Good Morning, Midnight (2016)
Lily Brooks-Dalton
256 pagesIn my review of Marlen Haushofer’s post-apocalyptic novel The Wall, I mention that what attracts me to such stories is not “the precipitating catastrophic event itself, but rather … the characters’ reactions to the new situation they find themselves in.” I found my conviction on that point put to the test by author Lily Brooks-Dalton in her story Good Morning, Midnight, in which something goes very wrong on Earth, but exactly what remains a mystery to both the characters and the reader.
Set perhaps a few decades into our future, the story opens at an observatory on an island in the far north of Canada, well above the Arctic Circle. There, a year after the rest of the staff were hurriedly evacuated amidst rumors that “something catastrophic was happing in the outside world” (10), an aging astronomer, Augustine, carries on his work. Cantankerous, and caring only about continuing his research, Augustine had refused to leave, despite warnings that there would be no further rescue missions coming for him.And indeed, when Augustine tries the base’s radio just days after the evacuation, the outside world had gone silent, leaving him with no idea what might have occurred. Augustine has a more immediate concern however, one that motivated the self-proclaimed loner to fire up the radio at all: his discovery of a young girl, Iris, in one of the dormitory buildings on the base. He figures her to be about eight years old, and wonders how she could have been left behind in the evacuation, and why he has no memory of having seen her on the base before. Having spent his life looking upward to the cosmos, with barely any time left over to consider the world or people around him, he realizes that he has no idea what to do with her.
Despite having received broad renown as a scientist, Augustine has remained unsatisfied, desperate to make a discovery that will ensure his fame matches the historical giants of his field, and so extends far into the future. That single-minded focus left him with little time in his life for anything else, causing him decades earlier to leave behind his wife and young daughter, and beyond them, any other connection to the world that threatened to interfere with his goals. Now, even as he continues his work at the observatory, the sudden appearance of Iris in his life --- and the deafening silence of the outside world --- force him to confront the profoundly ephemeral nature of his fame. Marooned at the end of the Earth, he finds himself re-examining the choices he has made in life.
A second plot-line parallels events on the observatory base: far from Earth, on a spaceship beginning the return trip from exploration of the Jupiter system, the communications officer, Sully, suddenly discovers that contact with Earth has been lost. As the days pass without contact being reestablished, Sully and her five crewmates confront the reality that something more serious than a simple technical glitch may have occurred. As the silence from Earth drags on from days into weeks and then months, the crew struggle to carry on their mission; the motivation to continue the scientific work, or even to just maintain the routines necessary to get themselves safely back to Earth, begin to lose meaning. Each of them becomes lost in thoughts of what has happened to the people and world they left behind, each reacting differently to the unexpected situation.
The portion of the story set aboard the spaceship focuses on Sully, and though she is decades younger than Augustine, similarities abound between the two. Like Augustine, Sully has spent her life looking upward, beyond Earth --- in her case becoming an astronaut. She too now finds the enormity of the crisis causing her to reevaluate the suddenly enormous seeming cost of her unwavering pursuit of space: a failed relationship and lost connection with her former husband and their daughter. Contemplating what may have happened back on Earth, she comes to realize that her recognition of the impact of the sacrifices she has made has likely come too late to atone for.
The two plot lines are told in alternating chapters, and, with the cause and extent of the catastrophe on Earth left unrevealed, Brooks-Dalton keeps the focus squarely on the psychological crisis Augustine and Sully each face as they re-examine their past choices in the face of heart-rending uncertainty and loss. For the reader, the story has strong parallels to Meg Howrey’s The Wanderers (my review here) which, although not a post-apocalyptic novel, leaves readers in the dark about its central, motivating reality --- as much so as the characters themselves. In both novels, this shared uncertainty with the characters helps deepen our empathy for the emotional conflicts they experience.
That shared plot device does, however, lead to a nagging concern for readers of both stories: the plausibility of the characters actually remaining so completely unaware of the truth. In Brooks-Dalton’s novel this relates, of course, to the apocalypse that has occurred. However self-absorbed and focused on work Augustine may be, can he really be expected to know nothing more than that “something catastrophic” is occurring? For those on the spaceship, one could assume that their communications were well-filtered by mission control, but can they be expected to remain so in the dark about such an apparently extensive disaster even once back to Earth orbit? Admittedly, complaining about implausibility in science fiction novels is a bit unproductive, since future technology can always serve explicitly or implicitly to explain it away, and ultimately this is a minor quibble for both of these engaging stories.
In Good Morning, Midnight, Augustine and Sully each experience the unspecified apocalypse, and the depth of the resulting isolation, as a catalyst forcing them to recognize the implications of the self-imposed seclusion they have cultivated as they have pursued their careers. When their two plot lines briefly and tenuously cross toward the end of the novel these two characters --- more similar than they know --- find a moment of solace in the connection, and in the knowledge that there may yet be hope for a future for mankind. The true poignancy of that moment is, however, left for the reader to grasp and reflect upon.
Other reviews / information:
As an Amateur Radio operator, it was fun to see that hobby make an appearance in the story.
Have you read this book, others by this author, or even similar ones by other authors? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.
Other of my book reviews: FICTION Bookshelf and NON-FICTION Bookshelf
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