This week’s Shelf Awareness Maximum Shelf pick is Cecile Pin’s CELESTIAL LIGHTS, an unforgettable portrait of a complicated man and a breathtaking tale of memory, personal choices, and the relationships that define us.
January 28, 1986: Soon after launch, the Challenger shuttle falls out of the sky and into the sea. At the same time, Oliver Ines is born. CELESTIAL LIGHTS is his story.
Ollie spends his childhood in an English village where his bedroom is covered in glow-in-the-dark wallpaper bearing the planets and stars. Decades later, he has become one of the most renowned astronauts of his time. When an enterprising billionaire taps him to lead a landmark mission to the distant moon Europa, Ollie makes a choice that will send his whole world spinning.
As the mission advances deeper into unchartered territory, Ollie finds himself retreating into the past: his university days in London and years in the navy, relationships found and lost, becoming a husband and father. But will the world he remembers still be waiting for him ten years later when he returns?
“Some works of fiction can crush readers with their philosophical heft. Others trip lightly over their themes and are richer for it. Pin’s story, which starts in 1986 and concludes in the near future, is in the latter category. This seemingly simple tale of a young man tantalized by ambition to the point of risking family stability is the good kind of exploration: a meaningful journey that gains power as it progresses toward its heartrending conclusion…
Central to all of this is of course Ollie, who goes from a childhood with glow-in-the-dark galaxy wallpaper in his bedroom to an adulthood navigating questions of faith, responsibility, the environmental costs of exploration, and the quicksand one can step into when one’s priorities are misaligned. That’s a tough literary feat to pull off, and Pin does it exceedingly well in this inventive, sincere work.”—Shelf Awareness
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