SOURCE: Silverblatt, Michael. “Children of a Laser God.” Los Angeles Times Book Review (3 February 1991): 11.

In the following review, Silverblatt criticizes Mallon for not investing enough in his characters in Aurora 7.

On May 24, 1962, 11-year-old Gregory Noonan leaves his fourth-grade classroom and takes the railroad to Manhattan in order to join the crowd in Grand Central Station watching Scott Carpenter's Aurora 7 space flight on the huge monitors. The boy is space-mad, loony for the Mercury project, a would-be moon traveler. Shy, smart and uncommunicative (he already has trouble receiving kisses or saying “I love you” to close relatives), Gregory has veered out of the orbit of his understanding parents; he seems to have received an otherworldly call to outer space.

With audacious cunning, Thomas Mallon implies that God Himself has lured Gregory away from his home and into darkest Manhattan, much as He has lured Scott Carpenter into the heavens...