Percivals Planet, Michael Byers
Percivals Planet, Michael Byers
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Percival's Planet
A Novel

Author: Michael Byers

Narrator: William Dufris

Unabridged: 17 hr 17 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 08/24/2010

Synopsis

In 1928, the boy who will discover Pluto, Clyde Tombaugh, is on the family farm, grinding a lens for his own telescope under the immense Kansas sky. In Flagstaff, Arizona, the staff of Lowell Observatory is about to resume the late Percival Lowell's interrupted search for Planet X. Meanwhile, the immensely rich heir to a chemical fortune has decided to go west to hunt for dinosaurs, and in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the most beautiful girl in America is going slowly insane while her ex-heavyweight champion boyfriend stands by helplessly, desperate to do anything to keep her.

Inspired by the true story of Tombaugh and set in the last gin-soaked months of the flapper era, Percival's Planet tells the story of the intertwining lives of half a dozen dreamers, schemers, and madmen. Following Tombaugh's unlikely path from son of a farmer to discoverer of a planet, the novel touches on insanity, mathematics, music, astrophysics, boxing, dinosaur hunting, shipwrecks—and what happens when the greatest romance of your life is also the source of your life's greatest sorrow.

About Michael Byers

Michael Byers is the author of the story collection The Coast of Good Intentions, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the acclaimed novel Long for This World, winner of the First Novel Award from Virginia Commonwealth University. Both were New York Times Notable Books. A former Stegner Fellow and Whiting Award winner, Michael teaches at the University of Michigan.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Tim on January 25, 2012

Searching for the ninth planet was no picnic. The mind-numbing drudgery of making long-exposure photographic plates of the stars, of the eye strain induced by meticulous examination of thousands of pin-pricks of light, day after day — how could you make an exciting novel out of this? Well, you can't......more

Goodreads review by Jake on June 26, 2016

The prose of this novel arrives like a well-cooked steak, a whole steak dinner actually. No one taste or aroma dominates, which is not to say the meal is uneventful. Yet the food is incredibly satisfying, and at some point you realize the chef has carefully chosen each ingredient and maintained rema......more

Goodreads review by David on September 05, 2010

A pretty light weight, average, uninspiring narrative for the bourgeoisie faux intellectuals....not a waste of time...a nice, light, unperceptive read. Good summer fare ... for the beach or summer house ... but no weight...no gravitas.......more

Goodreads review by Makayla on July 16, 2023

Byers is an expert at research. Unfortunately, he just didn't distill it quite enough. I found myself skimming over pages because many of them were just in-depth descriptions of twentieth-century and astronomical details that I couldn't bring myself to be interested in.......more

Goodreads review by Ron on November 26, 2013

It's nice to see Pluto getting some love. You might remember that after years of nasty rumors, the International Astronomical Union kicked Pluto out of the planet club in 2006. And then came those mocking novelty T-shirts: "It's okay, Pluto. I'm not a planet either." We still don't know much about t......more

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