This took me a little while to get into, but about fifty pages in I was hooked and read it in two sittings. It's a strange, unsettling book. Thomas is a man who lives a dual life. Mostly a sombre, God fearing man who is a pillar of the congregation of the small, chapel community in the Essex town of Aldleigh but also a man who has a secret life in London, cruising bars and clubbing with men who are now dying of AIDS. He thinks of leaving the chapel but stays when he meets Grace. Grace's mother died in childbirth and Grace's bewildered father turns up with her at the chapel, not knowing what to do. Thomas becomes a surrogate parent and believes that he will be able to help Grace break away from the church as she grows. Grace, like Thomas becomes a strange creature, of the world but not entirely in it. Entwined with their stories is a complicated and deeply satisfying story of astronomy, comets, strange hauntings and mysterious women. My description seems unwieldy but it is a deeply satisfying novel that I enjoyed more and more as I read on.