Bright and Dangerous Objects

June 12, 2020

Mackintosh (So Happy It Hurts) presents an intimate portrayal of a woman at a crossroads. Commercial deep-sea diver Solvig learns that she has been short-listed for the Mars Project, a lifetime commitment to leave Earth behind and journey to the red planet. Her partner, James, wants to focus on settling down and beginning a family. Solvig is a very relatable protagonist for many women: she is trying to balance the ambitions of career and the excitement of journeying to Mars with the obligation to start a family and stay close to home. Is the desire to travel to Mars or take that opportunity real or is it just running away, driven by fear? VERDICT The Mars Project and Solvig's interest in it provides an exciting backdrop, but the core of the story is in the very human need to balance personal and familial desires. It will appeal to readers who appreciate realistic portraits and asking the question: "What if I just ran away to Mars?"--Lydia Fletcher, Univ. of Texas at Austin

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August 1, 2020
A commercial diver is torn between embracing her life on Earth and the opportunity to be one of the first humans to live on Mars. Thirty-seven-year-old Solvig Dean appears to have all she could want: a successful and exciting career as a saturation diver who travels deep into the North Sea to tend to the oil pipelines and wells that network the sea floor, a house in a Cornish beachside town, an Irish wolfhound named Cola, and a loving tattoo-artist partner, James. Even so, she continues to feel trapped. She can't choose a direction for her life and struggles to process her mother's death, which occurred when she was 2, leaving her with only a few photographs and her father's stories about a brilliant woman who escaped her own life's pressures through 15-hour days working in IT and bottles of Smirnoff vodka. Solvig distracts herself from the growing distance in her relationship with James and her ambivalence about starting a family by taking monthlong dive jobs and applying to the Mars Project, which aims to put the first colony of humans on the Red Planet by 2030. She keeps her application a secret from those closest to her--even though the mission would likely mean never returning to Earth. Will joining the Mars mission satisfy her ambition, or is it just an attempt to escape her earthly life? Mackintosh's detailed prose sensitively animates the worlds of the novel--from the tough commercial diving industry to the quirky community of Mars-colonist hopefuls--as well as the internal complexities of navigating middle age while torn between the contending desires for belonging and freedom. A perceptive and nuanced study of a woman's search for self-fulfillment, reaching from the ocean floor to outer space.

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Starred review from August 10, 2020
British writer Mackintosh’s powerful U.S. debut explores a woman’s struggle between her desire to join a Mars resettlement program and stay on Earth to start a family. At the start of the novel, Solvig Dean, 37, is out stargazing with her boyfriend, James, on a scenic cliff in Cornwall. The opening line of dialogue (“ ‘It’s incredible,’ I tell James. ‘I’m sitting here with you, but I’m looking light-years away’ ”) sets the tone for what follows: Solvig is an ambitious dreamer, while the plans of James, a tattoo artist, extend to nurturing a sourdough starter for the rest of his life. Solvig, a deep-sea diver for the oil industry, working 10-hour shifts on the ocean floor and away from home for months at a time, loves James, but she’s restless on land and in their relationship. After James tells Solvig about the Mars Project, Solvig is captivated by the prospect, but conflicted. With graceful prose and elegant metaphors, Mackintosh connects Solvig’s search for herself and desire for balance with her process of coming to terms with the loss of her mother. Solvig’s difficult choice is further informed by Mackintosh’s brilliant weaving in of a history of women in space. When Solvig finally makes her choice, the reader is left breathless, astounded by her courage. This is a deeply moving story about love, loss, and the strength it takes for women to realize their dreams.

October 1, 2020
Modern women are raised with the idea that we can have it all. In Mackintosh's first novel, deep-sea-diving welder Solvig?approaching 40, content in her relationship with James, contemplating a baby, and secretly volunteering for a lifelong colonizing mission to Mars?is confronted with the inherent flaw in this concept: choosing her path will require sacrifices so deep she could be forced to abandon what she previously thought she held dear. Solvig is both a confounding and supremely relatable character, and one whose motives book discussion groups will be eager to dissect. Mackintosh's short fiction has been lauded in her native UK, and her prose here has a cadence and tightness that will appeal to readers of that format while leaving room to explore Solvig's unsettled dreams, ambitions, and ambivalence. While Solvig's dilemma (Have a baby or leave Earth forever or . . . both?) is extreme, it is one that will resonate with readers at the crossroads of parenthood and career ambition.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)