By Andrew Sean Greer
In 1965, on a small island within the South Pacific, a gaggle of astronomers assemble to witness the passing of a comet, but if a tender boy dies in the course of a meteor bathe, the lives of the scientists and their household swap in sophisticated but profound methods. Denise struggles for recognize in her expert lifestyles, married Eli turns into more and more interested in Denise and her quixotic brain, and younger Lydia makes an attempt to flee the scientists' long-casting shadows. Andrew Sean Greer's awesome and sweeping first novel is an exploration of possibilities taken and misplaced, of affection chanced on and damaged, and of time's refined gravitational pull at the lives of daily and impressive humans.
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Everybody in the outfit did. Even the officers. It was something to do, I guess. ' She moved slightly, rubbing her breast against his upper arm. Kelly settled down to a steady cruising speed of eighteen knots as he worked his way out of Baltimore harbor. The Italian freighter was the only merchant ship in view, and the seas were flat, with one-foot ripples. He kept to the main shipping channel all the way out into the Chesapeake Bay. ' she asked as they turned south. 'Yeah. There's a fridge in the kitchenette - it's in the-' 'I saw it.
It's from one of the places I've been,' he said. ' She understood. ' Kelly nodded matter-of-factly. They were out of the yacht basin now, and he advanced the throttles yet again. ' 'Nothing to talk to a lady about,' Kelly replied, looking around from a half-standing position. ' she asked. It caught him short, but he was getting used to it by now. He'd also found that talking to a girl, no matter what the subject, was something that he needed to do. For the first time he answered her smile with one of his own.
That' was a thunderstorm, a towering mass of cumulonimbus clouds that reached eight or ten miles skyward. 'Looks like we're going to get some rain,' he told her as he took the beer from her hand. ' 'Well, not here, it doesn't,' Kelly replied, looking around the boat to make sure that there was no loose gear. Below, he knew, everything was in its proper place, because it always was, ennui or not. Then he switched on his marine radio. He caught a weather forecast at once, one that ended with the usual warning.