Fighting Gravity

Sparks fly when a nineteen-year-old Jewish college student falls for a hard-drinking, twice divorced, fortysomething Catholic man, in a novel that chronicles the ever-evolving relationship of a seemingly mismatched couple.

Peggy Rambach's powerful second novel, Fighting Gravity (after When the Animals Leave), is based on her marriage to novelist Andre Dubus. At 19, Ellie Rifkin meets and falls in love with volatile 41-year-old Gerard Babineau, a hard-drinking writer recently separated from his second wife. The narrative alternates between their whirlwind romance and the trauma of a car accident years later that leaves Babineau in a wheelchair. Ellie at times seems like a ghost hovering just outside the story, trying to make sense of her love for the intense, often cruel man who has consumed her life.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Gravity makes the world go round, bringing together such two unlikely entities as Ellie, an optimistic, Jewish, 19-year-old New England college student, and Babineau, an earthy, Catholic, Louisianian, ex-marine professor 22 years her senior. But gravity is also what makes a collision-propelled body smash into the ground and collapses a marriage, chilling events that punctuate Rambach's meticulous and wrenching tale of love and the will to survive. Ellie seems sweet and uncomplicated when she meets Babineau, a man full of "danger and dazzle" with four children and two ex-wives, but she is every bit as tough as he is, and their courtship, marriage, and embarkation on mutual parenthood are full of surprise and revelation--as is the anguished aftermath of Babineau's Good Samaritan act gone wrong on a dark highway. This streamlined and potent novel would be affecting even if it wasn't based on Rambach's marriage to the late, gifted, wheelchair-bound, and wild-hearted writer Andre Dubus. Add that to its composition, and this is indeed a tragic and haunting tale. Donna Seaman
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What is it about New England? The cold winters, a profusion of colleges, hoary old traditions, the veneration of Salinger, something in the water? Once again, a young Jewish coed is seduced by an arrogant older professor who becomes more abusive, bitter, and distant until tragedy hastens the end of their relationship. The professor, naturally, is a neurotic, alcoholic veteran. Although the plot, characters, and settings are quite similar to Terry Farish's A House in Earnest (LJ 4/15/00), also published by Steerforth, its tone is even more intimate. This highly charged story, based on the author's marriage to Andre Dubus, covers a wide emotional spectrum, drawing on her increasing confusion, frustration, and anger without becoming a soap opera or a screed. This book will have particular appeal to Joyce Maynard fans and is recommended for medium to large public and academic libraries. Jim Dwyer, California State Univ., Chico
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.