Radiance: A Novel

So, imagine that at around the time George Melies filmed A Trip to the Moon, we actually discovered space travel. And all the planets--the moon, Venus, Neptune, Mars, etc--were habitable. And unlike A Trip to the Moon, no one lived on these planets but giant callowhales, and these whales produced milk that facilitated our ability to live on these planets, though no one knows what these callowhales are. Okay, then imagine that silent films are considered so artistic that films are produced primarily without sound, and also in black and white. Now put yourself in the Hollywood, film-noir mentality. An Orson Welles movie, perhaps. Meet Severin. She’s the daughter of a famous gothic film director, and has always grown up under the spotlight as a beloved film icon. She becomes a documentarian, traveling the stars and making her own films. Her fifth film—The Radiant Car Thy Sparrows Drew—explores a city that’s disappeared on Venus, and a child that circles the city. She and her crew travel to Venus, begin filming. And then she disappears. Told through scripts, gossip columns, interviews, and a fictional first-person detective, Radiance explores the impact of Severin’s disappearance on those who loved her, as well as the history of a person who’s always been in the limelight. As always, Valente’s writing is mesmerizing and unique, and I’m awed by her ability to capture so many different tones. Radiance is her first science fiction novel (she has several sci-fi short stories, one of which was the jumping off point for this novel), and it combines the pulp aesthetic of 1950s sci-fi with postmodern storytelling strategies. This is a book that’s meant to be read fast. If you let too much time go by between reading, you’ll miss connections. It wasn’t until about halfway through that I realized what was going on with some of the parts, and I went back to reread so I could make sure I was following! But it’s utterly unique and beautiful. For sci-fi, fantasy, and film fans, you should absolutely read this.

This is a weird one: a multi- point of view history of 20th century film making if Jules Verne style space travel had worked. Flits around through time and place, but if you have patience, the story comes together nicely. Very cool.

radiance: a novel is a wonderful blend of fantasy, sci-fi, and noir that goes on a trippy ride across a fully inhabited solar system, set in a 20th century where movies are black and while, and mostly silent. The central mystery slowly unwinds itself, with the final expose (at least to me) being unexpected but reasonable. I thoroughly enjoyed this book,

The flow of this book was weird for me. It jumps from pov to pov and style to style and is rarely clear about where it's going. Even so, it was interesting and mysterious and the mystery gets solved, more or less. It's like nothing I've ever read before.

Cat Valente writes weird books, and I love them. This one is no exception. Radiance follows the unfolding of a great mystery as told through audio transcripts, gossip magazines, film clips, and other forms. It's beautifully written. It's almost certainly not for everyone; it is quite odd, but I expect that those who like it will absolutely love it.

Some may well like this pastiche about the disappearance of Severin, who seems like a combination of Amelia Earhart and Leni Riefenstahl. In an alt universe that's arrived at our mid-20th century, somehow all the planets have been inhabited and terriformed. Severin, a documentary film maker, takes a documentary crew to Venus. Everyone returns but her. And in a series of recollections, first-person simile-laden noir narratives, and what all, we learn her story. I note the abundance of five-star reviews, but mine is not one of them. Frankly, I threw up my hands when a screenplay breaks out (in a typewriter typeface, yet) and my Kindle told me this would be going on for 43 minutes. No, just no. The late great film critic Pauline Kael once dismissed a film by saying she admired the technique, and then added: "what else is there?" Yes. --- Recommended for those who have admired this author's previous books. And those who think Gene Wolfe is a genius. Others should avoid.

This is a harder than average review to write. I agonized over how many stars to give Radiance as the number I wanted to give varied from as the reading went on. I wanted to love it. I wanted to give it a glowing five star review. At times I did love it. I love Cat Valente. I took a half day of work to go to a book store, listen to her read me the prologue and get my copy of this book signed. I did not love Radiance. Throughout the majority of the read I felt as though the complex and disjointed style was too difficult for the simplicity of the plot. On the other hand, the plot may have only seemed simple as I recognized too many of the classic sci-fi tropes. Either way, I had the mystery solved fairly early on and read to the end to get confirmation. I even abandoned it in the middle, well, early middle. I read about 100 pages and stopped. I couldn’t make myself put it bank on the shelf and pick out a new book. I couldn’t make myself pick Radiance back up. It intimidated me with its non-linear patchwork style. In the end, it was a new year’s resolution and a 2016 book challenge posted to Facebook (with a category of book that intimidates you) for me to try again. Then, somewhere around the last quarter of the novel, the style, which had become increasingly frustrating, coalesced into something lovely. I feel like I should be writing a baking metaphor about batter and cake. Or maybe it’s more a whole vs. sum of its parts type thing. In conclusion, Radiance is not for the lite reader. Radiance is not a beach book. Radiance is the type of book that requires a cup of hot tea, a fuzzy blanket, and a room with no distractions. I slogged through to the end. I was not disappointed. I cannot guarantee that struggling through would result in a similar end joy for you. Read at your own peril. <b>EDIT:</b> It has been over 48 hours since I finished Radiance. I’ve been unable to stop the novel from swimming through my mind. I’ve come to a new clarity. DO you remember that game-show on Nickelodeon many years ago? A picture would be revealed one tiny square at a time and you’d buzz in when you knew what the picture was. The part of this novel that was frustrating to me was that I guessed correctly on the pictures subject by the second or third square revealed. However, no matter how many times I hit the buzzer no one would reveal the whole picture. The thing that made me up my star rating was that the picture finally revealed wasn’t just a sketch of the story I read, but the Creation of Adam Fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel painting version of the story I read. It’s beautiful! I cannot give the book five stars, at least not today. Maybe after month or a year of the novel spinning through my brain I’ll come back and edit my review again. I still repeat that this is a complicated read and it’s not for the faint of heart, but I love it more the more I think about it.

There is something to be said for telling a story by just telling it, in a more or less linear manner. This book attempts to tell the story by presenting a series of “vignettes”; such as pieces of someone’s diary, movie scripts, interviews, etc.; for each of which apparently only about 5% of what is presented has to do with the story of this “novel”. I suppose the reader is supposed to infer the story from these. There might be some cases where this approach can be made to work; and the result considered “artsy” or “profound”. For this reader, this was not the case.

Great book but bad printing/binding issues which ruined my reading experience. Pages are printed slanted. Sad.

I was curious to know what others thought of this book and was aghast to find mixed reviews. I do feel that's a positive sign for a work of art, for this is what this novel is. Beautiful, Noir, a murder mystery, brain bending pager Turner, set in a alternate future where we can travel the solar system.

I loved the premise of this book -- a space-opera-type mystery set in an alternate reality where silent movies have never given way to talkies, and movie stars hop between our solar system's planets -- but had a tough time getting my bearings in the first couple of chapters. Fortunately I kept going and as the story progressed and all the threads converged I fell completely under its spell. This turned out to be one of those books that I immediately wanted to pick up and re-read, to catch what I missed the first time.

The content of the book is excellent, and I enjoyed it greatly. But, the paperback is of a pretty low quality. My copy arrived already smudged and greasy as if it were used, and many pages were printed on a slant with portions of words cut off on either side. In other instances, letters would appear out of line with a sentence, or even missing altogether. Disappointing!

I wanted to like Radiance. I understand the nostalgia for a solar system of princesses on Mars, and lush tropical wonderlands on Venus. The rocky, barren wastes revealed by space probes can represent something of a loss. While Radiance has great qualities, I did find it hard work. The story flits about in style, format and point of view. I could see that the story was about our everyday viewpoint colliding with the vastness that lies beyond. Other-worldly animals and plants had familiar names to cover up their weirdness. I got the point there, which did not make the story any easier to follow. As part of the idea that people take their own viewpoint out into strange places, Radiance has many references to travellers carrying familiar stories with them into space. But although the story of Radiance uses all kinds of easily recognised genres, it somehow lacks a familiar pattern. In an adventure story there is usually some mundane home that people leave behind. Dorothy leaves Kansas for Oz, for example. I mention the Wizard of Oz because there are a number of allusions to Kansas in Radiance. But the people mentioning Kansas don’t seem to know where it is. They certainly don’t know how to get there. Dorothy’s home remains an arty metaphor. Maybe that’s why I felt lost. There was no Kansas. Everywhere seemed to be Oz. At one stage in the book someone says: “Something has to be real. Something real has to anchor the magic.” I would say this is very true, and sums up what Radiance was lacking. Radiance is a brave effort and beautifully written, but I was rather glad to get to the end.