Good Morning, Midnight
NOW THE MAJOR NETFLIX FILM 'THE MIDNIGHT SKY'
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- €4.49
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- €4.49
Publisher Description
NOW A MAJOR NETFLIX FILM 'THE MIDNIGHT SKY', DIRECTED BY GEORGE CLOONEY, STARRING FELICITY JONES AND GEORGE CLOONEY
'A remarkable and gifted debut' Colson Whitehead, author of The Underground Railroad
'Fans of Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven and Kim Stanley Robinson's Aurora will appreciate the Brooks-Dalton's exquisite exploration of relationships' Washington Post
There is a particular beauty in silence, in being cut off from the world. Augustine, a brilliant, ageing scientist, is consumed by the stars. He has spent his entire life searching for the origins of time itself. He has now been left alone on a remote research base in the Arctic circle, all communication with the outside world broken down. But then he discovers a mysterious child, Iris, who must have hidden herself away when the last of his colleagues departed.
Sully is a divorced mother. She is also an astronaut, currently aboard The Aether on a return flight from Jupiter. This is the culmination of her career, the very reason for all the sacrifices she has made - the daughter she left behind, the marriage she couldn't save. When all communication goes silent, she is left wondering what she will be returning to.
Marooned in the vast silence of space and the achingly beautiful sweep of the Arctic, both Augustine and Sully begin to understand their place in the world, and what gives their life meaning. For only in the silence can we find out who we truly are.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Brooks-Dalton's (Motorcycles I've Loved) ambitious debut novel, the human population of Earth has gone silent, "as if there were no radio transmitters left in the world, or perhaps no souls to use them." At the Arctic's Barbeau Obervatory, renowned curmudgeon and astronomer Augustine, nearing 80, chooses to stay behind as his colleagues depart from the research station (in response to the unspecified crisis) so he can live out his life untethered from society. When he discovers Iris, a young girl "left behind like a forgotten piece of luggage," Augustine's life and his uninterrupted opportunity to "quantify the guts of infinity, to look back into the dawn of time and glimpse the very beginning" gets complicated. At the same time, the six-person crew of the Aether, the first manned flight to explore Jupiter and its moons, turns back toward Earth. Neither Augustine nor the crew of the Aether know what fate has befallen humanity, only that their entreaties remain unanswered, as if sentient life had never existed. When Augustine, a ham-radio enthusiast, catches the attention of Sully, the Aether's communications specialist, the two converse briefly. But time and space conspire to separate the planet's last remaining inhabitants. Brooks-Dalton's prose lights up the page in great swathes, her dialogue sharp and insightful, and the high-concept plot drives a story of place, elusive love, and the inexorable yearning for human contact. Although the book's two parallel threads often read less like a novel than a pair of expertly crafted if only tangentially related novellas, the memorable characters explore complex questions that resonate with the urgency of a glimpse into the void.
