What do you think?
Harris and Bostock #2
The Night of the Comet
Best friends Harris and Bostock are back, and now Bostock is in love with Harris's sister Mary. While Harris schemes to make Mary fall in love with Bostock, the whole town is caught up in a frenzy of confusing affairs of the heart on the night of Pigott's Comet.
- GenresHistorical Fiction
149 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1979
About the author
Leon Garfield
125 books51 followersLeon Garfield FRSL (14 July 1921 – 2 June 1996) was a British writer of fiction. He is best known for children's historical novels, though he also wrote for adults. He wrote more than thirty books and scripted Shakespeare: The Animated Tales for television.
Garfield attended Brighton Grammar School (1932-1938) and went on to study art at Regent Street Polytechnic, but his studies were interrupted first by lack of funds for fees, then by the outbreak of World War II. He married Lena Leah Davies in April, 1941, at Golders Green Synagogue but they separated after only a few months. For his service in the war he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps. While posted in Belgium he met Vivien Alcock, then an ambulance driver, who would go on to become his second wife (in 1948) and a well-known children's author. She would also greatly influence Garfield's writing, giving him suggestions for his writing, including the original idea for Smith. After the war Garfield worked as a biochemical laboratory technician at the Whittington Hospital in Islington, writing in his spare time until the 1960s, when he was successful enough to write full-time. In 1964, the couple adopted a baby girl, called Jane after Jane Austen, a favourite writer of both parents.
Garfield wrote his first book, the pirate novel Jack Holborn, for adult readers but a Constable & Co. editor saw its potential as a children's novel and persuaded him to adapt it for a younger audience. In that form it was published by Constable in 1964. His second book, Devil-in-the-Fog (1966), won the first annual Guardian Prize and was serialised for television, as were several later works (below). Devil was the first of several historical adventure novels, typically set late in the eighteenth century and featuring a character of humble origins (in this case a boy from a family of traveling actors) pushed into the midst of a threatening intrigue. Another was Smith (1967), with the eponymous hero a young pickpocket accepted into a wealthy household; it won the Phoenix Award in 1987. Yet another was Black Jack (1968), in which a young apprentice is forced by accident and his conscience to accompany a murderous criminal.
In 1970, Garfield's work started to move in new directions with The God Beneath the Sea, a re-telling of numerous Greek myths in one narrative, written by Garfield and Edward Blishen and illustrated by Charles Keeping. It won the annual Carnegie Medal for British children's books. Garfield, Blishen, and Keeping collaborated again on a sequel, The Golden Shadow (1973). The Drummer Boy (1970) was another adventure story, but concerned more with a central moral problem, and apparently aimed at somewhat older readers, a trend continued in The Prisoners of September (1975) republished in 1989 by Lions Tracks, under the title Revolution!, The Pleasure Garden (1976) and The Confidence Man (1978). The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris (1972) was a black comedy in which two boys decide to test the plausibility of Romulus and Remus using one of the boys' baby sister. Most notable at the time was a series of linked long short stories about apprentices, published separately between 1976 and 1978, and then as a collection, The Apprentices. The more adult themed books of the mid-1970s met with a mixed reception and Garfield returned to the model of his earlier books with John Diamond, which won a Whitbread Award in 1980, and The December Rose (1986). In 1980 he also wrote an ending for The Mystery of Edwin Drood, unfinished at the 1870 death of Dickens, an author who had been a major influence on Garfield's own style.
He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1985. On 2 June 1996 he died of cancer at the Whittington Hospital, where he had once worked.
Garfield attended Brighton Grammar School (1932-1938) and went on to study art at Regent Street Polytechnic, but his studies were interrupted first by lack of funds for fees, then by the outbreak of World War II. He married Lena Leah Davies in April, 1941, at Golders Green Synagogue but they separated after only a few months. For his service in the war he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps. While posted in Belgium he met Vivien Alcock, then an ambulance driver, who would go on to become his second wife (in 1948) and a well-known children's author. She would also greatly influence Garfield's writing, giving him suggestions for his writing, including the original idea for Smith. After the war Garfield worked as a biochemical laboratory technician at the Whittington Hospital in Islington, writing in his spare time until the 1960s, when he was successful enough to write full-time. In 1964, the couple adopted a baby girl, called Jane after Jane Austen, a favourite writer of both parents.
Garfield wrote his first book, the pirate novel Jack Holborn, for adult readers but a Constable & Co. editor saw its potential as a children's novel and persuaded him to adapt it for a younger audience. In that form it was published by Constable in 1964. His second book, Devil-in-the-Fog (1966), won the first annual Guardian Prize and was serialised for television, as were several later works (below). Devil was the first of several historical adventure novels, typically set late in the eighteenth century and featuring a character of humble origins (in this case a boy from a family of traveling actors) pushed into the midst of a threatening intrigue. Another was Smith (1967), with the eponymous hero a young pickpocket accepted into a wealthy household; it won the Phoenix Award in 1987. Yet another was Black Jack (1968), in which a young apprentice is forced by accident and his conscience to accompany a murderous criminal.
In 1970, Garfield's work started to move in new directions with The God Beneath the Sea, a re-telling of numerous Greek myths in one narrative, written by Garfield and Edward Blishen and illustrated by Charles Keeping. It won the annual Carnegie Medal for British children's books. Garfield, Blishen, and Keeping collaborated again on a sequel, The Golden Shadow (1973). The Drummer Boy (1970) was another adventure story, but concerned more with a central moral problem, and apparently aimed at somewhat older readers, a trend continued in The Prisoners of September (1975) republished in 1989 by Lions Tracks, under the title Revolution!, The Pleasure Garden (1976) and The Confidence Man (1978). The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris (1972) was a black comedy in which two boys decide to test the plausibility of Romulus and Remus using one of the boys' baby sister. Most notable at the time was a series of linked long short stories about apprentices, published separately between 1976 and 1978, and then as a collection, The Apprentices. The more adult themed books of the mid-1970s met with a mixed reception and Garfield returned to the model of his earlier books with John Diamond, which won a Whitbread Award in 1980, and The December Rose (1986). In 1980 he also wrote an ending for The Mystery of Edwin Drood, unfinished at the 1870 death of Dickens, an author who had been a major influence on Garfield's own style.
He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1985. On 2 June 1996 he died of cancer at the Whittington Hospital, where he had once worked.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
February 20, 2017
Like A Midsummer Night's Dream, cupids arrows go astray in this wacky historical comedy.
Best friends Harris and Bostock connive to make Bostock's lovesick dreams come true in exchange for a "borrowed" item of his father's. But the trouble snowballs with several cases of mistaken identity, secret rendezvous, scientifically inaccurate mating rituals, and multiple girls named Mary. Add in a jealous best friend, a music teacher, a young fish-monger, a magistrate, and a portentous comet, and you have the makings of romantic disaster.
Leon Garfield's complex plot and witty repartee have rightly been compared to Dickens's own. The caricatures are hilarious, the word-play divine. The denouement rattles to a tidy conclusion worthy of the Bard.
This book is a companion story The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris.
Best friends Harris and Bostock connive to make Bostock's lovesick dreams come true in exchange for a "borrowed" item of his father's. But the trouble snowballs with several cases of mistaken identity, secret rendezvous, scientifically inaccurate mating rituals, and multiple girls named Mary. Add in a jealous best friend, a music teacher, a young fish-monger, a magistrate, and a portentous comet, and you have the makings of romantic disaster.
Leon Garfield's complex plot and witty repartee have rightly been compared to Dickens's own. The caricatures are hilarious, the word-play divine. The denouement rattles to a tidy conclusion worthy of the Bard.
This book is a companion story The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris.
December 11, 2010
I giggled and giggled through this book. What a completely ridiculous mess of mistaken identity and teenage hormones! Hee hee.
September 11, 2018
It’s interesting that although Bostock and Harris instigate the farce in each novel, they don’t appear much in it.
This is even lighter-hearted than ‘The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris’. Where that book had frequent (if comically inflated) musings on guilt and dark secrets, ‘The Night of the Comet’ is pure romantic farce. There are no dark secrets (or even guessed-at dark secrets) but instead has people talking at crossed purposes.
Each chapter is short and sparky, and each causes the plot to take a sharp left turn - enough of these left-turns lead the characters where they should be. It’s fun, would make a very enjoyable stage-play or a great mini-series. It’s a joyful marriage of sharp plotting and sparky writing but as such is quite hard to review, it works well, achieves its purpose and that’s it.
The best character was the Irish glazier, whom love has turned into an angel. He’s been searching England from Liverpool down until being washed up in Brighton in search of his runaway love. She’s there of course, but his fondness for all women, and a few misunderstandings make their renunion a little more shaky then it could be.
A fun slice of provincial eighteenth century romance, a tight farce and probably Garfield’s most airy and fun book.
This is even lighter-hearted than ‘The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris’. Where that book had frequent (if comically inflated) musings on guilt and dark secrets, ‘The Night of the Comet’ is pure romantic farce. There are no dark secrets (or even guessed-at dark secrets) but instead has people talking at crossed purposes.
Each chapter is short and sparky, and each causes the plot to take a sharp left turn - enough of these left-turns lead the characters where they should be. It’s fun, would make a very enjoyable stage-play or a great mini-series. It’s a joyful marriage of sharp plotting and sparky writing but as such is quite hard to review, it works well, achieves its purpose and that’s it.
The best character was the Irish glazier, whom love has turned into an angel. He’s been searching England from Liverpool down until being washed up in Brighton in search of his runaway love. She’s there of course, but his fondness for all women, and a few misunderstandings make their renunion a little more shaky then it could be.
A fun slice of provincial eighteenth century romance, a tight farce and probably Garfield’s most airy and fun book.
May 28, 2017
Bostock is madly in love with his best friend's sister, Mary Harris. So, in exchange for Bostok's father's telescope, Harris promises to help Bosty win the affections of his sister. Meanwhile, Michael Cassidy is in search of his true love, Mary Flatley. What ensues is a funny sequence of misunderstandings that culminates with a celebration for Pigot's Comet.
Charming, lively characters and very funny situations.
Charming, lively characters and very funny situations.
September 10, 2021
This seemed easier to read than the first installment. It was still very good. There are subtle allusions and jokes, but perhaps after having read the first book I was better prepared to anticipate them.
Particularly knowing that the first book was turned into a TV series, I'm surprised that this one wasn't - I think it would be great to see the hilarious comic scenes played out.
Particularly knowing that the first book was turned into a TV series, I'm surprised that this one wasn't - I think it would be great to see the hilarious comic scenes played out.
November 20, 2020
The young scamps are reminiscent of Wodehouse.
Misunderstandings and hijinks all round.
Misunderstandings and hijinks all round.
June 5, 2022
Oh my stars this was great.
[The US edition that Goodreads is using has a very WTF cover. The book is much funnier, sweeter, and peculiar in a completely different way than it would imply.]
[The US edition that Goodreads is using has a very WTF cover. The book is much funnier, sweeter, and peculiar in a completely different way than it would imply.]
April 8, 2016
Bostock and Harris, the sequel to The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris, doesn't quite live up to the standard of the original, but is a thoroughly entertaining read nonetheless. There's another perfectly executed plot, it's fast-moving and contains some wonderful Garfield lines: '..."there's something in the air, O'Rourke!" said Cassidy suddenly with a sniff like a gale going backwards'; 'they were friends and had been through thick and thin together, for which nature seemed to have formed them: Harris being thin and Bostock, thick'. But it is a slighter story, there isn't quite as much of the wonderful character comedy as in the first book, and it lacks the peerless illustrations of Fritz Wegner.
September 8, 2012
I think this must be the US title of 'Bostock and Harris'. Anyway, that's what these four stars are for. A very mirthful read.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews