Bright Objects

Ruby Todd

Allen & Unwin

Otago Daily Times, June 8th 2024

As I stood in the backyard watching waves of auroral light play across the stars in early May, it was hard not to see the display as portentous. As a scientist, I recognise this as magical thinking, but there is something about such phenomena, particularly when they draw attention to our significance in the grand scheme of things, that taps into the deepest parts of our subconscious.

This same impulse propels Ruby Todd’s debut novel, Bright Things, a suspenseful tale of love and loss set against the backdrop of a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event. Set in the rural Australian town of Jericho, it is narrated by a young widow, Sylvia Knight, lost darkness after her husband’s death two years before. Certain that the driver who killed him was a local police officer but unable to prove it, she has decided to end her own life on the anniversary of the accident and is preoccupied with setting her affairs in order. Meanwhile, the rest of the town is preparing for the arrival of comet St John, the biggest and brightest celestial traveller to visit Earth in 4000 years. It is an event of no interest to Sylvia until she meets the titular comet-spotter, Theo St John. Seeing in him an unspoken ‘sorrow kindred’ to her own, she decides to stick around, at least long enough to witness this spectacle herself. She also finds herself drawn into the orbit of Joseph Evans, himself recently bereaved, who has sublimed his grief into conviction the comet’s arrival is a divine message. As the comet brightens in the sky, Evan’s new-age mysticism becomes increasingly cult-like, while Sylvia’s quest to find her husband’s killer regains momentum. Events accelerate towards a climax as St John reaches perigee, and Sylvia is confronted with the most difficult choice she will ever have to make.

Despite its difficult subject matter – grief and regret, how lies of omission can be as damaging as those of commission, and how our desire to believe can blind us to the truth –  Bright Objects is also a story of romance and wonder. The ‘whodunnit’ elements of the story are not hard to solve, but they drive the plot at a satisfying pace, and the sense of knowing what Sylvia does not (or will not) see is an effective way to maintain suspense. Sylvia herself is an insightful and entertaining narrator with a wry self-awareness (her descriptions of working at a funeral parlour beautifully capture the practicalities of the industry without diminishing the importance its ceremonial importance), and her retrospective, first-person account is carefully crafted so that the ending remains ambiguous until the final few pages. Am I imbuing the novel with additional significance in light of my own momentary surrender to the ineffable? Probably, but isn’t being the right book at the right time the spark that makes it memorable?