Booker longlist. I guess lesbian marine biologists are on trend right now, which I never would've called, but find delightful as a concept.

I'm not sure why this book was five-hundred pages. It's an extremely slow-boil investigation of what makes us, using both the backstory of the main character and the origins of life on Earth to reflect back on each other. It's a neat concept, and I appreciated that the book never spelled this out, and that it took the science fiction side of the story seriously (there were a couple "pretty sure that's junk science" moments, but for the most part it stands as an SF novel in the school of Carl Segan's Contact). The prose was often really beautiful, especially in its descriptions of science and ocean life.

However, the feeling of character ended up being a bit detached in a way that didn't work for me. I get that the protagonist was emotionally closed and analytical, but we still got told what she was thinking too often, and I would've liked more scenes with characters interacting and showing her personality more. Sometimes she felt more like the means to a metaphor than a person.

In the end, I'd have liked this book more if there'd been about two-hundred pages less of it. Which I think means I wasn't really getting what the author was going for.