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Published Jan 2016
352 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publication Information
From the acclaimed author of The Last First Day, here is a beautiful new period novel: a nineteenth-century story of female empowerment before its time, based on the life of Caroline Herschel, sister of the great composer and astronomer William Herschel and an astronomer in her own right.
This exquisitely imagined novel opens as William rescues Caroline from a life of drudgery in Germany and brings her to England and a world of music making and stargazing. Lina, as Caroline is known, serves as William's assistant and the captain of his exhilaratingly busy household. William is generous, wise, and charismatic, an obsessive genius whom Lina adores and serves with the fervency of a beloved wife.
When William suddenly announces that he will be married, Lina watches her world collapse. With her characteristically elegant prose, Carrie Brown creates from history a compelling story that interweaves familial collaboration and conflict with a haunting exploration of the sublime beauty of astronomy and our small but essential place within a vast and astonishing cosmos. Through Lina's trials and successes we witness the dawning of an early feminist consciousness—a woman struggling to find her own place among the stars.
"A fictional romance is added to this real-life story of an unusual woman, but it proves less compelling than the events documented by the Herschels themselves." - Publishers Weekly
"The historical details may be of interest to astronomy buffs, but neither they nor the Herschels come into involving focus in this plodding version of their lives." - Kirkus
"A haunting evocation - actual and imagined - of the life of Caroline 'Lina' Herschel, the younger sister of the eighteenth-century astronomer William Herschel. The tale is deeply satisfying, a testament to Carrie Brown's seductive voice and her ability to translate Lina's deep emotional life in all its complexity, both joyful and heartbreaking." - Robb Forman Dew, National Book Award–winning author of Dale Loves Sophie to Death
This information about The Stargazer's Sister was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Carrie Brown is the author of five novels and a collection of short stories. She has received many honors for her work, including a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award, the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, the Great Lakes Book Award, and the Annual Library of Virginia Literary Award (twice). Her short fiction and essays have appeared in many literary journals. She and her husband, the novelist John Gregory Brown, live in Massachusetts, where they teach at Deerfield Academy.
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