Theater of the Stars: A Novel of Physics and Memory [Hardcover]

N. M. Kelby (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 16, 2003

ucienne Kundera, an astrophysicist, has uncovered a black hole as mysterious as the secrets in her life. Lucienne's mother, Hlne, is a scientist as well, who was captured during World War II. She eventually escaped and disappeared, reappearing years later in New Mexico with Lucienne. Hlne claims to have no recollection of these past events, but when she and Lucienne visit Paris, the city of Hlne's youth, Hlne is overcome by memories and secrets, and attempts suicide. Lucienne becomes dangerously obsessed with uncovering her mother's past, while at the same time attempting to solve a celestial mystery so dark and dense that its nature cannot be revealed. Theater of the Stars is a finely crafted novel sure to establish Kelby as a storyteller of unique sensitivity and wisdom.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

*Starred Review* After discovering a black hole, American astrophysicist Lucienne is in Paris to accept a prestigious award to be presented by her formidable and mysterious mother, a French physicist who somehow ended up at Los Alamos at the height of the Manhattan Project. Estranged from her husband, Lucienne is painfully aware that she has always put her work first, as has her mother, and finds the grim metaphor manifest in the black hole, which pulls everything into its inescapable darkness, bracingly ironic. But nothing could prepare her for the shocking revelations that unfold over the course of Kelby's elegant, spellbinding, and ingenious tale. Acclaimed for her debut, In the Company of Angels (2000), Kelby brilliantly dramatizes everything from rape to murder to the Nazi occupation of Paris to the North African front to the uneasy friendship between the lonely son of a Parisian furrier and the son of their Moroccan housekeeper to the atomic bomb to the tragedies of September 11. Kelby's radioactive spider web of a novel is as psychologically loaded as it is suspenseful, as penetrating in its condemnation of war as in its searing insights into twisted love and fractured families. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

"Both mysterious and a novel about secrets—secret actions and the secret emotions that provoke them." -- Washington Post Book World

"Packed with revolving themes... Kelby's writing has a dreamy quality." -- San Francisco Chronicle

"Unique and moving...Kelby...has a real gift for description...electrically vivid." -- St Petersburg Times

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Hyperion; 1 edition (July 16, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786868589
• ISBN-13: 978-0786868582
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,640,643 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #39 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Women's Fiction > Mothers & Children

More About the Author

N.M.Kelby (Nicole Mary Kelby) has been translated into several languages and offered by The Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club, and Quality Paperback Book Club. She is the recipient of a Bush Artist Fellowship in Literature, an NEA Inter-Arts grant, the Heekin Group Foundation's James Fellowship for the Novel, both a Florida and Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship in fiction, two Jerome Travel Study Grants, and a Jewish Arts Endowment Fellowship.

Her story "Jubilation, Florida" was selected for NPR'S "Selected Shorts," and recorded by Joanne Woodward for the CD Travel Tales, and reprinted in New Stories from the South: Best of 2006 (Algonquin Books).

www.nmkelby.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Worth reading twice, July 28, 2003

By 

Susan O'Neill (Andover, MA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Theater of the Stars: A Novel of Physics and Memory (Hardcover)

This is a beautifully and economically written, minutely-researched, thoroughly engaging, disquieting novel that illustrates how human intentions and motivations become nearly irrelevant in the march of both public and personal history. Set in present-day Paris, it flashes back into the strange, nerdish world of nuclear research that led, ultimately, to the bombing of Hiroshima. It stretches into astrology, dabbles in human treachery and touches upon our human eagerness to judge others by culture and creed. It picks through memory, showing the reader a reality that the characters themselves can never fully see even as they live it.

All these big themes in fewer than 300 pages, in which a woman searches for the truth about her unknown father as her mother lies dying.

I ordered this book because I loved "In the Company of Angels"--so much that I've sent it out to just about everybody I know. This novel is quite different in form and content from its predecessor, which relied heavily on magical realism, but it is no less masterful. But in both books, Kelby's ability to put life into perspective through her writing--the talent to show the proverbial "universe in a drop of water"--is phenomenal.

"Theater of the Stars" had me turning pages and staying up late; I was far from disappointed in the ending, but I was definitely disappointed that it had to end so soon. I seldom read a book twice, but I've already started on my second time through. There's so much here.

Susan O'Neill, Author, Don't Mean Nothing: Short Stories of Viet Nam

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars MORE MIRACLES FROM NICOLE KELBY, December 29, 2003

By 

Larry L. Looney (Austin, Texas USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Theater of the Stars: A Novel of Physics and Memory (Hardcover)

After reading Nicole Kelby's first novel, the brilliant and moving IN THE COMPANY OF ANGELS, I naturally worried that her next work would fall short of the high mark her debut attained. I needn't have been concerned. THEATER OF THE STARS shows without a doubt that she is a writer of exceptional talent and spirit - and that she has stories to convey that will leave an imprint on the soul of the reader long after the last page has been read.

The great Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky saw time as continually folding back upon itself, doubling itself at every instant, with the past continually co-existing with the present. I got a sense of that while reading this novel: the focus jumps from chapter to chapter between the present and the past, but it does so effortlessly and fluidly, never leaving me with the feeling that I was being jerked around. Kelby's gentle but thorough style, and her incredible sense of feeding information to the reader at just the right pace are responsible of this, I believe.

The story concerns a journey of memory and spirit undertaken by several characters, centering on two women, a mother and daughter. Both of them are physicists - and both of them have dizzying gaps in their memories of their pasts. When they set about to fill these gaps, and to reconcile the emptiness and pain they feel, a labyrinth of paths and lives appears - it is the unraveling of this labyrinth that draws the reader through the journey undertaken by these characters, and there are many wonderful discoveries to be made about them and ourselves along the way. There is quite a bit of science at play in the book - but not so much that a layman can't both appreciate and enjoy the ride. The book is in many respects a mystery - there are secrets to be uncovered and explained, ties to be established and reconciled, and life-changing lessons to be learned. It all comes together beautifully - and it has a lot to teach us about how all of the lives on this planet are tied together, and how we view those with whom we share it. There are lessons here about love and family and spirit and prejudice - lessons we could all stand to review again and again.

There is also - as in Kelby's previous novel - an undercurrent of spirituality that flows like a secret but powerful river, carrying along the characters as well as the reader. It never attempts to `preach' or advocate any particular belief system or creed - it's simple there, and it's presence is undeniable and comforting. My advice is to let yourself be borne by it where it will take you - it's a rewarding journey. I can't wait to see where she takes us next - this is a writer whose work I know I'll be seeking out for a long, long time to come.

4.0 out of 5 stars interesting, November 27, 2011

By 

R. Lee Holz - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Theater of the Stars: A Novel of Physics and Memory (Kindle Edition)

Theater of the Stars is very different from Whale Season but is characterized by the same fluid writing style and engaging character development. The former is tragic and the later richly comedic. In terms of entertainment, I enjoyed the comedy more than the tragedy. If either book had a deeper message, I missed it.