What is George Bishop reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: George Bishop, author of The Night of the Comet.

His entry begins:

Instead of describing what I’m reading now, I thought it might be more interesting to look at what I was reading while I was writing my latest novel, The Night of the Comet.

During the thick of working on Comet, I read Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace for the first time. It might not be all that evident, but Tolstoy’s novel had a profound impact on the eventual tone and even the shape of my book. Going into Comet, I remember wanting to write something smart, edgy, modern, ironic—the kind of literary fiction that seems to attract attention and praise these days. But Tolstoy’s humanism, his calm, patient, sympathetic voice, reformed me, and I began to...[read on]

About the book, from the publisher:

From the acclaimed author of Letter to My Daughter comes an engrossing coming-of-age tale that deftly conveys the hopes and heartaches of adolescence and the unfulfilled dreams that divide a family, played out against the backdrop of a small southern town in 1973.

For his fourteenth birthday, Alan Broussard, Jr., receives a telescope from his father, a science teacher at the local high school who’s eagerly awaiting what he promises will be the astronomical event of the century: the coming of Comet Kohoutek. For Alan Broussard, Sr.—frustrated in his job, remote from his family—the comet is a connection to his past and a bridge to his son, with whom he’s eager to share his love for the stars.

But the only heavenly body Junior has any interest in is his captivating new neighbor and classmate, Gabriella Martello, whose bedroom sits within eyeshot of his telescope’s lens. Meanwhile, his mother, Lydia, sees the comet—and her husband’s obsession with it—as one more thing that keeps her from the bigger, brighter life she once imagined for herself far from the swampy environs of Terrebonne, Louisiana. With Kohoutek drawing ever closer, the family begins to crumble under the weight of expectations, until a startling turn of events will leave both father and son much less certain about the laws that govern their universe.

Illuminating and unforgettable, The Night of the Comet is a novel about the perils of growing up, the longing for connection, and the idea that love and redemption can be found among the stars.

Learn more about the book and author at George Bishop's website.

Writers Read: George Bishop.

--Marshal Zeringue