Good Morning, Midnight by Lily Brooks-Dalton

Early this morning I finished reading Good Morning, Midnight by Lily Brooks-Dalton. I watched the Netflix movie shortly after it came out and I liked it, but I have to admit I had forgotten most of the plot. Last week I stumbled across this slim paperback version at my local library sale and I was intrigued. I brought it home with me and immediately started reading. 

Augustine is a world-renowned scientist at the end of his days studying the stars from a research facility near the north pole. When a mysterious world-ending event forces the evacuation of the post, he chooses to stay. He has no family to go back to and he would rather spend what time he has left gazing through the massive telescope at the universe. When he discovers a small child has been left behind in the emergency departure, he must force himself to keep living a little longer and set up some way for her to survive.

Sully is an astronaut halfway through a two-year expedition to Jupiter when mission control suddenly goes silent. She and the rest of the six-person crew have no idea what has happened and must wait until they are back in Earth's orbit to make a plan for their future. There is no way to know what has become of the families they've left behind or if there is any way for them to return to terra firma.

I loved this book. It is beautifully written and filled with so much emotion in so few pages. It is a quiet kind of book with plenty of internal examination by the characters, and yet it is far from slow. I was struck repeatedly by how a book like this should be a bit boring with all the reflection on memories and lives now passed, but Brooks-Dalton crafted it in such a way that I couldn't put it down. When I finally closed the back cover, all I could say to myself was, "Damn. That was a good book." Over and over again, I said it. It probably seems silly, but I actually cried because it was so good, not because of what the characters faced or their outcomes, but just because it was so good.

I love this book. I wish there were more of it. I wish I knew more at the end, but I also respect the way the author chose to tell the story. It was magnificent.