BKMT READING GUIDES
The Night of the Comet: A Novel
by George Bishop
Hardcover : 336 pages
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NEW YORK POST "REQUIRED READING"
PEOPLE MAGAZINE STARRED REVIEW
From the acclaimed author of Letter to My Daughter comes an engrossing coming-of-age tale that deftly conveys the hopes and heartaches of adolescence, and the unfulfilled dreams ...
Introduction
A KIRKUS REVIEWS "BEST BOOKS OF 2013"
NEW YORK POST "REQUIRED READING"
PEOPLE MAGAZINE STARRED REVIEW
From the acclaimed author of Letter to My Daughter comes an engrossing coming-of-age tale that deftly conveys the hopes and heartaches of adolescence, and the unfulfilled dreams that divide a family, played out against the backdrop of a small southern town in 1973.
For his fourteenth birthday, Alan Broussard, Jr., receives a telescope from his father, a science teacher at the local high school who's anxiously awaiting what he promises will be the astronomical event of the century: the coming of Comet Kohoutek. For Alan Broussard, Sr.--frustrated in his job, remote from his family--the comet is a connection to his past and a bridge to his son, with whom he's eager to share his love for the stars.
But the only heavenly body Junior has any interest in is his captivating new neighbor and classmate, Gabriella Martello, whose bedroom sits within eyeshot of his telescope's lens. Meanwhile, his mother Lydia sees the comet--and her husband's obsession with it--as one more thing that keeps her from the bigger, brighter life she once imagined for herself far from the swampy environs of Terrebonne, Louisiana. With Kohoutek drawing ever closer, the family begins to crumble under the weight of expectations, and a startling turn of events will leave both father and son much less certain about the laws that govern their universe.
Illuminating and unforgettable, The Night of the Comet is a novel about the perils of growing up, the longing for connection, and the idea that love and redemption can be found among the stars.
Praise for George Bishop's Letter to My Daughter
"A first novel of immense power . . . George Bishop is a novelist to keep your eye on."--Pat Conroy, author of South of Broad
"Gripping . . . [Bishop] somehow gets into a teenage girl's head and roams around there like a native. You believe in Laura; her voice never hits a false note."--Star-News (Wilmington, N.C.)
"George Bishop writes Letter to My Daughter with a keen eye, an open heart, and a lot of love. I am sure I will return to it again as a cautionary tale and a parable of forgiveness."--Adriana Trigiani, author of The Shoemaker's Wife
"Before you sit down to read this book, put aside a few hours or else you'll miss some appointments. You will be pulled into every paragraph."--Clyde Edgerton, author of The Night Train
Excerpt
We are stardust, we are golden,We are billion-year-old carbon,
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.
—Joni Mitchell, “Woodstock”
“Hey, look! It’s right out there. I tell you, it’s one of the most
beautiful creations I’ve ever seen. It’s so graceful.”
“It’s yellow and orange, just like a flame.”
—astronauts Edward Gibson and Gerald Carr, on spotting
Comet Kohoutek from Skylab, December 1973
HERE in Baton Rouge you can still see the stars at night.
Our backyard abuts the last patch of pastureland in the neighborhood, a piece of the old Pike-Burden farm still hanging on at the edge of the city. On a clear night like tonight, when my wife and boy are busy inside, I like to leave my desk for a few minutes and walk down to the rear of our yard, down to where my quarter acre ends at a low ditch and a barb-wire fence, and take in the night air. Beyond the fence the land stretches out flat as calm water. Stands of pine and oak ring the field. Off in the far corner a cow pond gleams in the moonlight. From the east comes the swish of cars passing on Perkins Road; from the north, the distant rumble of trucks on I-10. ...
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Discussion Questions
1. The Night of the Comet features the Broussard family: Alan; his wife, Lydia; their daughter, Megan; and their fourteen-year-old son, Alan Junior, the narrator. With which character do you identify the most? Who, if anyone, would you call the hero of the story?2. The backdrop of the novel is the coming of Comet Kohoutek in 1973. Had you heard of—or seen—this comet before reading the book? Is there anything surprising that you learned about comets from the novel?
3. The novel is set in Terrebonne, a fictional small town in south Louisiana. How important a role does the setting play in the story? Could the novel have been set elsewhere?
4. The narrator, Junior, says that this comet is “more than just a comet,” and he credits the comet for bringing dramatic changes to his family. Do you see the comet as possessing supernatural properties in the story? If the comet can be read as a symbol, what would you say it represents?
5. Lydia Broussard enjoys reading her horoscope before breakfast, and she seems to believe in the prophetic power of astrology, despite her husband dismissing it as “nonsense.” Do you read your own horoscope? Why or why not?
6. Halfway through the book, when asked by his son about love, Alan Senior claims that love is nothing but a story, “like [the] fairy tales that we tell each other, tell our kids, to keep us going.” Why would he say this to his son? By the end of the story, do the characters’ actions bear out Alan’s claim, or not?
7. The Night of the Comet has been described by reviewers variously as “sad,” “quiet,” and “hilarious.” What adjectives would you use to describe the novel?
8. Was there anything about the ending of the novel that surprised you? Which characters, if any, get a happy ending?
9. The Night of the Comet is classified as “Fiction—Contemporary Women; Family Saga; Literary.” Do you think these are good descriptions of the book? Or is there some other category under which you would shelve it?
Notes From the Author to the Bookclub
“A quiet, occasionally bittersweet novel about the differences between desire and disappointment, expectations and reality.”—Booklist “Hilarious and heart-wrenching, ethereal and earthy, The Night of the Comet points us to the fragile universe of dreams and disappointments, joy and tragedy, saying here it is, all of it: feast your eyes on the magic. It’s a heavenly book. Nobody writes about the gravitational pull of parent-child relationships—all that we yearn for and all that we can’t have—like George Bishop.”—Minrose Gwin, author of The Queen of Palmyra “Equally sweet and sad, this is a fine novel of love and forgiveness.”—Stewart O'Nan, author of Snow AngelsBook Club Recommendations
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