Gravity is the Thing

Gravity Is the Thing by Jaclyn Moriarty

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Everything is Connected.

Abigail Sorenson lost her brother under mysterious circumstances 20 years ago. He disappeared, and in spite of everyone’s best efforts, he never turned up.

Meanwhile, right about this time, Abigail began receiving letters in the mail offering random unrelated advice. A chapter a week from something called “The Guidebook,” a self-help manual from an unknown source. Chapters, out of order and nonsensical, nonetheless, Abigail finds herself following the advice. The Guidebook becomes a stabilizing force in a chaotic life.

Cut to: many years later, when she is offered an invitation to a retreat to discover the secret of the mysterious Guidebook. If Everything is Connected, maybe this is just what she needs to solve a twenty year old mystery of the disappearance of her brother.

This book is delightful. That is the word that kept running through my head as I read this 1st adult novel from young adult Australian author Jaclyn Moriarty. “Gravity” jumps around in Abby’s life and tells the tale of her exes and her family and her Happiness Café, a business that she runs in the here and now in the novel. And all throughout the phases of her life, the Guidebook has offered its unrelated take on everything.

I won’t spoil anything. I will say there is a make or break moment about a third of the way in, which you can choose to accept (I urge you to accept) or it may cause you to put the book down in a sense of absurdity. For it is an absurd book that is all the better for its absurdity. It is also a heartfelt guidebook of its own, peeling back Abby’s life and showing how we look for cause and effect and ascribe meaning to things as a way to keep ourselves going. That sometimes following a program…any kind of program…is how people cope.

It is bendy and twisty and fairly unpredictable with a satisfying resolution and it was a total joy to read. I loved it all. Easily the best book I’ve read this year.





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