Voyagers by Meg Charlton

I have recently started listening to two new-to-me bookish podcasts on the recommendations of various blog readers - From the Front Porch and Currently Reading. I have tried these podcasts in the past and have not made it past the introductions (I am not predisposed to enjoy people who claim to be a "full-time CEO" or "a homeschooling mom") but I have been able to ignore my red flags so far. Voyagers by Meg Charlton is a book that came to me via an episode of From the Front Porch. 

In this debut novel from Meg Charlton, we are introduced to Alex and Ana. When they were six, they went missing for thirty-six hours and when they were found, mostly unharmed, their description of what happened to them sounded an awful lot like an alien abduction. We move ahead in time, Alex and Ana have grown up and grown apart. Alex is a gay lawyer living in New York who has disavowed his alien abduction past and Ana runs retreats for experiencers of alien contact. When the Signal, a radio transmission pulsing from across the universe and getting closer and closer to Earth, starts disrupting aircraft and satellites, Alex and Ana meet up again. 

Have you ever thought that an author had two distinct ideas and then someone convinced them to mash up both of those ideas into a book? Like, did Charlton have an idea of two kids going missing and their narrative when they got back was so unreliable no one ever figured out what happened to them? And then she had this second idea about the Signal and what would happen if society slowly started to collapse? And then she smushed them into one book where you don't really get an answer about either storyline? 

I found this book to be such a page turner. I wanted to know what happened to Ana and Alex when they were six. I wanted to know what the Signal was going to do to the planet. But I am not entirely sold on how well these two stories worked together. I thought the writing was observational, the ideas interesting and unique, and I want to read more from this author.

4/5 stars

Lines of note:

Anyway, living through various crises, personal and global - COVID, 9/11, the death of both our parents - had inured me to catastrophe. Worlds ended all the time, didn't they? And yet the world persisted. (page 90)
I just...this hit home for me. I have lived through all of this, too, and I'm just not sure that I have it in me to get hepped up about things like I did twenty-five years ago. 

I didn't feel like an adult. I felt like I was regressing further with every swipe my siblings took at each other. (page 103)
Man, if you ever see me around my sister, you'll know exactly what I was like when I was fifteen.

"Do you have someone to stay with, if there is a lockdown?"
"Myself."
"I know but..." She bit her lip. "I just hate to think of you all alone in your apartment if something happens."
I resented this. I was the only one of my siblings not straight, not married, not a parent, and I could sense sometimes, from all of them, that this worried them. It wasn't conscious or cruel, but there was a baseline assumption that I was lonely, and I found that offensive. I was lonely, of course, if not for the reasons they imagined. (page 108)
Since we're reading Convenience Store Woman, I kept comparing Keiko to Alex here. He's mostly fine, but people are pretty convinced he isn't. Social norms in the US are different than in Japan, but they're still there. 

He turned to look at me with an air of such pure, uncut boredom that it seemed impossible to imagine we were on the verge of apocalypse. This reaction is, I've discovered, more common than people assume. There is a vast silent majority of indifference. Even I, anxious to my core, can understand this. These days, things both awful and extraordinary seemed to happen all the time, and most people didn't give a shit. (page 209)
My students are so apathetic. And I sort of get it, but not really. When I was their age, I was full of rage and wanted to change things. My students can't even tell me some element in pop culture they enjoy. I ask them to recommend me a song, a book, a television show, or a movie, and about half of them write N/A. JUST WRITE SOMETHING. 

****************

If aliens invaded tomorrow, what would you being doing today?