Celestial Lights

A beautiful, heartbreaking novel of memory, love and space from the award-winning author of the Women's Prize longlisted debut novel Wandering Souls.




January 28, 1986: soon after launch the Challenger shuttle falls out of the sky and into the sea. At the same time, in a small English village, Oliver Ines is born.



Oliver Ines grows up in a bedroom papered with glow-in-the-dark wallpaper bearing the planets and stars of the galaxy. When he becomes one of the most renowned astronauts the world has seen, it feels as if his path was preordained. But as Ollie comes-of-age, falls in love with his first love Philly, makes friends and loses them along the way, we begin to see just how far he is willing to go to secure his destiny.


When an enterprising billionaire seeks him out to train as an astronaut and later lead a mission to Europa, Oliver makes the fateful decision to leave Philly, his son and loved ones behind. Ollie will travel further and longer into space than anyone before him. Aboard the spacecraft with only three other crew members for company over many years, he charts their precarious progress via a private log. Everything in his life has built to this moment, and yet everything he knows is about to change forever.


Celestial Lights is a dazzling and heartbreaking portrait of ambition, love and duty. It explores the sacrifices required to achieve the hopes we so desire and what happens when they turn out not be what they at first seemed.