BookBrowse Reviews Bright Objects by Ruby Todd

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A small town in Australia is swept up in a comet's arrival as funeral parlor employee Sylvia Knight struggles to move on from her husband's unresolved death.

It is January 1997 in the small town of Jericho, and Sylvia Knight has decided to end her own life. She's already died once before—two years previous, a hit-and-run took her husband Christopher from her, and shortly after, her heart stopped momentarily. Since then, the man she thinks is responsible for Christopher's death, local police sergeant Angus Blair, continues to walk free from justice. With Christopher's case officially closed by the authorities, Sylvia plans to kill herself on the night Comet St. John, which is causing a stir all over the world, is supposed to be visible on Earth for the first time. However, when the somber, mysterious discoverer of the comet, Theo St. John, visits the funeral parlor where Sylvia works to order burial services for a deceased someone, a single conversation sets her on a different path, igniting a fascination with the celestial body and propelling her well past her self-imposed expiration date.

While Comet St. John passes over the world through the spring and summer, Sylvia observes how its force seems to overwhelm those around her—Theo keeps a pragmatic distance from her as he grieves for his unknown someone, while Joseph Evans, a magnetic agricultural heir who has just lost his mother, sees the arrival of the comet as biblical and leads a meditation group with the aim of understanding it more deeply. Sylvia comes into an unexpected sense of peace, even as she struggles to choose between Joseph's abstract search for cosmic meaning and Theo's nose-to-grindstone approach to healing and moving on. However, she senses a malicious intent brewing underneath Joseph's increased fervor for the comet's final moments over Jericho, all while Angus seems to be watching her from the sidelines.

Bright Objects is a riveting, gorgeous story about the briefness of our time on Earth, the ways we cope with grief, and the symbols that occupy our lives. Based on the real-life events surrounding Comet Hale-Bopp and the Heaven's Gate cult (see Beyond the Book), the novel oozes rich anticipation, demanding to be digested slowly and for the reader to savor each and every word, directions I was happy to accommodate from the first page.

The plot is centered around a young widow's journey to find something grounding and tangible in what feels like a meaningless world. Sylvia's story is infused with death. In a prologue titled "Divinations," she lays forth how the "bright object," Comet St. John, was connected to the two times she died, in 1995 and 1997. This information, combined with how we meet Sylvia when she is working at a funeral parlor and contemplating suicide, makes the beginning of the novel seem morbid. But the more her narration unfolds as she continues to live, the easier it is to connect with her—in the way she has been humbled by the tragedies of her past, in her keen observation of others, and in the occasional, bright flare of anger fueled by a clear sense of justice. Additionally, the past tense narration, in which Sylvia often refers to events to come and assumptions in retrospect, contributes tension as we draw closer to bigger revelations.

While death and grief are huge themes, Todd juxtaposes them with the thrill surrounding the comet. In a note to readers on her website, she states that she "wanted to explore how it's often in the midst of despair that human beings become most open to new registers of meaning and experience." The comet, a symbol of death and rebirth in ancient times, feels like such a natural conduit for these new views, and I was fascinated not only by Sylvia's questioning of the universe, but by Joseph and Theo's individual, opposing interpretations of the celestial event.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention how wonderfully written Bright Objects is. In a slow-paced and reflective narrative, Todd masterfully builds suspense. She infuses history, science, and magic in her imagery of the natural world, especially when depicting the comet: "I tried to picture it, the same flaring creature passing by, a bird in flight, its wings of gas and dust blazing blue-green and white, over a planet yet to see the collapse of the Bronze Age, the birth of Babylon, the date of the biblical flood, or the beginning of recorded history."

With its introspective narrator, weighty themes, and captivating writing, Bright Objects is like a comet itself—memorable, mysterious, and awe-inspiring.

This review first ran in the September 4, 2024 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.