First published in 2016
253 pages
My rating: 3 out of 5
The Short Of It:
Such a promising premise, but not the story I expected.
The Long Of It:
Sully is an astronaut returning from a trip to Jupiter when her ship permanently loses communication with Earth; Augie is an elderly astronomer in the Arctic who decides to stay and finish out his days with his telescopes when the rest of the base is evacuated. Both know something horrible has happened, but they have no idea what disaster has befallen their planet and no clear way of finding out.
The library sticker on my copy of "Good Morning, Midnight" proclaims it to be science fiction and I was pumped for a fast-paced post-apocalyptic thriller, but it should be billed as literary fiction -- it's really a quiet novel about human connection. The possible end of humankind had both characters -- neither particularly likable -- doing a lot of soul-searching and cataloging their many, many regrets -- and me doing a bit of yawning.
There was an interesting twist at the end, but by then the book had mostly lost my interest. About a third of the way through I had the sinking feeling that the actual nature of the apocalypse wouldn't be revealed -- the what and how and why wasn't necessary to the character-driven story -- but I still had hope. Nope, Brooks-Dalton never expounds of the topic.
The book was well-done for what it was, and I really liked the author's idea -- two lost souls coming to terms with the fact that something awful has likely wiped out everyone and everything they've ever known -- as well as reading about life on a spaceship, but it was a totally different novel than I had in mind. I wanted something like "Station Eleven" or even "The Fireman," but I got a rather depressing and cerebral story instead.
I thought that Good Morning, Midnight was quite hopeful underneath it all. It wasn't quite what I expected either but I really enjoyed it.
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