Radiant Shimmering Light

By Sarah Selecky

Bloomsbury     2018

422 pages     Literary/Satire

Sarah Selecky’s debut novel, Radiant Shimmering Light, is a delicious send-up of the online self-care movement that aligns itself with social media and self-promotion. The book is extremely funny and extremely sad, all at the same time. Lilian Quick, age 40, is a self-absorbed, self-doubting animal-portrait artist. She lives in Toronto, has little money, but she does have a few good friends. Her major gift is that she sees the auras of the dogs she paints, including the auras in the backgrounds of her paintings much to the delight of the dog owners. She also has a penchant for taking Instagram photos of everything that happens to her and keeping a running Twitter feed going. Of course, this involves compulsive checking to see how many responses she gets to her posts. Her self-doubt extends into every moment of her life as well. Here is an example: “I hate winter. No! Replace that thought with something positive. . .On my way out, I take off a mitten and try a selfie again. My clothes look cute and hygge, but my face looks lopsided and I have bags under my eyes. I delete the pic.” She even took an Instagram picture of her finger after she cut herself, immediately checking to see how many people posted sympathy responses.

One of Lilian’s friends keeps a great blog that makes her look like her life is perfect; another friend is a successful realtor; and another goes by the name of Yumi but his/her preferred prefix is “they.” (This I particularly liked.) She also has a cousin named Florence Novak, who is a self-help guru, calling herself “Eleven.” After many years, Lilian and Eleven reconnect at a self-actualization rally that Eleven’s organization is sponsoring in Toronto. Following that event, Eleven convinces Lilian to attend her six-month empowerment program called “Ascendency” but also to come and work with her at her headquarters in New York. She promises that Lilian will become both empowered and wealthy as her online business takes off and she loses her self-doubt and gains power. After this setup, the novel proceeds to watch, among other things, Lilian’s ability to see the aura of dogs extend to the people around her. As a consequence, her business booms—but not so much her personal life.

As frustrated as I got with Lilian, I sympathized with her journey toward authentication. She is a very real character as are Eleven and the other women in the movement. I do have to say, as much fun as I had with Lilian’s journey with Eleven, I got a little bored. The book is perhaps 50 pages too long. One can only self-actualize for so long! The reviewer in the Minneapolis Star Tribune remarks: “Selecky masterfully mimics the marketing-speak of “gurus” like [the character] Eleven: an endless cycle of metaphor and hyperbole, pet names for her followers (“petals,” “darlings”) and a cultish adaptation of language for her own purposes.”

I was enamored with Radiant Shimmering Light from the very first pages. I saw people I knew in the self-actualization movement. I have a peripheral relationship with a woman who wishes to have a similar lifestyle guru status in the world and is on a tour right now to make her place in the movement. Every time I read about Eleven, I thought “I know this woman.” I also have a 7-year-old granddaughter who recently told me that she can tell how someone is feeling by just touching them. (Frankly, that freaked me out a bit.)

The Booklist reviewer suggests that the novel is “an insider look at the intersection between the sincerity of belief and the commodification of aspiration.” Selecky pokes fun at the culture of online empowerment that attracts women in particular — that strange mix of spirituality, philosophy and self-help with a healthy dash of capitalism — without mocking or dismissing it.” (From the Toronto Star review.)

I think Selecky did a marvelous job of understanding the female-empowerment movement and its online stimulus to create wealth. By the way, she probably used her own experiences as fodder for the novel; she runs an online writing school that “approaches writing as an art and also as a contemplative practice.”