The Specific Gravity of Grief

by Jay Lake

This is the trade paperback version of Jay Lake's novelette. The story, although fiction, parallels Jay Lake's own battle with cancer. Fifty percent of proceeds will be donated to the Clayton Memorial Medial Fund.

Genres: Fiction

100 pages, Hardcover

First published June 28, 2010

About the author

Jay Lake lived in Portland, Oregon, where he worked on multiple writing and editing projects. His 2007 book Mainspring received a starred review in Booklist. His short fiction appeared regularly in literary and genre markets worldwide. Jay won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, Endeavour Award, and was a multiple nominee for the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards.

Reviews

[Anthony]

I'll say it right out: I've got signed and numbered copy #118 out of 250 issued by Fairwood Press, and these slim 100 pages are worth every bit of that cover price. I've read the book twice in the two days since I received it in the mail. I suspect that in a few days I will read it again, and I know that I will pass my copy around to friends and family.

Jay Lake and I share something in common: colon cancer. In a family riddled with various cancers, my diagnosis in 2005 should not have been a surprise and yet it was. I got lucky: it was detected early, the surgery went well, and the chemo that followed was nowhere near as debilitating as I witnessed my mother and friends experience. About a year ago, I became aware of Jay Lake's blog, wherein he was actively discussing his own cancer surgery, treatments, ups and downs, and recurrences. Jay has been hit much harder with the disease than I was, and despite (or perhaps to spite) the cancer he has kept his writing career going and is a devoted father and partner and friend. He's an inspiration.

So I'm glad to finally read Jay's short novel about a different Jay Lake, a Jay Lake ne whose adult life is beaten up with cancer not only personal but familial. This Jay's life takes a different course thanks to the disease, a more brutal course, and our Jay Lake explores that course of anger, defeat, loneliness, sickness, repetition, and yes, grief. "Everything has a weight, a value, a specific gravity. Hope. Love. Ambition. Grief. Everything," Lake tells us about a quarter of the way into the book. But we've already figured that out as we read the fictional Jay Lake's adult life-story. At some point cancer stops being a recurrence and becomes a lifestyle, and for each of us that point is different. We meet the fictional Lake when cancer already has a hold, has become a lifestyle, and in short chapters connected to parts of the body to which the cancer might (or might already have) metastasize(d) we see how the character came to be where he is. And we also get a hint at where he's going and how he's going to get there.

The cliche is that good things come in small packages. Great things come in this one, as the author Lake assembles and disassembles the life of the fictional Lake in such a brief and shining space. The body is a metaphor for life, and cancer is part of the body whether we like it or not. The language is poetic, sometimes feeling sparse and sometimes feeling so dense you wonder how you can lift the words to your eyes. There are moments that might border on "TMI," and there are moments when the reader is left to make the connections him- or her-self. Details are plentiful, but nothing is spoon-fed.

If you are a cancer patient, a cancer survivor, or a caregiver: find a copy of this book. Beg it or borrow it. It is far worth the effort.

[Elizabeth Coleman]

I wonder what this book is like to someone who doesn't know Jay. This book was hardest for me when its reality intersected with my own. I've seen that rusty sweater, I was in that room at Iron Springs. I'm already carrying a lot of emotions of my own to the emotional apocalypse.
It's a semi-autobiographical look at my friend and mentor's struggle with cancer. It's a few parts narrative, a few parts philosophizing. It intellectualizes emotions, and pierces rationality with the cold needle of reality.
There are dramas a hundred times more intricate and emotional than Hamlet playing inside the minds of everyone around you, but you don't get to see them. They're composed of fears and hopes and imaginings of what life could be like. In writing this, Jay is showing you the play running through his head, and all the painful emotions that go with it. Reading it, you just want to hug him and go, "it's all right, it's all right. She's still with you, and your daughter's just fine." But to do that is to discount the reality of the emotions. Maybe, in writing this, Jay is hoping to eject the tumor of fear growing in his psyche. He's turned the mutated child of his fears into a slim, hardbacked novella for friends and strangers alike to carry away.
It's an apocalyptic tale, a worst case scenario, but like any good apocalypse, it leaves sparks of hope behind to burn in the post-apocalyptic wasteland. And everyone loves a good post-apocalypse, don't they?

[Joy]

Poignant, hopeful.