The Radiant Dark
A Novel
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- 12,99 €
Publisher Description
INSTANT USA TODAY BESTSELLER • A People Best Book of the Month • An Apple Best Book of the Month
“Beautifully written and full of wonder and humanity.” — People
“Just as engrossing as the mysteries swirling in outer space.”—The New York Times Book Review
In the wake of First Contact, one mother upends her life and her children’s futures, as humanity reckons with its place in the universe.
It’s March 1980, and Carol Girard and her husband are living an ordinary life in a small town in the Adirondacks. They have just had their first child, and though Carol is struggling with the challenges of new motherhood, her future seems clear. Until something extraordinary happens: an inexplicable flickering of light in the sky, which is ultimately determined to be communication from intelligent life on another planet. But these beings are eleven light-years away, and nothing is known about them other than the fact that they seem to know we exist, too.
As humanity reels from a shifting understanding of its place in the universe, we follow the stories of the Girard family: Carol, whose fascination with this other life sparks a desperate search for spiritual meaning; Michael, her loyal son, who finds solace not in the stars above his head but in the ground beneath his feet; and Ro, Carol’s bright and ambitious daughter, whose childhood goal to work in interstellar communication will evolve into something far grander.
Tracing five decades of love, loss, ambition, and self-discovery, The Radiant Dark is "Daring and expansive, soul-stirring, and precise, this is a novel about love and belonging.” (Eliana Ramage, author of To the Moon and Back).
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
The people closest to you can seem a galaxy away in this sensitive family saga told against a thought-provoking backdrop of speculative fiction. Struggling with postpartum depression in 1980, Carol Girard initially doesn’t pay much attention to the news about strange flashes of light originating from the star Ross 128. But it soon becomes clear that there’s intelligent life on the star—life that’s attempting to contact us from 11 light-years away. As the years pass and slow communication builds between our two worlds, the revelation that alien life exists ripples through the culture, brilliantly colouring how the Girards evolve, change, and sometimes grow apart. From Carol, who finds herself seeking spiritual answers, to her younger child, Ro, who joins the space agency out of a contrasting devotion to science, the sci-fi element of the novel cleverly illuminates finely drawn, often bittersweet truths about its characters. The Radiant Dark is a poignant look at the complexities of understanding each other.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Oliva (Forget Me Not) blends a quiet family drama with a spellbinding saga of extraterrestrial contact in her alluring latest. Growing up poor in the Adirondacks, Carol Girard hoped for a better life. Instead, she settled down with a dependable but emotionally cold husband in their hometown. After giving birth to their first child, Michael, four weeks early in 1980, Carol experiences debilitating postpartum depression, exhaustion, and feelings of inadequacy. A few weeks later, flashes of light and a radio signal in the sky emanating from the constellation Virgo lead scientists to theorize that aliens from the star Ross 128, 11 light years away, are communicating with Earth. Carol, born under the zodiac sign Virgo, feels connected to the aliens, which humans call Rossians. Two years later, Earth sends a reply, beaming out a picture of the solar system. Over the course of decades, the narrative tracks how Carol's daughter, Ro, becomes an astrophysicist to decipher a message sent by the Rossians in 2005. The extended depiction of Carol's frustrated life doesn't quite gel with the alien story line, but the novel picks up speed with Ro on the case, and Oliva imbues the story with a genuine sense of hope that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe. This will fascinate readers.
