Gravity Is the Thing

3.5 Stars The writing is bitty and disjointed. A sentence truncated before it's meaning is passed on; a chapter of two lines and then one of ten pages. The tale itself wandering backwards and forwards in half finished thoughts and thoughts that are extrapolated far beyond their worth. All this to accurately reflect the thoughts passing through the mind of our narrator, Abigail. Whilst I could understand what the author was trying to achieve here I did find that it began to irritate me, it all felt a little pretentious somehow. Not deliberately so but almost as though the artifice of it all was peeking slyly at you in the blank spaces of the book and there is a lot of blank space; true there are many pages and many words to fill those pages but most of all there is space. The space of what Abigail does not communicate and the strange space of what feels like over-sharing. After reading the first 100 pages in one fell swoop when I picked the book up I found I was disinclined to continue. The whole idea of The Guidebook and then the retreat just didn't hold my interest for any length of time. When Part One was complete I wasn't sure if I really wanted to know what happened next, or if anything did - Spoiler Alert - nothing really happens except lives get lived. It took me 11 days to decide to pick the book back up and finish it. The plus points for me were the narrator's voice, it did seem to accurately represent a genuine person with all the seeming contradictions inherent in having a personality. I just didn't particularly like the person that was telling the story to me. The dichotomy of everything being her fault but that it was all somehow down to the Universe at the same time began to wear thin after a while. I did enjoy her relationship with her 5 year old son but felt that Oscar was never a person in his own right to her, he was merely an extension of Abigail and her experiences. It is cleverly written and I understand the whole "trying to understand why we are here and what we are doing and how can we make it better for ourselves, our loved ones and for the whole of humanity" BUT it just didn't do it for me. There was too much sleight of hand involved here and it was front and centre and not disguised in any way. I prefer a little disingenuity in my writing, enough so that I can take the character's hands and step in to their world for a little while. I didn't hate it and some sections I actively enjoyed, there was just something missing for me. Maybe it is the constant "not good enough" mantra that pervades Abigail's life and her search for that perfect state of being that put the final "meh" in to the book or it could just be this is one to file under "s'okay". It did get an extra 0.5 stars for being daring in the writing style and presentation and allowing bitty and choppy to be used to show internal thoughts. THIS IS AN HONEST AND UNBIASED REVIEW OF A FREE COPY OF THE NOVEL RECEIVED VIA READERS FIRST.