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Book Reviewed by:A novel of the obsessions of the age: scientific inquiry, geographic discovery, political reformation, but above all, astronomy, the mapping of the solar system and beyond. It is a novel of the quest for knowledge and for human connection - rich, far-reaching, and unforgettable.
In late-eighteenth-century Ireland, accidental stargazer Caroline Ainsworth learns that her life is not what it seems when her father, Arthur, throws himself from his rooftop observatory. Caroline had often assisted her father with his observations, in pursuit of an unknown planet; when astronomer William Herschel discovered Uranus, Caroline could only watch helplessly as unremitting jealousy drove Arthur to madness. Now, gone blind from staring at the sun, he has chosen death over a darkened life.
Grief-stricken, Caroline abandons the vain search, leaves Ireland for London, and tries to forget her love for Finnegan O'Siodha, the tinkering blacksmith who was helping her father build a telescope larger than his rival's. But her father has left her more than the wreck of that unfinished instrument: his cryptic atlas holds the secret to finding a new world at the edge of the sky. As Caroline reluctantly resumes her father's work and confronts her own longings, Ireland is swept into rebellion, and Caroline and Finnegan are plunged into its violence.
Chapter I
WHAT HE SEES AT THE END
IN THE WINTER of 1791, some few weeks after Arthur Ainsworth's penumbral blindness reaches its inevitable and irreversible completion, he grunts for an inkpot, fumbles after dull quills, scavenges whatever paper is immediate to hand, and so begins to set down, in a desperate and meandrous splatter, an atlas that will guide his daughter to the elusive planet they have spent the better part of their lives pursuing. Sudden and unexpected, what he sees is no easy thing to convey. Here in his shuttered bedroom at New Park, high above the River Nore, just beyond the town of Inistioge in southern Ireland, the bedridden astronomer fingers the ribbon of silk tied over his eyes and works through the long calculations cluttering his thoughts. He strains his memory, calls on meticulous observations from years before, but now they carry him only part of the way.
Propped on blankets flecked with ink, he chews the tangle of gray hairs hanging past his ...
The plot takes a while to get up and running, and even when it does, proceeds slowly. To be fair, it takes time to construct a story that is as big as the heavens. The scope of The Blind Astronomer's Daughter may be a bit too big, its cast a bit too populous, but the final chapters redeem these minor flaws...continued
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(Reviewed by Lisa Butts).
Sena Jeter Naslund, author of Ahab's Wife and The Fountain of St. James Court, of Portrait of the Artist as an old woman
Utilizing history and imagination, Pipkin creates characters--most memorably two complex and touching women, both called Caroline--who are formed by both their innate gifts and a world flawed by violence and injustice. He brings them all together with a force as effective and inclusive as gravity.John Pipkin brings the astronomer siblings, William and Caroline Herschel, vividly to life in The Blind Astronomer's Daughter. While the novel shines light on Caroline in particular, William, with his impressive discoveries and status as England's astronomy golden boy, provides motivation for the fictional Arthur Ainsworth's quest for renown.
William and Caroline Herschel were born in Hanover in 1738 and 1750, respectively. Today, Hanover is part of Germany; at the time it was a state within the Holy Roman Empire and the birthplace of both George I and II. George III was born in England and was simultaneously King of The United Kingdom and Hanover - although he apparently never visited the latter. Upon the invasion of the French in 1757,...
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