I was absolutely engrossed in this novel. It had everything I love in a book; it took me away to places I’ll probably never go (a deep sea trench and space, for example) and concentrated on the one storyteller with all other characters only really understood in relation to her – a deep dive into the head of a very interesting woman. Leigh is a Dutch biologist, very nerdy, interested in the beginnings of life on earth. She is also the survivor of a father’s beatings, a mother who consoled her but would not stop the beatings and a sister Leah protected so she didn’t get beaten. He died and she tried to make herself anonymous. I felt the father as an understated presence in the story. He is not the story. The story is the science.
Much of Leah’s childhood is related in a pragmatic fashion, ignoring the ‘show don’t tell’ rule of modern writing. She tells us, and moves on. She has an extraordinary life, there is lots to cover and Leigh is pretty straightforward. Her science, on the other hand, is – like most things we don’t understand – utter magic. The places she takes us are deeply compelling and we linger over the meaning behind things.
Leigh discusses the strangeness of life of earth with a colleague on an exploration of an ocean trench. She says: ‘I don’t want to “other” the strangeness. I want to accept it and recognise it. One of the first things that excited me – really excited me, and I can remember this vividly – about the ocean, was the knowledge that it already contains everything. It’s like you said earlier: the stuff of the body – of every body, of every living thing – it’s still there. …I feel like it must be a developmental problem, a preserved childhood state, or something – I just can’t accept this fact as trivial, and move on. How can you take this for granted? How can anyone do that?…The cell is basically an ocean capsule. A preserved primordial capsule, holding the original marine environment inside. This is . . . this is just beyond incredible, isn’t it? I mean, you could describe us as both people, and as mobile assemblages of ocean. I am not ready to get over this.’
The journey into the trench returns unfathomable results, and the colleagues she meets on the job propel Leigh into the weird world of NASA. I really have no idea if the descriptions of what happens in the NASA labs have any bearing on reality or are straight out of Star Trek. Leigh is engaged to develop some kind of primal lichen as a food source for extended space travel. A garden for a space ship that she designs, rather beautifully, not only as nourishment but as a source of contemplation and a communal obligation; something that needs to be tended with love, bringing humanity into the heart of the technical.
Five years ago, the story goes, a new method of astral propulsion was discovered. The technology behind this is outside the story (fair call, I think), so you need to take a leap of faith here to make the second part of the novel reasonable. Take the leap. I’m not sure that it ever does become reasonable but even if you are not a sci-fi fan (and I am not) by then you have invested so much in Leah and her understanding of the world, where she hovers on the cusp of the wonderful, that you have to read on. You have to know.
The lovely thing about Leigh is that her nerdiness is philosophical and observational and she takes us along with her. The antennas seemed mysterious, impenetrable, though I knew more or less what they did: sweep the skies, receive transmissions from spacecraft. But the reality here on the ground was different. The discs were monolithic, inscrutable, quite beautifully sculpted. They looked devotional, built in praise, which I supposed they were. The soft, curved white parabolas were like a pale opened hand, waiting to catch something, carry something, pass something on. The container, the object of infinite purpose and adaptability, the thing that enabled other things. A cup, a bowl, an opened hand. A vessel can contain almost anything; so can language. There was no limit to the purpose it might serve.
You’ll have to read the book to learn whether Leigh comes back with any answers to these Brian Cox-ish questions on the origin of life, whether we are alone in the universe, and what it all means. As I say, the second part of the book is a bit out there.
A great one for a book club, I think. SO much to discuss, from the domestic to the intergalactic. I took screeds of notes. ‘The world was no longer what we thought it was at all’, is one of the most prophetic notions I’ve ever read. It offers the suggestion of a Copernican or Darwinian moment coming up in the near future. Personally, I can’t wait.
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