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Title: The Movement of Stars
Author: Amy Brill
Genre: Literary/historical fiction
Thingummies: 3.5
Synopsis: A female Quaker astronomer on Nantucket before the Civil War tries to find a comet, falls in love with an African sailor.
Thoughts: Far too much of this book was too convenient; but I’ll hand it to Brill for at least avoiding some of the most obvious endings.
The main character was inspired by a real woman, Maria Mitchell, but it starts with a similar set-up and then departs from there. Nonetheless, Brill has clearly done a great deal of research, and it shows. The Quaker community on Nantucket at this point had been long established but was in the process of morphing into something else, and the inherent tensions of the old and new communities make for fertile ground for the novel. There are the kind of details that make a novel come alive, pulling you into the setting so that it feels real.
I do think a number of the events feel a little too pat. For all that everything is set against the main character as a female astronomer, somehow things come out her way a little too easily. The appropriateness of the ending does rescue it a bit for me, though.
Author: Amy Brill
Genre: Literary/historical fiction
Thingummies: 3.5
Synopsis: A female Quaker astronomer on Nantucket before the Civil War tries to find a comet, falls in love with an African sailor.
Thoughts: Far too much of this book was too convenient; but I’ll hand it to Brill for at least avoiding some of the most obvious endings.
The main character was inspired by a real woman, Maria Mitchell, but it starts with a similar set-up and then departs from there. Nonetheless, Brill has clearly done a great deal of research, and it shows. The Quaker community on Nantucket at this point had been long established but was in the process of morphing into something else, and the inherent tensions of the old and new communities make for fertile ground for the novel. There are the kind of details that make a novel come alive, pulling you into the setting so that it feels real.
I do think a number of the events feel a little too pat. For all that everything is set against the main character as a female astronomer, somehow things come out her way a little too easily. The appropriateness of the ending does rescue it a bit for me, though.
