Bright Objects: Captivating Fiction Featuring Comets

For millennia, humans have taken notice of comets. They have inspired fascination and fear in observers since before we even had a name for them. The cosmos and, in particular, comets feature in fiction, too, including in two popular novels published this year. Check out the following books featuring comets in the storyline. 

Sarah Perry's intricate and richly told Enlightenment opens in 1997 as the Hale-Bopp comet is approaching Earth, catching the interest of an Essex newspaper columnist, Thomas Hart. Hart becomes friends with Grace Macauley, a much younger congregant of his strict Baptist church, and these two orbit in and out of each other's life over the years. Their relationship, as well as the mystery surrounding a 19th-century female astronomer, anchor this meditative exploration of passion, reason and wonder. 

Bright Objects by Ruby Todd is a literary thriller set in a remote Australian town in 1997 where Sylvia, grieving for her husband who died in a car accident, has set a date for her own death. Will the arrival of Theo St. John, an astronomer who discovered the comet that is approaching Earth, change the trajectory of Sylvia's life?

Ghosts and comets also feature in The Comet Seekers by Helen Sedgewick, an ambitious love story that spans almost 1,000 years. 

Finally, in a early work by Andrew Sean Geer, The Path of Minor Planets, a group of astronomers meet on a South Pacific island to witness the passing of a comet. The group reunites throughout the decades, as the lives and relationships of these friends progress and change over the course of this observant novel.