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Summary
Summary
In late-eighteenth-century Ireland, accidental stargazer Caroline Ainsworth learns that her life is not what it seems when her father, Arthur, throws himself from his rooftop observatory. Caroline had often assisted her father with his observations, in pursuit of an unknown planet; when astronomer William Herschel discovered Uranus, Caroline could only watch helplessly as unremitting jealousy drove Arthur to madness. Now, gone blind from staring at the sun, he has chosen death over a darkened life.
Grief-stricken, Caroline abandons the vain search, leaves Ireland for London, and tries to forget her love for Finnegan O'Siodha, the tinkering blacksmith who was helping her father build a telescope larger than his rival's. But her father has left her more than the wreck of that unfinished instrument- his cryptic atlas holds the secret to finding a new world at the edge of the sky. As Caroline reluctantly resumes her father's work and confronts her own longings, Ireland is swept into rebellion, and Caroline and Finnegan are plunged into its violence.
This is a novel of the obsessions of the age- scientific inquiry, geographic discovery, political reformation, but above all, astronomy, the mapping of the solar system and beyond. It is a novel of the quest for knowledge and for human connection -- rich, far-reaching, and unforgettable.
Author Notes
John Pipkin was born in Baltimore and received his Ph.D. in British Literature from Rice University. His first novel, Woodsburner , was named one of the best books of 2009 by the Washington Post , the Christian Science Monitor , and the San Francisco Chronicle . It won the Massachusetts Book Award for Fiction, the Steven Turner Award for Best Work of First Fiction from the Texas Institute of Letters, and the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Pipkin lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife and son.
Reviews (4)
Kirkus Review
Pipkins panoramic second novel (Woodsburner, 2009) unfurls a vista of scientific advances and social unraveling as the 18th century nears its close.Arthur Ainsworth, a Londoner orphaned by an epidemic, inherits New Park, a manor estate in Ireland, where he's able to pursue his hobby and main passion, astronomy. Telescopes, a new invention, are rudimentary and scarce: Arthur must commission his own from one of his tenants, the local blacksmith, Owen. Soon after his wife dies in childbirth, Arthur adopts a foundling whom Owen took in and names her Caroline. Only Owen and his family, including his nephew and apprentice, Finn, know the infant is not Arthur's daughter by blood. Meanwhile, in Bath, a musician named William Herschel, who had to leave Hanover after deserting the army, and his sister, also confusingly named Caroline but known as Lina, are similarly drawn to astronomy: William, like Arthur, is intent on discovering a new planet and devising better telescopes, and Lina acts as his assistant, collaborator, and calculator, as does Caroline for Arthur. (The Herschels are real historical characters.) Now blind from gazing at the sun, Arthur is enraged to learn that William has won the race to find a new planet. Caroline, meanwhile, is smitten with Finn, whom she spies on with a telescope, and Finn loves her as well, but both are too timid to declare their feelings. After Arthur dies after falling from New Parks roof (or did he jump?), his unscrupulous land agent destroys his will, dispossessing Caroline. Owen and his wife are also evicted and die on the road. Ignorant of one anothers fate, Caroline and Finn each flee Ireland, where rebellion against English landlords is brewing, she to London and he to Edinburgh. The novel is divided by Arthurs death into two discrete parts, and the second half, dominated by the bloody Irish uprising of 1798, never really gels with the first. Still, a fascinating look at the particular manias and obsessions of those who study the stars amid turmoil on Earth. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
In this lovely, meditative historical novel about the daughter of an eighteenth-century stargazer, Pipkin explores the conundrum astronomers face when confronted by an endless universe and humanity's near-insignificance in comparison. The story follows several characters all of them stars in their own galaxies in multiple plotlines, which is sometimes confusing and diffuses the book's focus on Siobhan (aka Caroline). Incorporated into her story are William Herschel, discoverer of Uranus, and his sister (also named Caroline); the 1798 Irish Rebellion; telescope-making and star-mapping; a fictitious family of Ainsworths living in Ireland; and the adoption of a foundling. This multitude of sprawling parallel plots and descriptive historical details, along with the large cast of seemingly unrelated characters, does help bring home the author's point that life and astronomy are made up of endless searches among diverse possibilities. This lyrical, philosophical book both frustrates and delights. Its focus on discovery is similar to that in Michael Byers' Percival's Planet, and Pipkin's poetic language will remind readers of Dava Sobel's essay collection, The Planets (2005). Herschel's story is also fictionalized in Carrie Brown's The Stargazer's Sister (2016).--Baker, Jen Copyright 2016 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
JOHN PIPKIN'S INGENIOUS first novel, "Woodsburner," was set during the fire that laid waste to 300 acres of Concord woods in Massachusetts in 1844, a blaze accidentally ignited by an unworldly Henry David Thoreau. The fire, a horrifying demonstration of nature's inexorable power, threw into relief man's doomed passion for owning and mastering all that he sees. The same frustrated craving for possession and dominion is at work in Pipkin's wide-ranging, many-layered second novel, "The Blind Astronomer's Daughter." Arthur Ainsworth is 8 in 1744 when the London sky is visited by a terrifying six-tailed comet, "an icy brilliance outshining the full moon." Plague follows, "the speckled monster" carrying off the boy's family, and Arthur, bereft, searches the skies for celestial bodies to replace his loss. He marries and moves to Kilkenny, Ireland, there to build "a dome that will open like a giant eye fixed on the whirling fretwork of heaven." Alas, his wife dies in childbirth along with newborn twins. Nearby, an orphaned infant girl is rescued by a boy who lives with his blacksmith uncle. This is Finn, whose carelessness at the forge leaves the baby with a damaged arm, an injury with consequences to come. Soon, however, Finn's uncle trades the baby to Arthur, who calls her Caroline. In exchange, he gains the right to purchase the land he tenants, a notion that disgusts Arthur's rent collector: "There are Irishmen who still think they can buy back the island one plot at a time." The revolutionaries behind the Rebellion of 1798, which also plays a part in this many-chambered story, will take care of him. Arthur combs the skies every night, seeking an unclaimed world, and is maddened by William Herschel's discovery not only of Uranus ("a cold new world reigning over unthinkable depths") but also of two of its moons. "The man," he rails, "owns half the sky already." Caroline, now his isolated and lonely assistant, observes her increasingly unhinged adoptive father convince himself that a "crafty planet" lies between Mercury and the sun. He stalks it, staring through his telescope at the sun until he is blind. After his death, Caroline continues her own observations, feeling "the quiet excitement of casting her eye into corners of the sky where few have gone before, this gentle trespass and the familiar yearning ... to know something more, something new and wondrous and seemingly impossible." Throughout, other characters have emerged, each consumed with a desire to penetrate the unknown. We follow William Herschel and his sister, also named Caroline, an astronomer in her own right. Finn, meanwhile, is enlisted to build a massive telescope for Arthur, and is also secretly devising a mechanical device for Caroline Ainsworth's damaged arm. Filling out the cast of central characters is James Samuels, an English functionary at Dublin Castle and would-be African explorer. The many-stranded story is told from the points of view of these people and proceeds entirely in the present tense, often through their hectic thoughts, giving immediacy to the anxiety and sense of urgency evoked by the century's end, by revolution in France, Napoleon's conquests, rebellion in Ireland, and scientific and technological rivalry in mastering the hitherto invisible and unexplored: "magnetism and electricity and gravity, infinitesimal organisms undetectable, planets and comets and stars as yet unseen, the ghosts and phantoms of things still to be discovered and understood and mapped." The novel's far-flung peregrinations give it a certain shapelessness, but its power lies in its vibrant and arresting imagery, resonant themes and sense of intellectual ferment. In his extraordinary ability to convey his characters' emotions as they take in the universe's immensity, Pipkin captures our own awe and sense of puniness as we look at the skies and the "implacable cartwheeling of worlds slow and indifferent." KATHERINE A. POWERS received, the 2013 Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing from the National Book Critics Circle and is the editor of "Suitable Accommodations: An Autobiographical Story of Family Life: The Letters of J.F. Powers, 1942-1963."
Library Journal Review
For Arthur Ainsworth, the Great Comet of 1744 marked an end and a beginning: the end of his family, killed by smallpox, and the launch of a life spent scouring the heavens in search of celestial bodies to name after his loved ones, and searching for connections. Oddly enough, it is the distant stars that bring him a "family": an orphaned girl, both daughter and assistant, who carries on his work; a talented blacksmith who builds his telescope; and even his rival -William Herschel, who discovered and named the planet that Ainsworth sought for his own memorializing. Pipkin's (Woodsburner) exquisitely crafted historical novel offers readers many things: a sensitive recounting of Ireland's travails as its impoverished populace struggles to feed and clothe itself, a riveting description of the passion of discovery in the late 18th century, and a brilliant examination of such age-old themes as the longing for permanence and belonging. VERDICT A pleasurable read for lovers of historical fiction and for those longing for reassurance that following one's passion does indeed lead to healing and belonging.--Cynthia Johnson, formerly with Cary Memorial Lib., Lexington, MA © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.