{"id":314969,"date":"2025-11-24T06:41:34","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T06:41:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/entertainment\/books\/lightbreakers-by-aja-gabel-a-story-of-impossible-things-made-possible\/"},"modified":"2025-11-24T06:41:34","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T06:41:34","slug":"lightbreakers-by-aja-gabel-a-story-of-impossible-things-made-possible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=314969","title":{"rendered":"Lightbreakers by Aja Gabel: \u2019A story of impossible things made possible\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\"Cover\"Cover\n<\/picture>\nI wasn\u2019t sure about reading Aja Gabel\u2019s Lightbreakers<\/em>: the premise was attractive, but the blurb suggested elements of SF\/Fantasy that I might have trouble with, more my understanding than anything else. It follows Noah who\u2019s been invited to take part in what is essentially a time travel experiment funded by a billionaire, and his wife, Maya, stalled in her art and lacking direction, who accompanies him out into the Texan desert.<\/p>\n

On the couch, with Maya three sips into her wine and his untouched, he told her about Klein Michaels, the invisible clock, and a person he used to be, years before she knew him.<\/em><\/p>\n

When Noah and Maya arrive in their new home, she\u2019s struck by the similarity to the Los Angeles house he shared with his ex-wife, Eileen, she seen in photographs. Noah seems blithely unaware, too caught up in this experiment ostensibly based on the paper which scuppered his career as a physicist. Noah met Maya at a lecture she\u2019d given on a Japanese photographer, attracted by her passion for her subject. Together for eight years and married for five, they\u2019ve reached a stage where a decision must be made about having children, complicated by the loss of Noah\u2019s daughter with Eileen and the grief that split them apart. Once inducted into the Janus Project, it becomes clear that Noah is to be the subject rather than involved in its design, the human lab rat to be \u2018folded\u2019 into time. Inevitably, he succumbs to the temptation to revisit his own past, longing to see his daughter again. Maya has her own past to resolve, a relationship broken by ambition. Noah\u2019s involvement of Eileen leads to a discovery that sheds a more sinister light on the motivation behind the project.<\/p>\n

Tell me what you remember. We\u2019ll see if it\u2019s what I remember.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Shifting perspectives between Noah, Maya, and Eileen, Gabel explores themes of love, loss, grief and memory in a what I\u2019d describe as more a philosophical novel than SF maybe because I\u2019ve not read much of the latter. There\u2019s quite a lot of physics which I had to take on trust but my ignorance didn\u2019t interfere with my enjoyment of this often poignant, sometimes wrenching, perceptive piece of fiction which poses questions about our versions of the past, our longing to revisit those we\u2019ve loved and lost, and the danger of not letting go while making the timely point that the desire of the ultra-rich to play God is a pernicious one. It\u2019s an immersive novel, rich in ideas and humanity, thoughtful and thought-provoking. There was a moment when I thought that it might have taken a wrong turn but Gabel neatly wraps up her storyline while leaving her readers with lots to ponder. Adding her debut, Ensemble<\/em>, to my list.<\/p>\n

Fleet: London 9780349725437 352 pages Hardback (read via NetGalley)<\/p>\n

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I wasn\u2019t sure about reading Aja Gabel\u2019s Lightbreakers: the premise was attractive, but the blurb suggested elements of SF\/Fantasy that I might have trouble with, more my understanding than anything else. It follows Noah who\u2019s been invited to take part in what is essentially a time travel experiment funded by a billionaire, and his wife, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":314970,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[98533,144521,27183,28935,144524,5244,144523,3972,144522,49698],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-314969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","tag-aja","tag-aja-gabel","tag-american-contemporary-fiction","tag-fleet","tag-gabel","tag-impossible","tag-lightbreakers","tag-story","tag-the-lightbreakers","tag-time-travel"],"yoast_head":"\nLightbreakers by Aja Gabel: \u2019A story of impossible things made possible\u2019 - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Book reviews, snippets of book news, and alerts about books outside the glare of the publicity spotlight.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=314969\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Lightbreakers by Aja Gabel: \u2019A story of impossible things made possible\u2019 - 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