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The Night of the Comet: A Novel Hardcover – July 30, 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
- Print length336 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherBallantine Books
- Publication dateJuly 30, 2013
- Dimensions6.34 x 1.05 x 9.5 inches
- ISBN-100345516001
- ISBN-13978-0345516008
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From Booklist
Review
"The Night of the Comet offers a snapshot of a moment in time and then fills in all the back story of the circumstances preceding it. A coming-of-age tale liberally dusted with starry trappings, the book perfectly captures the interminable feeling of high school--how the days drag and the future looms yet seems as if it will never come--as well as the heightened sense of drama that suffuse events at the time, as first loves and infatuations take on near-cosmic importance."--The San Francisco City Book Review
"It's the summer of '73, and the Kohoutek comet is hurtling toward Earth. The media hypes doomsday, while in a dull Louisiana backwater an obsessed science teacher becomes unraveled by his passion for the approaching mass of ice and gas. Told through the eyes of his 14-year-old son, himself tortured by passion for a new girl in town, this lyrical family saga twinkles with bittersweet humanity. As the comet becomes a laughingstock, Bishop (Letter to My Daughter) does a heavenly job telescoping the heady promise of youth tinged with the sorrow of lost dreams."--People
"The comet in question is Kohoutek, which for people coming of age in the 1970s caused some hoopla. In Bishopʼs funny and endearing follow-up to his novel "Letter to My Daughter," Alan Broussard Jr. gets a telescope for his 14th birthday from his amateur astronomer dad, a science teacher at the high school in their Louisiana bayou town. But Junior is less interested in Kohoutek than in lovely Gabriella Martello, whose family lives in a mansion within telescope view -- with a lifestyle that catches the attention of Juniorʼs mom."--New York Post Required Reading
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Summer 1973
Tterrebonne, Louisiana
“Well?” my mother asked, reaching in to straighten one of the candles.
My father touched her arm. “Shh. Don’t rush him. He’s thinking.”
The blue and yellow flames danced in the draft of the air conditioner. Crêpe paper streamers dangled from the overhead lamp, and colored balloons decorated the corners of the doorways. We leaned in around the table, all of us wearing cardboard hats, as blithe and unsuspecting as partygoers on the Titanic.
In my usual chair on the left sat my father, Alan Broussard. His arms were crossed on the table, his hair slicked over to one side, his black-rimmed glasses slipping, always slipping, down the slope of his large nose. My mother, Lydia, sat next to him, dressed up for the occasion in a pink pantsuit with a white belt, her red hair styled in a low bouffant with a curl flattened against either cheek. On my right was sister Megan, an angry seventeen-year-old with an embroidered blouse, contact lenses, and a weight problem: a wannabe hippie trapped in the most unhip household in the world.
And I—I sat in my father’s chair, the seat of honor for the evening. Alan Broussard, Jr.: “Junior” to family and friends, a slight boy in a striped polyester shirt, tight blue jeans, and a cardboard Burger King crown.
What did I wish for, staring into the blaze of candles on my cake that summer of my fourteenth birthday? I wished for so many things that it would’ve been impossible to name just one; I was a swirling fog of dreams and dissatisfactions. I wished that I was somewhere else. I wished I had a different name, a different family. I wished that something, anything, would happen to change the unpromising course of my life.
I had no obvious talents, no great looks, no exceptional humor or intellect or passions. I couldn’t sing, I couldn’t dance, I couldn’t play an instrument or throw a ball or ride a horse. Except for that odd suffix on my signature, the loopy “Jr.” that linked me to my father and gave me my nickname, I was as close as anybody could get to indistinguishable.
The only thing I had any affinity for—and I hardly considered this a talent—was reading. I was a reader, a bookworm. My tastes weren’t sophisticated; just give me a ripping good yarn (a phrase I’d gotten from a book: “a ripping good yarn”) and I could stay up half the night with it. Best, of course, if the story had a swarm of deadly army ants, or a jet plane crashing in a desert, or submarines, or jungles, or a raft lost at sea. But really, I would read almost anything I could lay my hands on. Slumped in my bed or a corner of the couch with a good book, I’d look up and feel nothing but disappointment at my own world, so dull and colorless in comparison. If I could have, I would’ve gladly spent the rest of my life in books. Stories were my escape, my refuge, my consolation, my love—
My sister razzed a noisemaker at my cheek. “Jesus, hurry up.”
“Stop it!” I hissed, and knocked her hand away.
I narrowed my eyes on the candles until my family receded into a blurry background. An image rose up at the front of my mind, like a genie conjured by the flames: a tanned girl in pink standing on a lawn. That was all. It was only a glimpse, barely a notion. I hadn’t expected to see her here tonight; this girl in pink was so far outside the realm of possibility that she might have been a fiction herself, an imaginary character from one of my books. But here she was at my birthday, signaling to me through the fog of my desires, and I instantly felt, rather than understood, that she represented everything I could ever wish for. I puckered my lips and blew: Gabriella.
My family cheered, and my mother plucked the candles from the cake and began passing pieces around.
“Are you excited about starting high school?” she asked.
“A little, I guess.”
“Why would he be excited?” Megan asked.
“Oh, I’d be excited. New classes, new teachers. Meeting new friends. Dances, dating, all that.”
“Your first kiss. That’s something to look forward to,” said my father. “Maybe Meg can give you some pointers. Huh, Meg? What about that? Huh?” He laughed, an abrupt snorting sound.
Megan frowned. “Dad, you’re being gross.”
“Yes, Alan, that is a little gross,” my mother said.
“Anyhoo. I know I’m excited,” he said, settling back and digging into his cake. Though it was summer, he wore his teaching outfit: black shoes, dark pants, white short-sleeved shirt, and a narrow tie. He’d just returned from a science-teaching seminar in Baton Rouge that day, where, he told us, he’d picked up some nifty ideas for his class this year—group projects, cross-curricular study activities, interactive demonstrations.
“That’s how you make a lesson more fun,” he said, gesturing with his fork. “You get the students up and moving around. Science is interesting. It’s just the teachers that are boring. Of course, it would help if we had a decent lab. We can hardly do anything with that junk we’ve got now.”
He launched into his usual complaint about the lack of support for the sciences in the Louisiana public schools. No respect, he said, none at all. Football and baseball, that was all anyone cared about. While Principal Lee showered money on Coach DuPleiss, his labs meantime were falling to pieces. . . .
Megan rolled her eyes, and my mother gave a little sigh as she began picking at a ridge of frosting with her fork. We had no interest in what my father had to say, but we were his family, after all, the kindest audience he had, and so we ate our cake and let him talk.
Other people—tellers at the bank, cashiers at the IGA—all had a way of grinning when my father began to speak, as if they couldn’t take him quite seriously. And certainly, he was peculiar. A tall, angular man, he was always blinking and peering around, like he’d just stumbled into a room and wasn’t sure where he was. He rode a rattling Raleigh three-speed bicycle to school, instead of driving a car like any normal person would do, and he carried a brown briefcase that he swung stiffly at his right side with a ridiculous air of importance. More than once I had seen students, high schoolers, even third graders, following my father down the hallway and imitating his jerky walk, swinging invisible briefcases, twitching and snorting and then falling all over themselves with laughter.
That year I would be entering his freshman Earth and Space Science class, and the thought of being his student, sitting in his classroom, filled me with dread.
“God help you. Although not even God can help you there,” my sister had warned me. “I have yet to recover.”
He pushed back from the table. “I picked up something else in Baton Rouge.” He winked. “Special order. Be right back,” he said, and disappeared into the bedroom.
“He’s really excited. He could hardly wait to give it to you,” my mother whispered as she bent in to take my plate. “At least try to pretend you like it, okay? It means a lot to him.”
My father reappeared carrying a bulky gift-wrapped box. “Here we are.” He rested it carefully on the coffee table and called us into the front room. “Go ahead, open it. It’s yours.”
My heart sank. I knew what it was. He’d been hinting at it all summer. I sat on the couch and cradled the gift in my lap. Megan settled heavily on the armrest. “What is it?” she asked. My father stood at the edge of the rug, bracing his hands on his hips and twitching all over, like he was holding himself back from diving in and ripping off the paper himself. “You’ll see. You’ll see.”
“It’s a telescope,” I said when I got the wrapping off. “Wow. Gosh. Look at that.” I turned the box around and looked it up and down, trying to show some enthusiasm.
“Huh? Yeah? Huh?” he said.
“Look up. Smile!” my mother called, and took a Polaroid.
My father already had his own telescope, of course, but his was old and not very powerful. What a person really needed, he’d been saying—if you really wanted to get good resolution—was a Celestron C8. It was the Mercedes-Benz of telescopes, the latest thing, made in California. A high-quality telescope like that wasn’t cheap, but a good one would last a lifetime. An investment, he called it. Wouldn’t I like something like that? We’d be able to track the comet with it, catch it before anyone else saw it, follow it all the way to the Sun and back.
“That’s not a toy, you know,” he said as I lifted it out of the box. “It’s a serious piece of scientific equipment. But I figured that you were old enough now. . . .”
Megan asked practical questions about the telescope: How far could you see with it? How did it work? And why was it so short and stumpy-looking? I knew all the answers; my father had already schooled me on the C8. It was a compound refractor-reflector, which was why it was so short. The light came in at the open end, bounced off a big mirror at the back, bounced off another mirror at the front, and then was focused down to the viewing lens, here—
My father interrupted my explanation. “With the forty millimeter Plössl eyepiece, you’ll get a magnification of about fifty power. Although theoretically, with the C8 you could get a maximum magnification of four hundred and eighty power. Cool, huh?”
“Far out,” said Megan. Her interest spent, her family obligations fulfilled, she headed upstairs to listen to records. “Happy birthday,” she called and closed the door to her bedroom.
My father couldn’t hold back any longer. He scooted in and squatted next to me. Soon he had the telescope in his own hands, running his fingers excitedly over the tube, his eyes bright behind his glasses. “How about that? You like it? Huh? You like it?”
While he checked all the parts, my mother, to make the occasion more festive, put a Pete Fountain record on the hi-fi and made drinks, a Coke for me, a rum and Coke for her and my father—“For fun,” as she liked to say. If our family had anything like a cheerleader, she was it. She was the one who staged all our birthdays, planned our holidays, arranged the group photos, and signed our names to Christmas cards when she mailed them out. That we had any sense at all of “the Broussards” as a family unit was mostly due to her—although, to be sure, she rarely got credit for this. If anything, my sister and I wondered why our mother bothered to make such a fuss over such a lost cause.
She was just returning with the drinks when my father stood up.
“Let’s bring it outside,” he said, and, carrying the scope in his arms, he headed for the door.
The air was swampy and warm. To either side were more homes like ours, small boxy hutches with clapboard siding, screened-in porches, and muddy yards. A broken line of bald cypresses and tupelos marked the edge of Bayou Black, a low, sluggish creek that passed behind the neighborhood. When a north breeze blew, as it did tonight, you could smell the Gulf. Bullfrogs and crickets kept up their noisy racket, lending a feeling of wildness to our damp little backyard, and a reminder that we barely had a foothold here—that given half a chance, the water and swamp would rush back in and reclaim the land from under us. “Terra non firma,” my father liked to call it, stamping his foot on the ground as though to demonstrate its unsoundness.
I stood by while he set up the telescope. My mother stood back by the porch, arms crossed lightly over her chest with her drink in one hand, smiling at her two boys.
“Check the ground surface first to make sure it’s level, no rocks or holes,” my father said as he bobbed around the tripod. He still had on his party hat, a red cone with white polka dots, like what a clown would wear. “Be sure the legs are locked. You don’t want it tipping over. Now, the first thing we do is polar align it.”
I looked over the top of his hat, across the black water to our new neighbors’ house on the opposite bank of the bayou. Spotlights shone on the walls and up into the fronds of tall, freshly planted palm trees on the back patio. Upstairs and down, lights glowed goldenly behind the windows, suggesting a rich, vibrant interior life. Their house stood out like a jewel in the darkness.
“Man-oh-man. Look at that. Sharp.”
My father stepped back and called me over. I bent to the eyepiece, curious in spite of myself. A bright blob wavered into view.
“What is it?”
“It’s the Moon, silly. Don’t you recognize the Moon?”
“Oh, right.”
“You have to hold still. Breathe easy. I trained it on the Sea of Tranquility. They were right there, Mr. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, walking around. Pretty amazing, isn’t it?”
I blinked and breathed. The image steadied itself in the glass, revealing a silvery, desolate landscape. My father squatted at my side, pointing out some of the more prominent lunar features while reciting their names at my ear: The Sea of Serenity, the Sea of Fecundity, the rays of Tycho, the rays of Copernicus. I peered closer, hoping I might see something interesting, an American flag, maybe, or leftover pieces of a landing module, but all I could make out were dusty hills and shadows. I wondered why anyone would ever want to go there, it looked so cold and lonely.
“Come see,” he called to my mother.
She tottered down the yard in her high-heeled sandals and, holding her drink aside in one hand, bent to the telescope.
“Careful you don’t spill on it,” he said.
“I won’t!”
She had a slim figure, narrow shoulders, and a straight back. Even though she was my mother, I could see it was true what people said about her, that she was a pretty woman. Even in a cardboard party hat, Lydia Simoneaux Broussard managed to look pretty. It was only lately that I had begun to notice what an unlikely couple my parents made: she petite and stylish and full of spunk, he gawky and birdlike and dull as a stick. I sometimes wondered what they were even doing together in the first place. Did they love each other? What did love even look like between two adults like them? And who in the world were these two strange creatures, Alan and Lydia, who called themselves my parents, anyway?
“Is this the comet?” my mother asked, blinking into the eyepiece.
“No, it’s not the comet. It’s the Moon! My god, doesn’t anyone recognize the Moon when they see it?”
Product details
- Publisher : Ballantine Books; First Edition (July 30, 2013)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 336 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0345516001
- ISBN-13 : 978-0345516008
- Item Weight : 1.2 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.34 x 1.05 x 9.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #4,262,113 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #28,554 in Family Saga Fiction
- #30,019 in Coming of Age Fiction (Books)
- #61,815 in Contemporary Women Fiction
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
George Bishop, Jr., worked as an actor for eight years in Los Angeles before traveling overseas as a volunteer English teacher to Czechoslovakia in 1992. He enjoyed the ex-pat life so much that he stayed on, living and teaching in Turkey, Indonesia, Azerbaijan, India, and most recently, Japan. He holds a BA from Loyola University in New Orleans, an MFA from the University of North Carolina in Wilmington, and an MA from the School for International Training in Vermont.
His stories and essays have appeared in publications such as The Oxford American, The Third Coast, Press, American Writing, and Vorm (in Dutch). His first novel, Letter to My Daughter was published by Ballantine Books in 2010; his second, The Night of the Comet, came out in 2013, also with Ballantine.
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Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the story touching and well-written. They describe the book as an enjoyable, remarkable read with clear writing that is descriptive without being overly wordy. Readers appreciate the realistic characters and family dynamics.
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Customers find the story touching and well-written. They describe it as a masterful way of gradually developing the story and tying threads together with a satisfying and uplifting ending. The plot keeps readers interested and the book is described as a well-recorded true story.
"Lovely story. Maybe a little too much astronomy for the average reader ( me ) but the humanity of the characters carries the story...." Read more
"...He really has a grasp for understanding and conveying the thoughts and emotions of each one of the characters portrayed here...." Read more
"...The Night of the Comet is a well-researched book that tells an interesting if familiar story of the travails of growing up and not understanding..." Read more
"...I found the tenderness with which he eventually viewed them to be very touching. I've recommended this to several friends already." Read more
Customers find the book easy to read and enjoyable. They appreciate the well-researched story with great eloquence and depth. The setting is described perfectly, making it a satisfying conclusion to the book.
"...And the setting for this story was perfectly described by the author which really made the story seem very real...." Read more
"...The Night of the Comet is a well-researched book that tells an interesting if familiar story of the travails of growing up and not understanding..." Read more
"...A satisfying finish and highly recommended." Read more
"This book was just okay, a decent read...." Read more
Customers find the writing clear and descriptive without being overly wordy.
"...The writing is beautiful and the story timeless. Will be reading this one again and again!" Read more
"...From the very beginning I was hooked on this story. The writing is extraordinary, clear and descriptive without being overly wordy...." Read more
"...The book is well researched and written...." Read more
"...Really uplifting and extremely well written." Read more
Customers find the characters realistic and sympathetic. They also mention that the father is a very real character.
"...astronomy for the average reader ( me ) but the humanity of the characters carries the story. Very poignant, and rather sweet...." Read more
"...However, this one really touched me. The characters are quirky enough to be interesting, but not so much that I couldn't relate to them...." Read more
"...However, as it progressed, the family relationships, the very real characters set in the context of a small Louisiana town and the frustrations of..." Read more
"...Even though it was set in the sixties the characters were easy to relate to, and I did gain a better appreciation for astronomy...." Read more
Customers like the family dynamics. They mention the real characters and that the family relationships work well. The book is about love and family, and a comet.
"...It's a book about love and family and a comet." Read more
"...However, as it progressed, the family relationships, the very real characters set in the context of a small Louisiana town and the frustrations of..." Read more
"...The family dynamics really work here...." Read more
"...written story of love, frailty, hope, and family in our very imperfectly perfect world...." Read more
Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on September 13, 2014Lovely story. Maybe a little too much astronomy for the average reader ( me ) but the humanity of the characters carries the story. Very poignant, and rather sweet. Low-key and heartfelt.
- Reviewed in the United States on October 6, 2013I enjoyed this novel so much! I've always been keenly interested in the stars myself, so he'd captured my interest from the very first page. And the setting for this story was perfectly described by the author which really made the story seem very real. He really has a grasp for understanding and conveying the thoughts and emotions of each one of the characters portrayed here. The writing is beautiful and the story timeless. Will be reading this one again and again!
- Reviewed in the United States on December 10, 2013I'd rate this 3.5 stars.
It's 1973 in the small town of Terrebonne, Louisiana. Alan Broussard, Jr. (aka "Junior") has just turned 14, and his mind is on many of the same things other 14-year-olds think about—trying to fit in at school, trying not to let his parents embarrass him, and, more importantly, girls—especially his new neighbor, the beautiful Gabriella Martello.
When Junior's father, an awkward high school science teacher and frustrated scientist, buys Junior a top-of-the-line telescope for his birthday, he does so in the hopes that he and Junior can watch the impending progress of Comet Kohoutek, which he promises will be the astronomical event of the century. Of course, Junior would rather use his telescope to watch Gabriella and her family, who live across the bayou in a much nicer housing development than the Broussards.
Much to the surprise of Junior, their father's enthusiasm about Comet Kohoutek's impending arrival starts to rub off on the people in Terrebonne, and excitement begins to build, even among those who have never had any interest in science. But the anticipation around the comet also highlights the problems in Junior's world—his mother's desire for a better and more exciting life than she has, one where money and love aren't as hard to come by; his father's frustration with the course his life has taken; even his sister's need to leave their small town. And all Junior wants is for Gabriella to feel the same way about him that he does about her.
"All of my father's talk about the 'objective observation' and 'trusting the evidence of your senses' was of little use when it came to trying to understand other people. People, I was beginning to believe, didn't so easily conform to the rules of science. With people, it was all just guesswork."
As tensions in the Broussard family grow at the same time excitement about the comet ramps up in town, Junior tries to make sense of his parents' relationship and the truth about love. But the problems of life, like scientific phenomena, can't always easily be pinned down, no matter how hard we hope they will.
The Night of the Comet is a well-researched book that tells an interesting if familiar story of the travails of growing up and not understanding your parents' relationship, but needing its stability. It's a story of the drama of first love, particularly unrequited, and how children and adults alike pin their hopes on things that don't always come true the way they want. It's also the story of relationships—between husband and wife, parent and child, those who seem to have it all and those who want it all.
I liked many elements of this book but found it got a little bogged down with the "coming of age" drama in Junior's life. The story about the excitement generated by the comet, and the way it brings to light problems in the Broussard family, resonated more for me. But it's still a good story that doesn't quite end the way you think it will.
- Reviewed in the United States on August 15, 2014What happens when we hang all our hopes on one solitary event -- which can never fulfill our expectations. From the very beginning I was hooked on this story. The writing is extraordinary, clear and descriptive without being overly wordy. The plot line is somewhat complicated in that I want to like all the characters, but they are just so darned flawed! But the story flows along like the current of the Mississippi and you are carried along to see where you end up. A satisfying finish and highly recommended.
- Reviewed in the United States on September 18, 2014This was a featured special on BookBub, which I use extensively. Books are inexpensive or free, so I don't expect too much out of them--that's not to say they aren't good books. However, this one really touched me. The characters are quirky enough to be interesting, but not so much that I couldn't relate to them. Actually, as a science teacher, I found the father a very sympathetic character. He loved his subject (astronomy) soooo much and tried so hard to instill that love in his students, in spite of the fact that he was ridiculed by them. I think it made him more sympathetic to me somehow. I cringed at what it did to his children, however, particularly the son through whose eyes we view him. The novel's crisis is a train wreck, a convergence of public embarrassments of both parents, which I almost couldn't read. In the end, however, the son finds a new respect for his parents, and I found the tenderness with which he eventually viewed them to be very touching. I've recommended this to several friends already.
- Reviewed in the United States on September 14, 2013This book was just okay, a decent read. The comet became an obsession of the father in the family, who was feeling the pangs of what he could have done with his life but didn't. The mother was feeling similar feelings and the two teenagers were trying to figure things out. It's a book about love and family and a comet.
- Reviewed in the United States on September 23, 2014The Night of the Comet is a beautiful read. George Bishop doesn't write characters, he writes people - fully fleshed, hopeful, flawed - and they make this story live.
I hate to call it a 'coming of age' story, because that phrase holds so much predisposition, but Comet is that, and much more. Each of the characters comes of age here, not just the boy around whom the tale is centered. A celestial event sets a family on a path much like its own, coming slowly into focus, causing wonder, disbelief and confusion, but most of all, change - in even the most unlikely situations. Give it a read.
- Reviewed in the United States on March 19, 2014A coming of age story set in 1970s, small town Louisiana, featuring a 14-year old young man and his nerdy father--the latter obsessed with Comet Kohoutek. The first half of The Night of the Comet is slow and repetitive as the author dissects the histories of several characters. The action builds substantially in the second half as it peels away the pains and joys of love.