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. Andrew Sean Greer's remarkable and sweeping first novel is an exploration of chances taken and lost, of love found and broken, and of time's subtle gravitational pull on the lives of everyday and extraordinary people.

"[Greer's] carefully crafted sentences can ring with ethereal beauty, and his metaphors are vivid and creative....Greer is a writer to watch; he has a literary style that's worth wrapping around his sensitive perspective on the world." The Boston Globe

"Greer pinpoints the 'tiny hidden madnesses in ordinary people' with unerring accuracy, and, in prose littered with sparks, makes palpable the longing for the celestial." The New Yorker

"One of the wisest, most compassionate novels about smart people's emotional lives to come around in years." San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

"The characters are not easily likable, and the novel suffers because of it; but otherwise this is a deep, moving story. The uncommon beauty and honesty of the narrator's voice conveys a startling and profound perspective on life that the reader will not soon forget." Gavin Quinn, Booklist

Andrew Sean Greer was born in 1970 in Washington, DC, the son of two scientists. He studied writing with Robert Coover and Edmund White at Brown University, where he was the Commencement Speaker at his own graduation in 1992. After years in New York working as a chauffeur, theater tech, television extra and unsuccesful writer, he moved to Missoula, MT, where he received his MFA from the University of Montana. He then moved to Seattle, and two years later to San Francisco. He began to publish in magazines such as Esquire, The Paris Review and Story before releasing a collection of his stories, How It Was for Me. His first novel, The Path of Minor Planets, was published to much acclaim in October of 2001, and his second book, The Confessions of Max Tivoli, came out in February 2004 with FSG. Upon publication, John Updike compared his work to Proust and Nabokov in The New Yorker; in the Netherlands, reviewers have mentioned Kafka and Gogol; a dozen other translations are forthcoming. He lives in San Francisco. His identical twin brother, Michael Greer, is also a writer.