note to Readers of
Bright Objects,
from Ruby Todd

Dear Reader,

I still remember the day when the idea for Bright Objects revealed itself to me. I was on a train, scrolling listlessly through the news, when I paused at an article announcing the upcoming arrival of a comet soon to be visible in the southern hemisphere. Which comet it was, I no longer recall—as often happens, its hoped-for brightness must never have eventuated. But as I peered through the train's window at the grey sky that day, I imagined a streak of light, bright as a planet and mysterious as a cipher, hanging over a small town, the kind of place that's a microcosm of the wider human universe. I imagined the presence of this bright object, over a period of months, reflecting the fears and desires and frailties of the town's inhabitants like a mirror, as comets visible to the naked eye have tended to do to human beings since before the founding of Rome. And I imagined what the apparition of that comet, one summer, might have meant to a particular young woman seeking to make sense of the strangeness of life, after losing her beloved husband in a tragic accident. 

Through this young woman, Sylvia, and the constellation of characters surrounding her—each with their own reasons to read meaning into the celestial visitor—I 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, in the process of trying to make sense of loss. Initially, Sylvia's experience of the comet is intensified by the competing worldviews of an astronomer and a local meditation teacher. But ultimately, its movement toward the Sun oversees her own movement toward recovering her personal power, faith in life, and place in the world. As well as being a novel paced and haunted by the progress of an intergalactic guest in the skies, Bright Objects is a love story, a story about making sense of life on Earth by way of the skies above us, and an exploration of the surprising ways that cosmic truths can mirror inner ones.

While the real events surrounding the Heaven’s Gate sect, during the appearance of Comet Hale-Bopp in 1997, served as an early stimulus for the novel, it is one of many sources in a story that uses creative licence to imagine a fictional, and quite different narrative, unfolding in small-town Australia at the same point in history. One of my great privileges in writing this story has been the opportunity to consult with three expert astronomers, who have assisted me to ensure that the parameters of my own fictional comet are scientifically plausible. At the same time, I’ve been able to explore the dark-sky region in Central-Western New South Wales known as the astronomy capital of Australia, containing Siding Spring, the internationally-important observatory which has played a historic role in the discovery of comets. 

In all these ways, Bright Objects has allowed me to continue seeking and exploring, in my own mind and in the world, while trying to capture a sense of felt life in all its wonder and absurdity, through the eyes of one young woman struggling to make sense of it. My hope is that you find, in this story, some aspect of the exhilaration and expansion of the journey I’ve travelled in writing it. 

Thank you for reading!

Ruby Todd