Willie Campbell enjoys a magical novel.
THE COMET SEEKERS
Helen Sedgwick
Harvill Secker/Penguin Random House
By WILLIE CAMPBELL
Publicity material describes this as Harvill Secker's lead debut fiction title for 2016 and one of the most vivid, original and magical books in years. I can't disagree.
Helen Sedgwick crafts an enticing family story that takes Aelfgifu in the crimson dress, her clerics and the fiery Halley's Comet from the Bayeux tapestry and uses both the tapestry and the appearance of comets since 1066 to 2017 to present a cast of family members, some alive and some ghosts, who live in elegant and intense relationships at their peak when comets are in the sky.
Roison, who has grown up in a small village in Ireland, and Francois, who comes from Bayeux, meet at a research station in the Antarctic in 2017. They have both experienced a family pattern of fascination with the sky and comets, and a tension between adventure and commitment to home. Both have lives dominated by females, as both fathers have gone away on adventures.
Severine, Francois' mother, is conscious that her mother talks to people who can't be seen. At a certain point, she herself sees the tapestry full of faces and begins to have their company. The penalty for this is that she is unable to move away from Bayeux, and is conscious that when she tries there is a knot in her belly, something between guilt and loneliness, while the ghosts remind her she is needed at home in Bayeux. Francois doesn't believe in the ghosts and this creates an almost unbearable tension for them. Eventually she persuades him to go see the world, for there are enough ghosts in the family.
Roison has an inescapable attraction to her cousin Liam, and this sits at the base of the dilemma of whether or not to adventure or remain. Staying in the village becomes impossible and Roison seeks her adventure, while Liam descends into despair.
The elegance of this story is a little like a tapestry itself. The stitchery is deliberate and varied. Shifts from short paragraphs to long sequences, and differing lengths of chapters call attention to changing mood and action. Lyrical descriptions of emotions alternate with crisp accounts of behaviour, especially those of the ghosts and their impact on the living. This is a novel worthy of more than one reading.
Willie Campbell is a Dunedin educator.
