provide planetwide contentment on Earth, so that humanity may join a galactic Confederation of intelligent beings. Chiddy explains, "We Pistach know what it takes to mend people, and it takes a good deal more than you are willing to do." Within days, alien nanotechnology is winning the war on drugs, a bizarre transformation frees Afghani women from the horrors perpetrated by their society, and Jerusalem vanishes from the face of the Earth.

Amid the surprises and humor, the occasional sinister note sounds. A cabal of evil politicians are determined to ruin Benita and the president. People are disappearing, leaving nothing behind but broken skeletons. Dangerously irresistible voices speak in apparently empty rooms. Are the Pistach responsible for these events? Or have other, predatory extraterrestrials also come to Earth?

Several chapters narrated by Chiddy foreshadow the novel's greatest mystery: the terrible secret of the Fresco, a vast work of art housed in the holiest Pistach temple. The meaning of this Fresco has formed the basis of Pistach philosophy for millennia. Benita's adventures culminate in a journey to the Pistach planet and a revelation causing as much change on the alien homeworld as the aliens have wrought on Earth. The Fresco is both a brilliantly sustained narrative and a powerful vision of change and renewal, characteristically celebrating biodiversity and articulating the author's belief that the antagonistic relationships between men and women can evolve into something precious and life-affirming. It deserves a place among Tepper's finest novels, which include The Gate to Women's Country (1988) and Grass (1989), a New York Times Notable Book and Hugo Award nominee. (Fiona Kelleghan)

Fiona Kelleghan is a librarian at the University of Miami. Book reviews editor for Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, she has written reviews and articles for Science-Fiction Studies; Extrapolation; The New York Review of Science Fiction; Science Fiction Research Association Review; Nova Express; St. James Guide to Science Fiction Writers; Magill's Guide to Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature; Neil Barron's Fantasy and Horror: A Critical and Historical Guide; Contemporary Novelists, 7th Edition; and American Women Writers. Her book Mike Resnick: An Annotated Bibliography and Guide to His Work was published by Alexander Books in 2000.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

One day, in the midst of strange events that are occurring throughout the United States, plain-spoken, 360year-old bookstore manager Benita Alvarez-Shipton is greeted by a pair of aliens who ask her to transmit their message of peace to Washington.

And so begins a fantastic adventure more perilous and important than Benita can imagine, because the envoys have come with a dire warning about another extraterrestrial race: predators with their attention focused on Earth, who may have already made their first "visit".

FROM THE CRITICS

Village Voice Literary Supplement

[Tepper's novels] are the old-fashioned kind, despite their futurisitc settings; the kind that wrap you in their embrace, that take over your life, that make the world disappear.

Publishers Weekly

HSo what do women really, really want? Elementary, Dr. Freud, according to Tepper's enchantingly sly feminist tale of Earthlings' first contact with alien starfarers: nothing that "virile, arbitrary, egocentric, and often belligerent" human males can supply. Abused wife to a feckless alcoholic, orphaned child of a wise Latina lady and her salvage-yard husband, Benita Alvarez-Shipton finds herself at 36 chosen by Chiddy and Vess, ambassadors from the galactic Pistach-Home, to introduce their message of peace to a largely skeptical, male-dominated U.S. government. Tepper intersperses episodes of Benita's struggle to help Chiddy and Vess with entries from the journal Chiddy keeps for her, an explanation of the Pistach moral-ethical religion centered upon a sacred fresco. To punctuate the many wrongs men in charge have committed, Tepper also inserts some headlines excruciatingly close to today's political scene: "Baptists claim ETs possible demonic invasion; Falwell says ETs more likely gay." Among other fitting punishments, the Pistach envoys see to it that rigid male right-to-life senators are impregnated by sentient wasps, whose larvae chew themselves out of righteous, unanesthetized senatorial bellies. As a clever roman clef and the stuff of secret female dreams, this novel succeeds brilliantly. Better yet, as a commentary on the capacity of women to endure, to achieve and to overcome, it shines as brightly as the stars that one day may provide what Tepper's women really want--true peace. Tepper's novel will sell to wide range of SF readers, but special targeting to women, for instance in feminist bookstores, will increase sales. (Nov.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

VOYA

Two friendly Pistach aliens approach Benita Alvarez-Shipton on a normal day in her depressing life. They ask her to be their intermediary with the United States government as they begin their work with Earth toward neighborliness and an alliance with the galactic Confederation. Most Americans, including the president (a Democrat), believe the Pistach are benevolent. Many Earth problems must be eliminated before such a union can be made, including the destruction of the environment, the mistreatment of women, the conflict in the Middle East, and the widespread use of guns and drugs. A rival group of aliens arrives simultaneously and approaches the president's enemies. These aliens are perfectly clear about what they want—hunting rights on the overpopulated planet—and deals are made with the senators (Republican). The fresco in the title refers to a sacred mural on which all Pistach beliefs are based. Eventually Benita visits Pistach in turmoil and helps the citizens through their spiritual crisis just as they are helping those on Earth through theirs. There can be no disguising the left-wing politics here. The aliens' agenda is practically a liberal wish list for Earth. Readers who tend toward conservative viewpoints might actually be offended. Readers who agree with the Pistach vision for Earth can expect to laugh and savor the wry dream, even when it is spread a bit thick. The subplot about the diehard pro-lifers being impregnated by hornet-like, mega-feminist aliens is overdone but priceless! Many complex issues are addressed, from religion to gender. In the hands of Tepper, this book is a philosophical frolic. VOYA CODES: 3Q 3P S A/YA (Readable without serious defects;Will appeal with pushing; Senior High, defined as grades 10 to 12; Adult and Young Adult). 2000, EOS/HarperCollins, 406p, Ages 16 to Adult. Reviewer: Elaine McGuire SOURCE: VOYA, June 2001 (Vol. 24, No. 2)

Library Journal

Benita Alvarez-Shipton faces an unorthodox midlife crisis when alien visitors choose her as their liaison with Earth's authorities and provide her with the means to take her destiny into her own hands in the process. The author of Six Moon Dance demonstrates her limitless ability to extract wonder and ingenuity from the lives of ordinary people faced with extraordinary situations. Tepper's talent for creating believable human and alien characters lends power and credibility to her work and makes her a convincing portrayer of sociologically oriented sf. Recommended for most sf collections. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Contemporary alien-visitors yarn from the author of Singer From the Sea, 1999, etc. The benevolent alien Pistach contact hardworking Benita Alvarez. They give her a message cube to present to the authorities—and they also give her the mental balance necessary to break free of her detestable personal circumstances. At length the cube, which shows how the Pistach can help humanity prepare to join the galactic federation by solving such intractable problems as crime, poverty, famine, and slavery, reaches the president. He engages Benita as liaison to the aliens. But predator races have also discovered Earth, say the Pistach, and intend to use the planet as a gigantic hunting ground. Certain politicians are willing to cooperate with them in return for power and wealth. Soon, though, the Pistach methods show near-miraculous results. The Pistach derive their ethos from a holy Fresco painted by the hero Canthorel. The pictures tell a story that inspires and impels the Pistach to help other races, even though the pictures are so dirty that the details cannot be discerned. Naturally, it's unthinkable to clean and possibly damage the Fresco. Then the heretic, T'Fees, cleans the Fresco, revealing the truth: the Pistach were conquerors and slavers! Pistach plunges into despair. The Pistach, however, are notably untalented artists, and this fact gives Benita an idea how humans may be able to help the Pistach. Another consummately skillful, wise, sometimes hilarious, iconoclastic performance, although possibly too relentlessly polemical for some tastes.

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