Luminous (2025) by Silvia Park

 Book Review

Luminous (2025)

by Silvia Park

     2025 was a down year for literary fiction neither the race for the Booker nor the National Book Award interested me- I didn't even recognize the semi-finalsts for the National Book Award.  Luminous, by first time novelist Silvia Park, stood out to me this year as an excellent combination of genre (science fiction) and literary fiction themes.  Luminous moves in a couple different directions and handle all its issues in a way that isn't overly didactic or stereotyped.    Luminous is one of the first really vivid visualizations of what a post-human society might look like- here we have characters who are part robot, part human, humans who have familial relationships with robots and robots that definitely, definitely want to be human.  At times, the literary fiction element made me feel like I was reading a contemporary I, Robot as written by Virginia Woolf, but my take is always that a difficult to read novel is interesting in a way that an easy-to-read novel simply is not.

  I'd highly, highly recommend picking up a copy of Luminous if you can find it in a book shop.