The Comet Seekers: A Novel

Helen Sedgwick

Okt 2016 · HarperCollins

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“An exquisitely layered, thrilling novel that leaps across centuries and continents to delve into the role of destiny and the elusiveness of perception.” —Carmela Ciuraru, New York Times

Róisín and François are immediately drawn to each other when they meet at a remote research base in Antarctica. At first glance, the pair could not be more different. Róisín, a daughter of Ireland and a peripatetic astronomer, joins the science team to observe the fracturing of a comet overhead. François, the base’s chef, has just left his birthplace in Bayeux, France, for only the second time in his life. Yet devastating tragedy and the longing for a fresh start, as well as an indelible but unknown bond that stretches back centuries, connect them to each other.

Helen Sedgwick carefully unfolds their intertwined paths, moving forward and back through time to reveal how these lovers’ destinies have long been tied to each other by the skies—the arrival of comets great and small. In telling Róisín and François’s story, Sedgwick illuminates the lives of their ancestors, showing how strangers can be connected and ghosts can be real, and how the way we choose to see the world can be as desolate or as beautiful as the comets themselves.

“A gorgeous novel that should resonate with fans of Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveller’s Wife.” —Elle

“Heartbreaking and satisfying.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Pointedly lyrical. . . . As in the work of contemporary fabulists like Kelly Link, Helen Oyeyemi and Audrey Niffenegger, the real intersects matter-of-factly with the supernatural.” —Andrea Barrett, New York Times Book Review

“[A] beautiful, character-driven novel, which is reminiscent of the work of Amy Bloom and Elizabeth Strout.” —Booklist

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Helen Sedgwick is a writer, editor, and physicist, who grew up in London and now lives in the Scottish highlands. Helen was the managing director of Cargo Publishing from 2014 to 2015, and she founded Wildland Literary Editors in 2012. The same year she won a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award and since then her writing has been published internationally and broadcast on BBC Radio 4. She was awarded a distinction from the MLitt in Creative Writing at Glasgow University in 2008. Before that, she worked as a research physicist, earning a PhD in Physics from Edinburgh University. She lives near the Dornoch Firth with her partner, photographer Michael Gallacher.