Customer Reviews

Year of the Comets: A Journey from Sadness to the Stars

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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.

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.

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.

This is an "enjoyable" book. Given its subjects of depression and astronomy, one would expect a heavy read; however, I zipped through the 200 pages with ease. Perhaps it is because I enjoy astronomy and cosmology, but I rather think it is because the book is well written and edited.

It is not a light read by any means, both subjects are serious and DeBlieu treats them as such. However, she describes them in layman's terms and only provides enough technical information to explain her views of the concepts. That approach makes it easy for any reader to grasp the insights she presents.

The book is more about her experience with her husband's depression, than his experience. I appreciate that approach, as it is first-hand and personal. She does not try to write the book on his behalf nor does she pretends to understand what he is going through. In fact, her own confusion and suffering comes to the fore every now and then, but she never dwells on it or look for sympathy. It provides wonderful perspectives for spouses and family members of depression sufferers. But be warned, DeBlieu does not provide a cure for depression nor does she have the ultimate answer for living with a depression sufferer. This is not what the book is about. It is rather about a personal experience and how she coped with it. At best, it registers empathy with those who suffer from depression and their loved ones who are affected by it without choice.

Having suffered from depression for a number of years myself, the glimpses that DeBlieu provides of her husband's experience are startling real. Her rather `gentle' description of the impact on the people around us is even more startling - in a state of depression one tends to focus on oneself and forget about those around you. And the fact that depressed people can do little about it is downright frightening even though they (we) know it is true.

I particularly appreciated the way she aligned the complexity of the human mind with the complexity of cosmology and astronomy. It is true that it is non-scientific and rather her way of coping with and thinking about depression as an illness of the mind, but her views are easy to relate to and provides that little bit of a different perspective to the everyday sadness of depression.

I recommend this book strongly for anyone who is living with or close to a depression sufferer as well as to anybody inclined towards depression. It is uplifting to both parties to see that it is possible to deal with depression even if it might require adjustments and sacrifices. If you are interested in astronomy it will be a huge bonus, but if you are not, do not let it put you off the book. You will most likely understand DeBlieu's astronomical and cosmological descriptions relatively easily, but if not, it will not lessen the value of the book. The book is certainly not for readers who are looking for astronomy and cosmology in terms of scientific subjects.

I really appreciated the author's humility regarding her knowledge of astronomy. She takes us on her journey of self-education which, for someone like me who knows very little about the stars, allowed me to keep pace with her discoveries. Her writing is descriptive but not overly flowery; I appreciated the directness and succinctness.

My only regret is that she did not share more of her experiences in dealing with her husband's slide into deep depression. Her description of what she went through seemed muted, too measured. Didn't they argue? Wasn't she angry? Didn't she feel helpless? She touches on these but I would have liked her to go a bit deeper.

Nonetheless, it is a very well-written, engaging combination of memoir and scientific discovery.

This is part memoir concerning her husband, Jeff's bout with clinical depression (deep sadness) over the impending death of his mother. "I read somewhere ...that soliders dying on the battlefield cry out for their mothers. People walking throught the carnage at Normandy heard grown men calling out, 'Mommy!'" She asks him what it felt like to know his mother's dying. He says it is scary; he's scared of not having a mother. "It's like being caught in a vortex and being sucked down; it's more out of control."

She philosophized about how many centuries ago, "people often turned to the stars to allay their fears and chart their paths." They had used stargazers not just to 'allay their fears' but to find answers to life's most pressing questions and sought wisdom about the best treatment of illnesses.

Since she is the Cape Hatteras Coastkeeper in North Carolina where that spectacular lighthouse stands tall, she started observing the night sky. "We now have the skills to examine the stars in more than a half-dozen ways, with scans for radio signals, microwaves, X-rays, gamma rays, and cosmic rays. Telescopes capture infrared and ultraviolet light, as well as visible light." The edges of the cosmos have been pushed back farther and farther with the advent of each new telescopic tool. "The various light waves that penetrate space give us glimpses of what lies beyong Earth's atmosphere... We are watching celestial events that would have startled our grandparents, never mind the first stargazers whose intellects were set ablaze by the objects they saw through their crude telescopes." She learned from an astronomy "history" book about the composite photograph called 'Hubble Deep Field' made from some 342 exposures over a ten-day period of December 1995, into the deepest parts of Space. "In that one tiny keyhole of the sky, the telescope detected hundreds of previously unknown worlds." In 1930, we knew of nine planets which made us our universe. Today's astronomers are now certain that the solar system is a lot more interesting than just a list of nine planets. There is no precise definition of the word, 'planet,' and astronomrs are thinking and re-thinking about where comets actually come from; in addition to the planets and their moons, there appear to be lots more to our solar system. In June 2002, Quaoar was discovered, as was Xena in October 2003, with its own little moon and is the most distant object ever found orbiting the sun. In February 2004, DW was discovered by a robotic telescope with an orbit farther out in Space of Sedna, discovered in March 2004. These new world have been found by looking far outside the plane of our solar system.

By studying the stars, she writes, "I imagined the whole of our tiny, perfect world -- people, animals, plants -- watching the sky together, saying as one, "Oh!" A diamond torch exploed in Orion and fell, leaving a misty,savering path as long as a comet's tail." With her new interest in the universe and by writing this account, she says that she embarked on "an unusual literary journey" and had some help from friends to "realize that my journey was indeed at an end."

Jan Debliue has also written MEANT TO BE WILD, HATTERAS JOURNAL, and WIND: HOW THE FLOW OF AIR HAS SHAPED LIFE, MYTH AND THE LAND. Her natural history/science articles have appeared in 'Audubon,' 'Orion,' and the 'New York Times Magazine.'