The Radiant Dark
A Novel
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- 予約注文
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- リリース予定日：2026年4月28日
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- ¥2,400
発行者による作品情報
Arrival meets Wild Dark Shore in this captivating novel that follows a family over fifty years—a bold and compassionate exploration of the universe around us and what it truly means to be human.
“The Radiant Dark is incandescent.” —Sarah Jessica Parker
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. And so begins a decades-long exchange of messages with this mysterious, faraway civilization.
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 a stunning examination of a family navigating their lives with the knowledge that we are not alone.
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.
