Readers' rating:
Publishes
Jul 16, 2024
352 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
A young widow grapples with the arrival of a once-in-a-lifetime comet and its tumultuous consequences, in a debut novel that blends mystery, astronomy, and romance, perfect for fans of Emma Cline's The Girls and Ottessa Moshfegh's Death in Her Hands.
Sylvia Knight is losing hope that the person who killed her husband will ever face justice. Since the night of the hit-and-run, her world has been shrouded in hazy darkness—until she meets Theo St. John, the discoverer of a rare comet soon to be visible to the naked eye.
As the comet begins to brighten, Sylvia wonders what the apparition might signify. She is soon drawn into the orbit of local mystic Joseph Evans, who believes the comet's arrival is nothing short of a divine message. Finding herself caught between two conflicting perspectives of this celestial phenomenon, she struggles to define for herself where the reality lies. As the comet grows in the sky, her town slowly descends further and further into a fervor over its impending apex, and Sylvia's quest to uncover her husband's killer will push her and those around her to the furthest reaches of their very lives.
A novel about the search for meaning in a bewildering world, the loyalty of love, and the dangerous lengths people go to in pursuit of obsession, Bright Objects is a luminous, masterfully crafted literary thriller.
"[An] intoxicating debut...Todd skillfully ratchets up the suspense on the way toward a stunning climax. The result is a lyrical and inventive literary mystery from an author whom readers will hope returns far sooner than any visiting comet." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Bright Objects is a mesmerizing, profound tale of obsession, exploring the need to believe in something and the duty to live in reality. Ruby Todd infuses the novel with almost unbearable tension—it moves toward a breathtaking climax as surely as a comet hurtling toward Earth." —Clémence Michallon, author of The Quiet Tenant
"I loved Bright Objects. Sylvia is an enormously appealing narrator who offers a thoughtful and nuanced perspective on a world turned on its axis." —Polly Stewart, author of The Good Ones
"Bright Objects is the story of a woman consumed by an unquellable obsession, reduced by solitude and incompleteness, caught in an unconscious embattled conspiracy of her own making. Ruby Todd writes of the strain of fearful events and discoveries, and the fatal inevitability of a sense of guilt when someone close to one is killed, all the while revealing to us the hidden realities that lie in wait for us." —Susanna Moore, author of In the Cut and The Lost Wife
This information about Bright Objects 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.
Ruby Todd is a Melbourne-based writer with a PhD in writing and literature. She is the recipient of the 2019 Ploughshares Emerging Writer's Contest Award for Fiction and the inaugural 2020 Furphy Literary Award, among others. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, Crazyhorse, Overland, and elsewhere. Her debut novel, Bright Objects, was shortlisted for the 2023 Victorian Premier's Unpublished Manuscript Award. She is a 2023 Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellow.
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