Good Morning, Midnight

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. (Aug.)