Force of Gravity - Hardcover

Jones, R.S.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670835919 ISBN 13: 9780670835911

Publisher: Viking Adult, 1991

Synopsis

Records the obsessive details of one man's decline into insanity, in a novel that questions the tenuous hold all of us claim on reality and upon our very lives

About this title

About the Author

R.S. Jones wrote Force of Gravity and Walking on Air, and was a recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award. He was president of the New York chapter of the ACT UP AIDS Awareness Organization, and editor in chief and vice president of HarperCollins Publishers.

From Kirkus Reviews

A disappointing first novel that traces a young man's gradual breakdown following his mother's death: The author's deadpan prose keeps the action at such a distance from the reader that it's difficult to develop any feeling--much less sympathy- -for the protagonist. Emmet, a photographer's assistant, lives with his dog in a dilapidated house in New York. An insomniac and recluse, he subsists on raw carrots and soda water and spends his free hours roaming through the forgotten neighborhoods of the city, obsessively searching for violations of the municipal code (which he has memorized). By the time we learn the real reason behind Emmet's collapse (i.e., witnessing his mother's suicide), he has entered a mental institution, where he makes common cause with Louise, self-destructive and even more disturbed than himself. They escape together, but Louise's instability puts her (seemingly) beyond Emmet's reach and gives an ambiguous tone to the story's end. There are flashbacks and recollections throughout--of Emmet's childhood, his grandfather's death at sea, his mother's widowhood and discontent--but these unfold a lament rather than a mystery, a chronicle whose outline is apparent at the onset and receives shading, though not shape, as the narrative progresses. When Emmet, at the end of the story, assumes the burden of caring for Louise, we are meant to see in this the start of his recovery, but--given the extent of Louise's psychoses--it could just as easily be read as another of his delusions. The author's implication that Emmet has regained his balance is not borne out in his description of Emmet's thoughts and actions, and this weakens what is obviously intended as a hopeful ending. A good story badly told: the narrator is aloof and seemingly too afraid of Emmet's madness to enter very deeply into his world. Unconvincing. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking Adult
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0670835919
• ISBN 13: 9780670835911
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 336