Book 5: Gravity

Gravity

Tess Gerritsen

When I picked up Gravity at my local library, I did so because I had heard about Tess Gerritsen's lawsuit regarding the eponymous movie, which (as far as I know) is more or less about an astronaut getting stranded in space. What I ended up reading is another epidemic novel, which is great (I love the genre), except for the fact that I happened to reach the dramatic climax just after discovering a bedbug in my apartment. Our scare turned out to be more hysterics than anything, thankfully, but it's hard to tell how much of the book's effect on me was due to solid storytelling and how much can be attributed to my alert mental state. Regardless of my personal distractions, however, Gravity remains a compelling thriller.

I often find that books like Gravity are difficult to write about, because I become so intrigued by the fast-paced, engrossing plots that I forget to note details about, say, character development. That, perhaps, is the greatest compliment I could hope to bestow on a writer like Gerritsen: the story is so good that the typical "literary" considerations are, at the very worst, irrelevant as readers barrel through the plot. That is not to say, however, that there aren't a few glaring flaws in the book. The two main characters' shared development arc is laughably predictable, to the point where Gerritsen doesn't even seem to bother to develop the relationship organically. She relies instead on the implicit understanding that this is bound to happen whenever such characters, with such a relationship at the start, are introduced. Their story, with regard to each other, just kind of happens, and it's easy enough to take it for granted; the lazy development doesn't end up hurting the story, but the thought may arise in the reader's mind from time to time. Likewise with a major plot development that would be subtle, except for an early aside that is so unrelated to the plot at hand that its incongruity basically demands that the reader mentally skip ahead and figure out what would otherwise be a twist.

That said, however, these two aspects of the book are the only parts that are particularly predictable, and even that twist ended up unfolding differently than I expected. At many points throughout the book, I thought I had the gist of the thing down, only for an unexpected development to alter my expectations completely and, crucially, keep me reading at a rapid pace. The twists are far from outlandish, yet they stray far enough from standard expectations (which are easy enough to form in the course of reading the book) that the effect is that much more spellbinding. It is obvious that Gerritsen has done her homework with regard to NASA and, to a lesser extent, biology, and the scientific aspects of the book are certainly realistic enough for my (admittedly inexpert) eye. The disease itself is appropriately horrifying and the initial slow burn accelerates at just the right time. Readers know just enough to stay a step ahead of the characters, but little enough that reading on takes on an urgent necessity. Gerritsen is a master at building the kind of tension that makes a book like this really work. Her chosen science fiction tropes, epidemiology and space, make a great (and original!) pairing and the novel remains startlingly realistic and plausible 15 years after its initial publication. Stephen King's blurb for Gravity promises a compelling story, and a captivating thriller is indeed what readers can expect. I often find that I can't quite pin down what it is about a particular book that draws me in and keeps me hooked, and perhaps the best thing I can say about Gravity is that it pulled me in and kept me enthralled from cover to cover.

Grade: A-