Celestial Lights

by Cecile Pin

Curiosity may be fatal to cats, but for humans, the calculus is considerably more nuanced. There are pluses and minuses to exploration. What is gained and what is lost? One person confronting that question is Oliver Ines, born in an English village at roughly the same moment when the space shuttle Challenger exploded, a tragedy that may have been a factor in his decision to become an astronaut. The instinct to explore and the repercussions when that ambition goes too far provide the dramatic tension in Celestial Lights, an elegant novel by London-based French author Cecile Pin.

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.

Oliver, known to everyone as Ollie, may have had a portentous beginning to life--his skin had a short-lived "icy blue hue" at birth--but his childhood is more pleasant. His mother is a French teacher. His father likes to renovate old cars. In 1995, at age nine, Ollie is helping his dad fix a 1960s Mini in their garage when his mum asks him to deliver plums to a village neighbor. That's where he meets Philly, a girl his age and the neighbor's niece, with eyes that were "a colour I'd never seen before--a mix of brown and green and gold." Ollie is smitten.

He and Philly begin hanging out together. She invites him to sit with her under the sycamore tree in her aunt's yard and hunt for New Forest cicadas, the only such species in Britain. The cicadas grow underground for almost 10 years, Philly explains, before rising to lay their eggs--a nice bit of foreshadowing, as readers discover. Thus begins one of Ollie's earliest explorations. Another is when he and Philly go for a walk, and he suggests they cross a forbidden area as a shortcut, "tangible proof that I was brave." Philly sees it as trespassing, "a reckless, pointless act." This, Ollie notes, was "a harbinger of all that was to come."

He's right, as Pin dramatizes in a series of deftly sketched scenes. Ollie and Philly lose touch until Ollie attends university to study engineering and complete a master's thesis on nuclear reactors. A chance encounter reunites him with Philly, who is working toward a PhD in biology and will eventually work for an ecology research group in Edinburgh. They fall in love and soon marry. Ever the natural explorer, however, Ollie has enlisted in the navy, and spends several years working on submarines, including a stint on a ballistic submarine carrying Britain's nuclear deterrent, and is often away from home.

As Pin poignantly dramatizes, Ollie may love his family, but what truly motivates him is space travel. He becomes fascinated by a mission to Mars known as EROS. Later, he follows the voyage of Pegasus, a spacecraft that was to spend 700 days on another Mars journey and was financed by Mark Massey, a billionaire who runs a private company called NovaTech. By the time Ollie is in his 30s, he has become an astronaut of considerable renown. Impressed by his accomplishments, Massey tracks him down and offers him a unique opportunity: apply for NovaTech's astronaut training program, where the company is preparing for a mission to Europa, the icy moon closest to Jupiter, to find out if there's an ocean under its crust that can sustain life. The catch? The mission will last for 10 years--the same amount of time the New Forest cicadas of his childhood need to rise to the surface. Ollie would be the first to walk on Europa. But he'd have to abandon Philly, and their six-year-old son, for a decade. It's no spoiler to say that he takes the challenge.

Pin's writing is especially imaginative once the action moves to outer space. She memorably describes the odd sensations of being on the International Space Station, "the hum of our suits' fans" during spacewalks, the "whole capsule shaking" on an earlier voyage's return to Earth, and more. Interspersed throughout this intriguing novel are excerpts from Commander Oliver Ines's log, a mix of humdrum and tension (Talos, Day 1714. I'm not sure what happened. I'm not sure.) The mystery lies in what happens during that mission, and how a decade in outer space affects Ollie, his family, the NovaTech space program, and Ollie's fellow astronauts.

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. --Michael Magras

Cecile Pin (photo: Ariane Lebon)

Albert Einstein said, "Curiosity has its own reason for existing." One can't learn and grow without developing the muscle for exploration. That's true, but there may come a moment when one has to determine the point at which a pursuit yields diminishing returns. That's the conundrum London-based French author Cecile Pin wrestles with in her novel Celestial Lights (Holt, March 24, 2026), about a world-famous astronaut forced to confront the dueling demands of ambition and family when on a 10-year mission. Pin, a Forbes "30 Under 30" winner whose first novel, Wandering Souls, was longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, blends these elements beautifully in this delicate work.

What inspired you to write this novel?

I've always found the cosmos fascinating. It surrounds us, is all-encompassing, and holds many mysteries. I was particularly interested in writing a novel that held some speculative, sci-fi elements, while still feeling humane and grounded.

While sketching out the novel, I read Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey: an epic, perilous journey, with a commanding protagonist at its center, burning with a desire for glory. It was hard not to draw a parallel with the character that I was writing. And, perhaps because they were particularly relevant to me at that time, I thought more about notions of personal sacrifice and ambition, and what happens when they come into conflict. Whether it's artists shutting themselves away from the outside world to complete their work; athletes forsaking retirement at the expense of their health and family life; journalists and soldiers risking their lives in war zones. I noticed how present the conflict between our personal, familial lives and our private ambitions is in our culture. I wanted to write a character wrestling with that, too.

One of the biggest themes of this book is exploration. What are your thoughts on the perils and benefits of curiosity?

I think being curious is a good thing! Curiosity is what drives me to write. Whether it's wanting to learn more about my family history, as for my first book, or about certain topics such as the space industry, or the themes I mentioned previously, my books are, in a way, means to satisfy a thirst for a specific knowledge. Curiosity also holds a strong link with empathy: it's being curious about people, about different cultures and lives, that allow us to understand and identify with people different from us.

Along those lines, one character talks about the environmental costs of exploration. How do you feel about these costs?

This is where curiosity might become a foible. How much should we value knowledge of the universe, knowledge of ourselves, if earning that knowledge damages our planet or creates harm elsewhere? How do we weigh one against the other? Space agencies often justify their work by arguing that some of the research conducted in outer space is invaluable for our advancement. For example (I'm simplifying here!), the microgravity of the ISS provides a unique advantage to study cancer cells, because of the way they grow in that environment, potentially allowing us to find better treatments. But whatever way you look at it, it should be a priority for space agencies to research ways to reduce their environmental impact, whether through solar panels, more reusable parts, or renewable energies.

My intent from the start was to raise those issues while leaving the answers up to readers. I liked the idea of the novel being a Rorschach test: for people to have varied takeaways, depending on their own backgrounds and views.

You write knowingly of space, life on a submarine, and nuclear reactors. What research did you conduct regarding them?

My alma mater, University College London, allowed me to audit some lectures in their physics and astronomy department, which gave me much needed basics on astrophysics and our solar system. I read books like The Future of Humanity by Michio Kaku and The End of Everything by Katie Mack to better understand some of the challenges faced by space travel, and the directions it's taking. I also read British astronaut Tim Peake's autobiography Limitless, which was helpful in understanding the European space industry a bit more (though I've fictionalized it in my novel), and life on the International Space Station.

The NASA and ESA websites are also incredibly thorough, and contain heaps of information on current and past missions and the technologies they're working on. I love this interactive rendering of the Solar System that NASA has, which allows you to see celestial bodies and the spacecrafts currently in their midst.

What do you see as the future of space travel?

With all the economic uncertainties across the globe, I see a world in which private companies hold a growing space within the space industry. Earlier this year, the Trump administration announced plans to cut NASA's budget by 24%, which will result in the shutting of labs and planned missions being abandoned. Billionaires, like Musk or Bezos, have long loved to make space their playground. I can imagine them jumping in to fill in that gap. But will their privately owned companies make do with serving the general public, or will their goals be more single-minded, i.e., not scientific, but commercial? The latter is more likely, isn't it?

Private companies have already begun sending people into space. We saw a version last spring when six women, including Katy Perry and Gayle King (and astronaut Amanda Ngọc Nguyễn), took part in a spaceflight, all dressed in Blue Origin suits, Bezos's space technology company. I imagine those kinds of commercial missions, and private astronauts, will become more common.

What authors and works of fiction inspired you for this novel?

I re-read a lot of Kazuo Ishiguro's works. I've always admired his ability to create worlds that are not quite ours, yet feel so real and tangible on the page, such as in Never Let Me Go. I was also inspired by his protagonists in The Remains of the Day and An Artist of a Floating World: stoic men, reminiscing on their past, unsure of the choices that have built their lives. For that same reason, I also re-read The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes, which is so elegantly written, and Trust by Hernan Diaz, one of my favorite books of recent years.

For the sci-fi elements, I read Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel, The Memory Police by Yōko Ogawa, and The Employees by Olga Ravn. I also read a lot of first-person narrations, as it was my first time making use of it. I found it daunting! Some of my favorites were Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi, Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, and The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner.

Several conflicts in this book relate to the struggle between family and ambition. Could you share some thoughts about the difficulty of balancing the two?

I was struck by how present this struggle is in our culture, through different shapes. I find that when I write, there comes a moment when I have to shut myself off, not answer texts, not be in touch with family for a few weeks. I need to enter the world of the book. But with that detachment comes so much guilt. I really wanted Ollie to wrestle with all of this: with the truth that our loved ones, and our homes, can be the most important thing, the best fuel we have, while at the same time be an inhibition to ambitions we might hold. --Michael Magras