THE RADIANT DARK, by Alexandra Oliva
What would happen — what would really happen — if beings on another planet reached out to those of us on Earth? It’s a question at the heart of countless creative endeavors (not to mention conspiracy theories), but Alexandra Oliva, whose previous books include “The Last One” and “Forget Me Not,” takes a different tack than most with her new novel, “The Radiant Dark.”
The story opens in an alternate version of the 1980s. Carol Girard is tending to her infant son, Michael, roiled by the challenges of new motherhood and undiagnosed postpartum depression. In bed with her husband in their small home in the Adirondack Mountains, she doesn’t see the strange, unexplained lights flashing in the sky, but more will follow, as will global speculation over what they mean. Eventually, the flashes will be traced to a star called Ross 128, and then to the exoplanet it orbits, Ross 128 b, a source 11 light-years away. “One of humanity’s oldest questions has been answered,” President Carter declares. “We are not alone.” After much international debate, Earth decides to send a signal back. And then the wait for a response begins.
Those hoping for snappy interplanetary repartee or the big, showy bangs of summer action movies will be disappointed. “The Radiant Dark” is a slow burn. After all, that’s the nature of space travel. With no delays, it takes 11 years to get a message to Ross 128 b, and then 11 more years for a message to travel back. That timeline punts Oliva’s extraterrestrial story to the background, where it simmers as a B-plot.
But this is to the book’s credit. Through Oliva’s skillful character development, the novel’s grounded, human story is just as engrossing as the mysteries swirling in outer space. I found myself rapt simply watching the Girard family live their lives, their day-to-day struggles, their relatable dramas, their joys and their pains on display.
Echoing the structure of light-years communication, the novel jumps across large swaths of time, with stops in 1993, 1998, 2005, 2018 and 2034. Along the way, Carol and her husband, Jake, have another child, Rosanna, named for the star system and its supposed inhabitants, the Rossians. Carol and Jake grow distant and divorce; their kids grow up and forge ahead in their own unique journeys. After a tragic incident in her youth, the brilliant Rosanna becomes a scientist, dedicating her life to the beyond. Her mother, who has her own traumatic childhood experiences, turns to a cultlike group devoted to worshiping the light of the Rossians. Against the backdrop of unprecedented scientific discovery, this fraught mother-daughter relationship becomes the heart of the book.
At one point, the two discuss the concept of the “generation ship”: Such a spaceship would set out on a journey with one group of family members, whose children would grow up in space and have their own kids. Only the later generations would live to see the “human outposts on other star systems.” Carol “can’t imagine signing up for something like that,” as she says, but Rosanna responds, “I’d do it in a second.” This difference of opinion speaks to the separate universes of a mother who needs to center herself in the story and a daughter driven to make sense of the world through the clarity of science, and the inevitable clashes between the two.
“We are not alone” may refer to our existence in the galaxy, but it’s also a signifier of family life, and Oliva is most of all concerned with the relationships right here on Earth, where, despite the presence of others, too often we feel lonely, misunderstood or invisible. While Carol and Rosanna are linked through their fascination with the Rossians, for a host of reasons — unaddressed generational trauma, possible narcissism, typical mother-daughter angst — they are unable to truly connect, and this wounds them both. Still, they have each other, in all that means. They are not alone in their universe.
And here it must be mentioned that Oliva’s otherworldly plot was, thrillingly, inspired by real life. In 2017, a research team discovered an Earth-size exoplanet 11 light-years from our solar system. They named it Ross 128 b. There is more to learn, but signs indicate that the planet might be able to sustain life.
At the book’s conclusion, Oliva makes a final jump to the year 2138, hurtling through time and space to an ending the characters we’ve come to know so well aren’t even alive for. But, in a message that’s full of bittersweet hope, their descendants are there to witness the present, to recognize the past and to keep moving forward. On this generation ship, “we are not alone” was only ever a starting point.
THE RADIANT DARK | By Alexandra Oliva | SJP Lit | 416 pp. | $28.95
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