In the first two sections "Nicole's Journal" and "At the Node," The Garden of Rama follows the lives of three characters: Nicole des Jardins Wakefield, Richard Wakefield, and Michael O'Toole. In their years of travel together aboard the enigmatic and massive alien craft, Nicole and Richard live as husband and wife and produce daughters Simone and Katie.

Michael, an older man who had married and raised a family on Earth, proves a gentle, attentive co-parent for the girls.

The main character Nicole embodies the most serious and most successful venture into female characterization in Clarke's science fiction. The novel's acknowledgments credit two women as consultants on the female attitudes and responses to events in the plot. Part I of the novel is posed as Nicole's diary.

Chapter One of Part I moves readily to describe the birth of Simone in sufficient clinical detail to bring readers of either...