In this memoir, an MIT astrophysicist must reinvent herself in the wake of tragedy and discovers the power of connection on this planet, even as she searches our galaxy for another Earth.
... stark, bewitching ... The merciless seesaw of [Seager's] grief makes for harrowing reading ... The second half of her story gleams with insights into what it means to lose a partner in midlife, and just as the widows helped Seager feel less alone, her story is sure to help any readers grappling with a similar loss ... Seager’s [prose] is rawer and starker, full of blues and blacks, written in the ink of grief, suffering, healing and — ultimately — clarity. In Seager’s hands you’re as apt to learn about 'a special body bag that’s designed to slide down stairs' as about storm-wracked rogue exoplanets where it rains molten iron ... beautifully dramatize[s] the emotional precarity of having one’s career pinned to the fate of space hardware ... address[es] the challenges of being female physical scientists in a male-dominated field, and convey[s] the struggle of operating in the vast scales of the universe at work, then commuting home to operate in the humbler scales of the domestic sphere ... [Seager] exemplifies the humanity of science.
Sara Seager is revealed to be an astute practitioner of metaphor as both a form of reasoning and illustration as well as a source of artful emotional resonance. So thoroughly, in fact, is this memoir steeped in metaphor and analogy, a proper reference point for Seager’s style not that of Humboldt or Sagan, for whom an analogy is drawn up periodically to establish a particular point, but rather that of Charles Darwin, for whom analogy is found to be at the root of his entire system of thought ... she is handling two distinct areas of engagement: the science part, and the emotions part. Both are revealed throughout in beautiful passages and images ... Seager endows these experiences with emotion and poignancy using an idiosyncratic but accessible and resonant metaphorical language.
eager shares a passion for the universe so deep that even this reviewer, a physics dunce, could grasp why she would spend her life gazing toward other planets. Analytical yet lyrical, Seager’s memoir is an examination of the parallels between searching for new life in the multiverse and starting over with a new life on Earth—the sort of connection only an astrophysicist might make.
