Bright Objects
‘A LITERARY MYSTERY OF CONSUMMATE ELEGANCE AND GRAVITY’.
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‘A LITERARY MYSTERY OF CONSUMMATE ELEGANCE AND GRAVITY’. ✶
A luminous literary thriller about a young widow, an astronomer, a mystic, and a comet.
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“A novel written with immense grace, beauty, and depth, Bright Objects plumbs the farthest reaches of one widow's grief... A surprising, thrilling, and seductively dangerous comet of a book.”
— Chelsea Bieker, author of Godshot and Madwoman
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"There’s a soothing, near-mystical quality to the book’s language, a sense of being borne along on unseen currents… What is on the page holds up a mirror to what is in the sky — luminous, unusual, unexpected… Todd has a brilliant trick up her sleeve […] — a feint that brings “Bright Objects” to a remarkable conclusion as unexpected as it is poignant, and more original and human than any conventional cult story."
— The New York Times -
An “intoxicating debut… a lyrical and inventive literary mystery from an author whom readers will hope returns far sooner than any visiting comet.”
— Publisher’s Weekly starred review
“It was not until the end that I saw St John for what it was,
a sign of destruction and strange rebirth,
and then all that had occurred seemed obvious somehow;
inevitable as the looping line of its course.”
January 1997: In the small town of Jericho, New South Wales, 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 overhead.
As the comet begins to brighten, visitors flock like pilgrims into town, and more and more people are drawn into the orbit of Joseph Evans, an enigmatic local who believes the comet's arrival is nothing short of a divine message. But Sylvia will soon realise that she isn't the only one haunted by the past. While everyone else is looking to the night sky for answers, her quest to uncover her husband's killer will unearth long-held secrets with far-reaching consequences.
Australian EDITION
OUT NOW
US edition
out now
ISTI MIRANT STELLA
“These men marvel at the star”
Music from the novel
Photo: Nabeel Khan
Ruby Todd is an Australian 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. Shortlisted for the 2023 Victorian Premier's Unpublished Manuscript Award, her debut novel, Bright Objects, is out now through Allen & Unwin (ANZ), and Simon & Schuster (US), and is forthcoming through Éditions Gallmeister (France).
