The Path of Minor Planets

by Andrew Sean Greer

Book Overview

In 1965, on a small island in the South Pacific, a group of astronomers gather to witness the passing of a comet, but when a young boy dies during a meteor shower, the lives of the scientists and their loved ones change in subtle yet profound ways. Denise struggles for respect in her professional life, married Eli becomes increasingly attracted to Denise and her quixotic mind, and young Lydia attempts to escape the scientists' long-casting shadows...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312306059
• ISBN13: 9780312306052
• Release Date: October 2002
• Publisher: St. Martins Press-3PL
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.62 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

What a gorgeous book!

I absolutely loved this book. It was such an ambitious endeavour to capture this story over such a span of years. The writing is phenomonal. I'm recommending it to everyone I know.

What a find

I picked this book up because I live in Bay Area and I was interested in reading a Bay Area author. This book is truly a find. The characters are fully realized and the writing is quite beautiful. I have to admit, I did find the first section (the first reunion of the comet) to be a little hard to get into, but I plowed forward, and now I am entirely wrapped up in the narrative. There are lines in this that sparkle--the kind you write down to remember long after you have put down the book. Further, the way time works in this novel is quite astonishing--you believe you're on this linear path where you're marching through the years. However, the narrative keeps circling around these moments. While on some levels this isn't Virginia Woolf (and I am also reading MRS DALLOWAY at the same time), I do find that both Greer and Woolf are interested in the "moment" and the ways in which a moment can resonate but not actually change a life--these moments are not Joycian epiphanies that become public acknowledgments of change. Instead these are touchstones in our lives that we return to again and again and ponder. A great book.

Five Stars and Two Comets

This novel is a remarkable find. Beautifully written, with many highly individualized characters, described with sharp and subtle insight. They interact through a cyclical plot that documents the effects of time on ambition (declining)and compassion (increasing). Never predictable, it is always intelligent and profoundly sympathetic to the human condition. The story moves with Comet Swift, from its discovery through two orbits (24 years),with periodic reunions at aphelion and perihelion. The second comet is discovered along the way by the protagonists, the reluctant lovers whose sad and joyous affair is the backbone of the narrative. One of the best I've read in recent years.

Reader's Delight

"The Path of Minor Planets" is a reader's delight. Complex. Character-driven. Agile. Beautiful. It's a magnificent, mature work, amazing for a first novelist.Written in what critics now like to call "psycho-narrative," Greer's book displays a third-person omniscient narrative that bores into its characters heads. It's a risky style: after all, Greer has to populate his characters with enough detail and freshness so that they feel real. And that he does it, not through action or scene or dialog, but for the most part through the subtler, richer stuff of the human brain and its wandering eye. Like "The Waves," "Path..." brings us about as close to our essential humanity as a book can."Path..." ostensibly is about a group of astronomers who meet once every six years to celebrate a minor comet discovered by their own academic star, Professor Swift. Their first meeting to witness the comet's passing from a lightless and distant Pacific isle is interrupted by an accident involving the death of a child. Subsequent chapters track characters who were present at the scene through their lives, failed marriages, and stormy careers.But "Path..." reveals much more. "Path..." shows us the effect of inhabiting different heads, of the space separating human objects in their orbits around one another, of the physical and emotional laws tying us together.It's unfortunate that Greer's book has thus far been under-appreciated. However, with the talent available to the author, I have no doubt as to his future successes.

A Major Book From A Major Novelist

I picked this book up because I'd read the short stories in "How I Got Here" and in Ploughshares and Esquire and was excited to read a full-length novel by the same writer, to see if he could pull it off, I guess, because the stories are so powerful and inventive, which sometimes means the novel is going to be a one-trick sort of deal, but The Path of Minor Stars is even better than the stories, and very "novelistic," by which I guess I mean it is in full command of itself, and pursues a vision that kept me interested until the end: the style, on the sentence level, is remarkable--very clear and direct yet leading one in circles--lulling and narcotizing, meandering through paragraphs--until the rug is pulled out from under you every few pages, in a good way. This book is better than The Corrections, which I read at the same time. It will be a shame if the Franzen book overshadows this more controlled debut. Beautiful book.