Alexandra Oliva explores the tangled bonds between mothers and daughters, and the implications of generational cycles, in her thought-provoking third novel, The Radiant Dark.
In a small Adirondacks town in 1980, new mother Carol is stunned and thrilled to hear that a strange flickering of light in the sky indicates a strong possibility of intelligent life on another planet, 11 light-years away from Earth. As she struggles to care for her newborn son, Michael, Carol becomes fascinated by odd transmissions from a planet known as Ross 128 b, eventually coming to believe the Rossians' messages have spiritual implications. Many years later, Carol's daughter, Rosanna, will grow up to become a scientist whose work deals with transport and communication to other planets. The prospect of contact with interstellar beings, and the implications for life on planet Earth, powerfully shapes the lives of Carol and her children, even after she divorces their father and moves away.
Oliva (Forget Me Not; The Last One) draws her characters with sharp, keen-eyed compassion, examining Carol's lingering trauma from her abusive childhood, and the ways it influences her fierce, often misguided love for her children. Michael, a peacemaker drawn to a life outdoors, spends his young adulthood wandering the country, searching for something he can't quite define. Meanwhile, Rosanna--prickly, analytical, driven--earns a spot at Yale and fights to carve out a place for herself in academia, while holding her mother at arm's length. During her graduate-student years in Arizona, Ro's work on a later Rossian transmission proves more vital than anyone imagines. And, years later, when a scandal involving the Rossians--and Ro's professional mentor--erupts in 2018, it brings Carol and her children back to those early days of first contact, with implications for all their futures.
Oliva sensitively guides her characters apart and back together, detailing different facets of each person at different pivotal moments in their lives. Carol's deep involvement with a spiritual guru whose message is focused on light is only one way Oliva relates her narrative back to its title again and again. The light of knowledge, of spiritual guidance, of scientific clarity, of life-sustaining love--all these forms of light illuminate the darkness in Oliva's novel, and her characters must grapple with the insights (strange, life-changing, sometimes unwelcome) that the light brings.
Tender, thought-provoking, and quietly luminous, The Radiant Dark asks how we relate to our fellow beings (interstellar or otherwise) and highlights the ways the past echoes through the present and shapes the future. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams
Shelf Talker: Alexandra Oliva's thought-provoking third novel examines the complex bond between a mother and her children against the backdrop of communication with a distant planet.