Good Morning, Midnight by Lily Brooks-Dalton
My rating: 4/5 cats
this is an interesting spin on the apocalypse genre: the end of the world as experienced by two characters who have already distanced themselves from the bustle of humanity – an astronomer named augustine who has been posted at an arctic research station for three years, and an astronaut named sully, returning to earth with her crew after a mission studying the moons of jupiter.
the cataclysmic event that causes the end is unspecified – the reader knows only as much as the characters themselves. augustine knows a little more than sully, having seen the other researchers at the observatory evacuated by the air force warning them vaguely of “something catastrophic,” but augustine refused to leave, and from that point on, neither he nor the crew of the aether have been able to make contact with anyone on earth – the planet is nothing but silence.
the book itself absorbs and projects this silence into a very quiet apocalypse story. it’s about loneliness and isolation and what’s left when all the distractions have been cleared away. it’s about introspection and regret and the choices these characters have made to leave family and other attachments behind in favor of ambition and career.
augustine is 78 years old and driven to leave an academic legacy that will endure after his death. he spent his life restlessly, moving from place to place and woman to woman, fathering a child he never met, half-heartedly sending money and presents until losing touch altogether. he’s not a man drawn to companionship, …he would have been hard pressed to name someone he didn’t despise, but after the evacuation, he discovers a little girl named iris left behind and, in the vast tundra at the end of the world, he gets a second chance at fatherhood.
He treated her like a pet because he didn’t know what else to do – with clumsy kindness, but as a specimen of a different species. He fed her when he fed himself. Talked to her when he felt like talking. Took her for walks. Gave her things to play with or look at: a walkie-talkie, a constellation map, a musty sachet of potpourri he’d found in an empty drawer, an Arctic field guide. He did his best, which he knew wasn’t very good, but – she didn’t belong to him and he wasn’t the sort of man who adopted strays.
iris is half-feral, very quiet and independent, and the two form a bond augustine has never before experienced, worrying about what will happen to her after he dies, left alone in the great absence.
He remembered that she was only a little girl, and that recollection kindled emotions he didn’t quite recognize. Tenderness, perhaps, but something else as well, something darker – fear. Not of her, but for her. Was the journey safe? Had he thought it through? Should he be more careful with this tiny spark of life that had somehow ended up in his care?
the emptiness of his surroundings and this new responsibility give him clarity of perspective – he reflects upon his life, all of the opportunities he let slip by him, the irony of his determination to be remembered in a world in which no one is left to remember.
Augustine knew only about the distant stars, billions of miles away. He’d been moving from place to place his entire life and had never bothered to learn anything about the cultures or wildlife or geography that he encountered, the things right in front of him. They seemed passing, trivial. His gaze had always been far-flung. He’d accumulated local knowledge only by accident. While his colleagues explored the regions of their various research posts, hiking in the woods or touring the cities, Augustine only delved deeper into the skies, reading every book, every article that crossed his path, and spending seventy-hour weeks in the observatory, trying to catch a glimpse of thirteen billion years ago, scarcely aware of the moment he was living in…When he considered how long he had been alive, it seemed remarkable how little he had experienced.
meanwhile, sully and the crew of the aether are hurtling towards an uncertain future, knowing that something is very wrong after being unable to contact anyone on earth despite there being no evidence of mechanical failure on their end.
With each passing day, their separation from Earth became more acute. Now, after two weeks of silence, it was beginning to feel like an emergency. Without the tether of Mission control rippling through the vacuum, they were truly alone. Even though they had begun the long journey home, gradually closing the yearlong gap instead of lengthening it, the crew was feeling farther from Earth than ever. All six of them were coming to terms with the silence, and with what it might mean – for them, and for those they’d left behind on the now-mute planet.
sully has also chosen career over family; leaving behind an ex-husband and a resentful daughter who doesn’t understand how desperately she needed to follow this calling, assuming there would be time in the “someday” to reconnect. like augustine, sully doesn’t feel the connection with people that comes so naturally to others, but in the claustrophobic confines of the ship and the apprehension of the future, she finally finds the comfort to be had in community.
it’s a slow-moving, highly descriptive book that makes the reader feel the weight of the emptiness and the terrible beauty of a silent world. it’s so beautifully written that i can excuse the heavy-handedness of its treatment of coincidence and reveals. i may have rolled my eyes at one point, but for a debut novel, this isn’t necessarily a dealbreaker – it just needed a little more finesse in handling those parts, and she handled the resolution well, avoiding a happy-slappy unrealistic ending. except for those few clunky bits, it’s a very strong book.
but i gotta ask about that polar bear scene at the end. i understand its function as symbolism but, BEARing in mind
some of the other parts of the book, is this something that is actually happening? what are we supposed to make of this?
3.5 rounded up for wonderful descriptions and excellent helpless tension that overcame my reluctance to fully embrace the wonders of coincidence.
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ugh, i had to pause this over a week ago and i’m finally able to return to it. sorry, book – thanks for waiting! good thing you’re not a gerbil or you’d probably have eaten your toes or something by now.
