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  • Published: 4 August 2016
  • ISBN: 9781473524804
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 304

The Comet Seekers




One Day meets The Time Traveler's Wife in this spellbinding, magical debut novel about love, loss, hope and heartbreak that shows us that the world can be as desolate or as beautiful as the comets that pass overhead.

Two lives. One night sky.

Róisín and François first meet in the snowy white expanse of Antarctica, searching for a comet overhead.

While Róisín grew up in a tiny village in Ireland, ablaze with a passion for science and the skies, François was raised by his restless young mother, who dreamt of new worlds but was unable to turn her back on her past.

As we loop back through their lives we see their paths cross as they come closer and closer to this moment, brought together by the infinite possibilities of the night sky.

  • Published: 4 August 2016
  • ISBN: 9781473524804
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 304

About the author

Helen Sedgwick

Helen Sedgwick was a research scientist working in the field of biophysics before writing her debut novel, The Comet Seekers. She has an MLitt in Creative Writing from Glasgow University and a PhD in Physics from Edinburgh University, and has received a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award. Having grown up in London, she now lives in the Scottish Highlands. The Growing Season is her second novel.

Also by Helen Sedgwick

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Praise for The Comet Seekers

Helen Sedgwick has written a first novel of remarkable grace, beauty and insight, in which a careful love of language meets an immense storytelling talent. I was moved and inspired by this book

Joseph O'Connor, author of The Star of the Sea

Haunting and beautiful, THE COMET SEEKERS follows a constellation of lives from modern Antarctica to medieval England, all of them connected by an extraordinary mystery hidden deep in the past. A captivating story, deftly told, about those who are driven to explore, and those who must stay behind

Helene Wecker, New York Times bestselling author of THE GOLEM AND THE JINNI

The Comet Seekers is a brave and tender debut from one of the brightest new stars of the literary world. It's one of the most vivid, original and magical books I've read in years

Kirsty Logan, author of The Gracekeepers

Readers will be enveloped in the magical world that Sedgwick creates and will grapple with the big issues she tackles—love, family, freedom, and loneliness. Those who are drawn to intimate stories of family drama are sure to respond to this beautiful, character-driven novel

Booklist

A magical debut…a gorgeous novel that should resonate with fans of Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveller’s Wife A breathtaking tale full of love, hope and heartbreak. You’ll be utterly captivated from the first page

Elle

A stellar love story

Glamour, Book of the Year

A spellbinding tale of love and loss, aglimmer with passion and melancholy.

Sunday Express, S Magazine

Beautiful, sad, moving, fascinating and original. I loved it.

Marian Keyes

Beautiful, haunting.

The Pool

A beautiful love story.

Love it

Her laconic tone and measured prose belie the novel’s dramatic content… Sedgwick is a highly evocative writer who makes excellent use of nature to showcase her themes… Her charming debut maps the world’s big questions on an even larger plane’

Sarah Gilmartin, Irish Times

A beautifully imagined and original conceit…. There is no escaping the undeniable artistry of this book, a clever triumvirate of love, ghosts and time-travel.

Jade Craddock

· A book that reveals its subtle complexities gradually as it gives way to a central story that feels at once astronomical and homespun.

Big Issue

[The Comet Seekers] is full of life: languorous, homely, fleeting and heavily affected by its past.

Jenni Ajderian, Skinny

Sedgwick’s balance of scientific accuracy, artful use of language and storytelling skill makes this tale glow… A timeless, intimate and magical book.

Abigail Etchells, Lady

Exquisitely layered, thrilling novel, which leaps across centuries and continents to delve into the role of destiny and the elusiveness of perception and memory.

New York Times

[The Comet Seekers is] my favourite of this year. Her story of many lives linked by comets over earth is brave, tender, vivid and magical.

Kirsty Logan, Herald, Book of the Year

A fluid narrative voice, pointedly lyrical. And, as in the work of contemporary fabulists like Kelly Link, Helen Oyeyemi and Audrey Niffenegger, the real intersects matter-of-factly with the supernatural…Many of this novel’s pleasures have to do with teasing out the implications of Sedgwick’s intricate pattern…This web of associations, spun by recurring images and figures, lends a different spin to the idea of a love that’s meant to be.

New York Times Book Review

Beautiful, very moving and different from anything else.

Marian Keyes, Sainsbury's Magazine, Book of the Year