LIGHTBREAKERS

A secret scientific breakthrough threatens to split up a married couple.

Gabel’s affecting sophomore novel follows Noah, a grief-stricken physicist, as he navigates the world after a devastating loss. Noah was once married to Eileen, a biologist and his first love, but their relationship and lives fell apart after the sudden death of their almost 4-year-old daughter, Serena. More than half a decade later, Noah is now remarried to Maya, a lapsed artist, who entered his world “like a warm steady light after years of darkness, pain, and grief.” As the novel weaves together the perspectives of Noah, Maya, and Eileen, the three characters’ lives begin to intersect after Noah accepts a job from Klein Michaels, a disgraced billionaire, to work on a top-secret, shadowy venture. The Janus Project allows people to travel back to their own memories, not as an outside observer but as their current self. As Noah becomes increasingly lost in his work and the possibility of seeing Serena again, Maya feels a distance swelling between them. With a precarious present and an uncertain future, they each look toward their past for comfort and answers: Noah decides to bring Eileen into the Janus Project, and Maya starts communicating with her artist ex-boyfriend. As Noah teeters on the brink of no return, Eileen contacts Maya with a plea: “how strange it was that they’d both decided the same thing…at the same time, like entangled particles, like knowledge traveling faster than the speed of light, like people of the same family, context, past, future, now.” The two women work to escape their situation, which threatens their physical, emotional, and temporal well-being. Combining elements of science fiction, mystery, and domestic realism, the novel grapples with the complexities of time, memory, grief, family, art, and science. Gabel beautifully explores the ways the past echoes endlessly in the present and into the future—and the unimaginable lure of being with the ones we love no matter the cost.

A poignant and sharp novel about love, loss, and finding light in the darkness.