Searching for life's answers in the night sky
Ruby Todd discusses her novel "Bright Objects" and the occult
The fever arrived with a little warning.
I felt it coming on in the evening. My throat itched. Something had been passed through my family, but I thought I was in the clear until the night before we were supposed to pack up and head to Cape Cod. I stayed up later than usual — so very late — and waited for the fever. I knew it would arrive and I wanted to make sure I took something to slow it before I went to bed. I needed to be sure I would not wake up with the aches and pains and sweating and a fever dream and that feeling that I was too tired to do anything about it, causing me to sleep less and feel worse while doing nothing. We have one of those children’s thermometers that barely goes into the ear and somehow registers your temperature. I usually run cold — sub 98 degrees Fahrenheit. I neared 100. I knew I’d miss the first days of our trip.
The next day, I slept while my family left. When I woke up, I watched some old television show on some streaming service in a daze. I carried my books and magazines from the bedside table to the couch. I slept some more. Finally, I opened Ruby Todd’s Bright Objects. I sat up, somehow, and read chapter after chapter. The suboptimal space my brain operated in worked perfectly with Todd’s plotting and pacing.
The story of Sylvia Knight grappling with life as a once in a millennia comet approaches Earth, growing in vibrancy as it nears to pass by for another 2,000 year journey. Knight is a widow grieving the death of her husband, who died in a hit and run accident that has yet to be solved. Knight works at a funeral home and comes into the orbit of two lost men — Theo St. John and Joseph Evans— who are also shaken by the comet. The meaning of life lurks around each corner as the characters circle and swirl, as they each search for answers. There’s the mystery of who killed Knight’s husband, which drives the book’s plot and the motivations of its characters, but what moves within it is Todd’s ability to speak through Knight and see the different angles of each character trying to make sense of life, which is messy and, in so many ways, pointless.
Todd grapples with all of this as she tries to understand our place and the great mysteries of the world. To me, the subplot of who murdered her husband works to push the plot of the book, but underneath and more interesting is a writer trying to find something more in the world.
I read and struggled to put the book down once my fever abated. I made it to the Cape, eventually, and finished late on a hot and humid evening thanks to the help of my phone’s flashlight. Any free time I found, I picked up Bright Objects, looking for the next question as much as the next answer.
Todd is Melbourne-based and has a PhD in writing and literature. She received the 2019 Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s Contest Award for Fiction. Bright Objects was shortlisted for the 2023 Victorian Premier’s Unpublished Manuscript Award. We spoke via Zoom.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
I read that you won some awards, so what were you awarded that tied to this book? How did that happen?
Sure. There was one short listing that was tied to the book, everything else was either for the start of a previous manuscript or self-contained stories, short stories. The one that was tied to this book was that it was shortlisted for the 2023 Victorian Premier's prize for an unpublished manuscript.
That's a great prize that's run in my state of Victoria here in Australia and is one that often is able to connect emerging writers with opportunities. It was great to be shortlisted for that. That was for an earlier draft of Bright Objects, and that was the prize that got the attention of my Australian editor.
I already had my agent, who's actually a U.S. based agent, and I was connected with her from the Ploughshares Emerging Writers Contest, which was in 2019, and that was for a short story called “Creation. That was a really funny because it was a total thrill to win that, but I had had no idea that a call with an agent was included. So when they mentioned that to me, via email, it was a lovely surprise. I certainly wasn't necessarily expecting Janet to sign me. But the great thing was when I had that chat with her in 2019. I was in this weird period where I was really questioning myself and I was in between projects. I'd sort of had to shell the previous project that I'd spent a long time on and done a lot of research for and was just letting it rest and surrendering to whatever was going to happen with it.
Luckily, I already started Bright Objects. I had four chapters and when she was asking what I was working on, I kind of pitched both books — the one that was finished and the one that I'd started. I think she could hear the excitement in my voice about Bright Objects in comparison to the one that I'd kind of felt like I'd been really pummeled by. She asked to read the opening of Bright Objects, even though that's all I had, and she signed me on the basis of that, which wasn't something I never expected would ever happen. I sometimes think, gosh, what if I hadn't had those chapters in hand to send her?
I want to talk about what is the difference between editing a book and writing it for Australia as opposed to working with U.S. based editors. What is the difference between the two sides?Did you have to do anything differently for each one?
To be honest, the route to having it published in the U.S. and Australia was really weird. As I said, the short listing of the Vic Premiers prize, that was how a number of Australian publishers had it on their radar. As soon as people are shortlisted, they want to read the full work. So I got a nice choice among Australian publishers to choose from and went with someone who I felt really understood it, Allen & Unwin. When that sale was advertised, Tim O’Connell saw it apparently.
Years and years ago, I think Tim had a lunch meeting with my agent when he was really young and just starting out and I remember him saying, “oh, Janet was one of the only agents who actually accepted my invitation and agreed to chat with this up and coming editor.” So I think they have sort of fond memories of each other. I remember him saying, “oh, I'd always hoped to work on a book with Janet.” And I think Janet's reference to some of the themes of the book resonated with him. I think he's always been interested in elements of the esoteric and cults.
So what ended up happening was that the timing was fortuitous enough that by the time that Tim came on board, I was about to start edits for my Australian publisher based on their report. We were able to realign timings and start having shared Zoom meetings so that both sides were able to get on board with what they both thought was necessary for the edits. And they actually aligned on those things.
Tim kind of wrote a report that I was able to read and my Australian editor was able to read, and then we kind of decided on the main points that were going to change. They agreed on central things like there was a character early on who we decided needed to be excised from the book because she was kind of peripheral to the plot. I worked with both of their reports and it was really harmonious. So it is just one book.
Tim didn't want a whole lot to change just for the American market. He felt, I remember him saying, was that one of the strengths of the book he felt, in terms of the market aspect, was that the town of Jericho, while it's set in New South Wales, there's kind of an aspect of universality about it, or, in many sections, it's like it could be happening anywhere. It is happening in Australia, but it's not so specific to Australia that it's going to alienate readers, hopefully.
I think we have to have faith in that audiences are global now. We have the Internet. I mean, books about people going to Europe have always been a thing in American literature. It's not far. I think that helps. I also think having faith in your reader is really important. Let's talk about the Australian market as a whole. I feel like it's kind of a lost little area of the world that does have its own little cultural, you have your own movie business, you have movie stars that come out of that that then go to Hollywood, right?
They're everywhere.
It's you and the Irish. You have a whole section of this stuff that we pretend is an Australian, but it is there. What is the Australian literary market for a book like this?
I kept hearing from the Australians throughout the process that, “it's a different market. It's a different market. It's a different market.” I've never worked in publishing, so my knowledge is far less multifaceted than theirs would be, but, from my end, having experienced the process of a launch as a debut, I know that they were concerned throughout the process with ensuring that we were categorizing it and framing it, even in terms of the cover, which is so different to the US cover really, in ways that… Have you seen the Australian cover?
No. I was going to look it up as you said it. I really like the American cover.
I adore it. I adore the U.S. cover. They felt that they couldn't use the U.S. cover because of the market, actually. I remember them saying that the book will be sold not just in indie bookstores, but also in the department store Big W, which is this kind of Kmart style.
Like a Sam's Club or a Costco, BJ’s, whatever? It sounds like a big department store/grocery store and that looks more like a cover for that audience.
It is so much more commercial in terms of how it looks. So yeah, it's very different. The blurbs are also different from Australian authors at the front, they sort of hint that it does have a literary aspect to it, but it's marketed as literary commercial, and that's really because it's got so much more of a chance, I guess, of selling and of reaching a wider readership.I mean, it's not untrue that it's literary commercial, but it's just, I think they really wanted to lean on that.
I don't know the difference. I mean, there are certain books that I look at and authors, I go, I guess commercial because it fits in a store, but I've read a lot of things and I'm like, I don't know, if you just told me this was commercial instead of just literary whatever, I guess commercial to me, look at what I get at the movie theater.
Yep.
So I don't know.
I mean, I have noticed as well, people have sent me photos of the book in quite prominent displays at various airports in Australia.
That’s great.
I'm sure it's similar in the States, but our indie bookstore scene has been decimated over the years. We used to have so many more independent bookstores thriving in various places.
We had a chain — it's still a chain — Collins Booksellers, but I've heard a lot of them have closed and often in rural areas that might've been the only bookstore around. So now it's really just Kmart and Big W and the airport, and that's that for brick and mortar stores that sell books. Australia is such a huge continent and most of the population is along the coast, but there are so many readers who don't have a local bookstore that they can walk into and engage with the bookseller who they know and ask fr recommendations. They either order online or they don't really encounter books much, unless they're the kinds of books that are sold at airports.
My city didn't have a bookstore a few years ago and now we have, I think, three independent bookstores, and one of them got bigger, it had to to upgrade its space.The Barnes and Noble moved out. But even used bookstores are coming back a little bit.
It becomes a trend.
It's similar to what happened with the record store revival a few years ago. People were kind of like, I don't know what I want to listen to anymore and Spotify just gives me the same algorithm being fed. Algorithms gets tiresome. We also had bookshop.org come in to help out a little bit.
I wonder, what were you thinking of as you're writing this at first, what comes first to you? What was the scene that you were like, that's the scene I want to start. That's the scene I need to write?
I think it was the retrospective voice, that first person, fairly intimate voice of Sylvia looking back on this period in her life when a celestial object came to town that then would always live on in her mind as the symbol of her destruction and rebirth. Really, it was that kind of charged perspective through her voice of announcing the time when this comet that will never be seen again arrived. I knew that I wanted to have this object be the symbol of many things. It's the symbol of existential dread, but also of the potential redemption of that sense of connection with something greater that can never really be understood, but which we are all a part of. That sense of cosmic interconnection that is a balm for anyone who has ever felt that crushing sense of despair of being alone on this planet potentially for no real reason. And that questioning of: why are we here? Is there any purpose beyond what we make of it?
That was the seed. It was always the comet and what it would signify for this central character who was at a loss in her life and dealing with grief and also prone, really prone, to not only awareness of the dangers of succumbing to certain mystical ideas, but also very hungry for them.
But also not too shy to question them. I think placing her mother-in-law in that place is interesting with her because some people are looking for those answers or they're asking those questions and I would say she's asking the questions, whereas the other person is believing the answers. She knows the answers aren't entirely there, and there is no magical bullet or magic. She believes in some magic; she needs to survive. But her mother-in-law, the only thing she understands is that magic at first. I am wondering about religion and your life and how you view it. Because I mean, this is essentially how religions start. So maybe you have similar feelings. This is a good example of how they brew out of the air like this out of something, a sign, right? We look for signs and there is a sign. So what is your relationship to the religious aspect of this book?
I gave a lot of myself to Sylvia, and something that maybe I shouldn't admit is the fact that I did the same for Joseph. So there is a lot of myself in Joseph as well. It's almost like this: If I take a logical leap, if certain barriers weren't there or points beyond which I won't allow myself to go, maybe in some parallel universe, I could end up as a cult leader.
You have a lot of faith in your charisma.
I could be a less successful leader.
There are so many ways I could answer this. I mean, I grew up in a family that kind of oscillated between I guess agnosticism and atheism. I ended up being sent at a certain point to a Catholic girls school because it was the closest school to where we were living at the time. I really loathed that school, but I didn't mind writing prayers because I saw it as a kind of meditation and I was exploring various aspects of paganism and the esoteric at the time. So I equated it to writing a spell, which I didn't share with my religion teacher, but I quite enjoyed the symbolism and the ritual that was involved in the chapel services, although I was quite creeped out just by the, it was just so rigid. I remember one time I was responsible for lighting the candles and there was some weird rule about how I couldn't, I had to have my back to everyone behind me and only turn around at a certain time or something.
It was this weird choreography that I just didn't understand because unlike many of the students there, I hadn't been brought up a Catholic, but I've always felt a kind of lack in my secular life. I felt the lack of that symbolism and the kind of atmospheric richness that can go with it and the ritual. So I was drawn to that.
I was always interested in astrology and the kind of, I've described it as the celestial lens that it can lend to otherwise mundane daily life. And when I was in a weird, when I was dealing with some melancholia and just feeling at a bit of a loss some years ago before I started writing the book, I revisited it and it just gave me so much comfort because it's actually incredibly fascinating when you go beyond the shallow pop culture horoscope aspect of it and look into people who are really quite learned and have researched it for many years and really view the universe in this way. People like Richard Tarnas, who wrote The Passion of the Western Mind, which was a course that I did at university as an undergrad. I was fascinated because if you look into it deeply enough, you see how there are these weird connections between astronomy and astrology and how if you go back hundreds of years, that was a natural connection. Astronomers will naturally, sometimes through serendipity or whatever you want to call it, name a new object that's been discovered after a Roman god or goddess. And then astrologers notice that and they bring it into the astrological family tree, and then they start to see supposed correspondences in terms of what happens down below. It's this idea of the planets as somehow being a timing device, like their orbits.
I was inspired by that, I guess in the end with the way that I described the comet. I love that idea of that really more palpable correspondence between the skies above us and what's going on on earth down below. I'm a romantic, so it's just an idea that really appeals to me. And in terms of other things, I mean, I've always been interested in researching various mystical traditions and both Western and Eastern, but probably more Western in terms of tarot. Specifically, when I was developing Joseph's character, I got more into Neoplatonism and some of those traditions. I've always been fascinated by ancient Egyptian spirituality as well, and just all of that ritualization of death.
Is there anything else that you want to add about this book that I should know? Is there anything you want to make sure gets out there?
I think a fun fact is that the orbit for the fictional comet St. John was actually computed by a comet expert, so as to be hypothetically plausible.
Is that why you have all those thank you’s to all those people at the end?
I'm grateful to three astronomers who I consulted with, but the one who computed the orbit is an Italian — I think he's Italian — and he works out of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It took me a while to find him, because not everyone can design a comet orbit from scratch according to specifications. I needed it to be this bright and visible in this part of the world at these times and what constellations would it be going through in August. And he was able to do that. He consulted in a private capacity. I always am at pains to say that because he said that NASA is very strict about it, but he was really generous to do that, and I was very excited to have had all of these data points that I was then able to reference when I was writing a description.