Year of the Comets: A Journey from Sadness to the Stars [Hardcover]

Jan DeBlieu (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 10, 2005

On the clearest nights, in the darkest rural areas, it's possible to see as many as 2,000 stars. On what kind of scaffolding are they hung?

Every moment thousands of neurons fire in our brains, giving rise to our thoughts and emotions. Is it possible for us to map and understand the complex internal cosmos that makes us who we are?

These two disparate questions became of immense importance to award-winning writer Jan DeBlieu in the spring of 1996, with the appearance of the Comet Hyakutake, the first of two great comets to visit Earth within a year. That spring, her husband, Jeff, began a long slide into a clinical depression. One night, unable to sleep, she stepped outside and found herself face-to-face with Hyakutake. Her encounter with Hyakutake sparked a desire to learn all she could about the stars, comets, and the makeup of the universe.

Through her family's story, DeBlieu describes the pain of watching her husband suffer, as well as his healing—indeed, their healing as a couple. She brings the Year of the Comets full circle with the appearance of Hale-Bopp in 1997, which coincided with Jeff's recovery.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

As in her previous book, Wind, DeBlieu uses forces of nature to illuminate the human condition. Here she brackets the harrowing story of her husband's severe depression with the appearances of the comets Hyakutake and Hale-Bopp; in between these astronomical events, she reflects on the chaos and order of the cosmos by weaving a well-paced history of stargazing. But it is the inner universe that dominates: "Demons of the mind: they dwell at the core of this account, alongside the lighted angels that perch in the heavens." And while many amateur astronomers have told their stories, few have had to raise a toddler and deal with a withdrawn and angry husband at the same time, so when DeBlieu goes outside and lies flat on the asphalt to examine the stars, one wonders if she wouldn't rather just stay there for a while. But eventually life begins to improve. "It's the same whether you're searching for personal truths or scientific fact," DeBlieu observes. "Something happens, some sequence of events that elicits a flash of understanding." Seeing significance in the arrival and departure of comets is not unusual, but DeBlieu finds more than portents of doom; instead, grief and longing are tempered by the hope that things might look up again some night. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

DeBlieu experienced a family crisis in 1996, when her husband Jeff's mother lay dying. Moving between vignettes set at her mother-in-law's home in Mississippi and theirs in North Carolina's Outer Banks, DeBlieu imparts the unremitting stress that Jeff's deepening moroseness places on them and their toddler. She initially turns to stargazing as a form of escape but becomes poetically expansive in contemplating the heavens, echoing her sophisticated nature writing in Wind (1998). Simultaneously, she refracts popular writings on big bang cosmology into a narrative of its history and main concepts. Back home, meanwhile, Jeff, forced by his forest preserve employer to take a leave, seems to benefit from rest as DeBlieu fields advice and information on the nature of depression, which she also condenses into a summary of neuroscience. In this memoir, science is not an external abstraction but something bound intimately to the author's experience, which any reader in a comparable situation will find quite affecting. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Counterpoint (April 10, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1593760701
• ISBN-13: 978-1593760700
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,040,618 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unusual, October 21, 2005

By 

D. Lincoln - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Year of the Comets: A Journey from Sadness to the Stars (Hardcover)

This is an interesting and unusual book in which the author
weaves together an account of her husband's depression with
observations on her hobby - Astronomy. One gets the strong
feeling that her marriage would not have survived the impact
of depression had she not had some interest to turn to for
fulfillment.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Clear, readable and sympathetic, June 6, 2005

By 

Patricia Ohmans (Saint Paul, MN, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Year of the Comets: A Journey from Sadness to the Stars (Hardcover)

Jan Deblieu is a gifted nature writer whose straightforward, accessible prose can make both the tangle of the galaxies and the tangle of neurons in a person's brain comprehensible to the lay reader.

As a mother, wife, and amateur astronomer, Deblieu walks a fine line between personal revelation (about her husband's depression and its effect on her and their young son) and abstract explication (about the complexities of contemporary astronomy and physics).

Year of the Comets effectively links these two seemingly disparate subjects, presenting both with clarity and vitality. Highly recommended.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The stars and a dose of misery, June 6, 2005

By 

Anthony Schmitz - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Year of the Comets: A Journey from Sadness to the Stars (Hardcover)

Here's a book that proves again that there's nothing like the boundlessness of the cosmos to snap one's problems into perspective. The Year of the Comets proceeds on two tracks. In the aftermath of his mother's death, Deblieu's husband, Jeff, settles into a deep depression. Simultaneously, Deblieu takes up stargazing, with a study of the two comets that crossed Earth's path that year. The neatly balanced result is this book, which is a compassionate look at what happens when the disease of depression enters your home, and a lovely description of the solace that a contemplation of the heavens can provide. The writing here is moving and informative on both fronts.