Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Gravity Is the Thing: A Novel
    Gravity Is the Thing: A Novel
    Gravity Is the Thing: A Novel
    Audiobook12 hours

    Gravity Is the Thing: A Novel

    Written by Jaclyn Moriarty

    Narrated by Aimee Horne

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    The adult debut from bestselling, award-winning young adult author Jaclyn Moriarty—a frequently hilarious, brilliantly observed novel in the spirit of Maria Semple, Rainbow Rowell, and Gail Honeyman—that follows a single mother’s heartfelt search for greater truths about the universe, her family and herself.

    Twenty years ago, Abigail Sorenson’s brother Robert went missing one day before her sixteenth birthday, never to be seen again. That same year, she began receiving scattered chapters in the mail of a self-help manual, the Guidebook, whose anonymous author promised to make her life soar to heights beyond her wildest dreams.

    The Guidebook’s missives have remained a constant in Abi’s life—a befuddling yet oddly comforting voice through her family’s grief over her brother’s disappearance, a move across continents, the devastating dissolution of her marriage, and the new beginning as a single mother and café owner in Sydney.

    Now, two decades after receiving those first pages, Abi is invited to an all-expenses paid weekend retreat to learn “the truth” about the Guidebook. It’s an opportunity too intriguing to refuse. If Everything is Connected, then surely the twin mysteries of the Guidebook and a missing brother must be linked?

    What follows is completely the opposite of what Abi expected––but it will lead her on a journey of discovery that will change her life––and enchant listeners. Gravity Is the Thing is a smart, unusual, wickedly funny novel about the search for happiness that will break your heart into a million pieces and put it back together, bigger and better than before.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateJul 23, 2019
    ISBN9780062931191
    Author

    Jaclyn Moriarty

    Jaclyn Moriarty grew up in Sydney, lived in the US, the UK and Canada, and now lives in Sydney again. She is the prize-winning, best-selling author of the Ashbury-Brookfield books (including Feeling Sorry for Celia and Finding Cassie Crazy) and the Colours of Madeleine trilogy (A Corner of White, The Cracks in the Kingdom and A Tangle of Gold).  Visit jaclynmoriarty.com to find out more.

    More audiobooks from Jaclyn Moriarty

    Related to Gravity Is the Thing

    Related audiobooks

    Family Life For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    Related categories

    Reviews for Gravity Is the Thing

    4/5

    60 ratings5 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 2/5
      DNF (maybe) 40%

      I wanted to like this book, the blurb sounded good and it had mixed reviews, which means I have to actually read/listen to find out for myself. But yeah, no. The narrator goes to a seminar and (view spoiler). Also, she spends time thinking about her missing brother, which is great, but I won't ever know if she found him or did anything about it since I didn't finish.
      Also the writing seems a little messy.

      I listened to the audio, at least the narration was okay.
    • 4/5
      This grew on me and by the end, I loved it. For over twenty years, Abigail Sorenson has been sent chapters of a mysterious self-help book. She’s invited to attend a retreat, meet others who also received The Guidebook and then be part of an on-going group learning more about it.Gravity Is The Thing alternates between this and Abigail’s reflections about significant relationships/things in her life -- particularly her brother, her marriage, and being the single mother of a preschooler. At times I found this quite uncomfortable, but I also felt like it needed to be, because some of the things Abigail’s dealing with are difficult, like grief, betrayal, and raising a child alone. The way these parts of the story are drawn together -- and watching Abigail make sense of her life -- was unexpectedly satisfying and compelling. I also liked some of the whimsical parts, and how Maybe The Real Treasure Was the Friends We Made Along the Way. (Probably I’d have liked it even more if there had been more about the friends but, anyway.)I enjoyed its Australian setting and the audiobook’s Aussie narrator, for both variety and familiarity. Also, early on, I made a prediction about how something would end up and I was positively gleeful that my intuition was correct. “I was thinking something,” Nicole said, pressing her forehead to the glass. “Wilbur, when you say flight waves, are you just thinking of thermals?” “There’s a sale on thermals at Aldi this weekend,” Frangipani said.
    • 2/5
      Publisher’s synopsis.Twenty years ago, Abigail Sorenson's brother Robert went missing one day before her sixteenth birthday, never to be seen again. That same year, she began receiving scattered chapters in the mail from a mysterious guidebook, whose anonymous authors promised to make her life soar to heights beyond her wildest dreams.These missives have remained a constant in Abi's life - a befuddling yet oddly comforting voice through her family's grief over her brother's disappearance, a move across continents, the devastating dissolution of her marriage, and the new beginning as a single mother and café owner in Sydney.Now, two decades after receiving those first pages, Abi is invited to learn 'the truth' about the book. It's an opportunity too intriguing to refuse - she believes its absurdity and her brother's disappearance must be connected. What follows is an entirely unexpected journey of discovery that will change Abi's life - and enchant readers.I haven’t read any of this author’s YA novels but I’m aware that this is the second one she has written for adults (the first being her 2004 “fairy tale for adults”, I Have a Bed Made of Buttermilk Pancakes) and, having read many positive reviews of it, I was looking forward to reading it. However, I have to admit that I struggled with it right from the start because I found it impossible to believe that the narrative voice was convincing as that of a thirty-six-year-old woman! Abi came across as very much younger and I found myself thinking that, for all its vaguely philosophical musings, this is probably a story which would possibly appeal more to a much younger readership. I recognise that it does include some important themes, such as unresolved loss, grief, fractured relationships, single-parenthood, the search for love and the need to make sense of events which appear to make no sense, but I never felt there was enough of a satisfying psychological depth to the author’s exploration of these themes. I found it equally difficult to ever feel entirely engaged with either the characters or the plot.I think the story’s potential could perhaps have been achieved had it been at least two hundred pages shorter but, at the length it was, there were just too many moments when I found myself becoming both irritated and bored by what felt like some rather simplistic reflections on “the meaning of life” … although I did enjoy some of the author’s cutting observations about the self-help “industry”! There were also moments when I enjoyed Abi’s internal “musings”, some of which were hilarious. With thanks to Readers First and the publisher for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review – I’m just sorry it couldn’t have been a more positive one!
    • 3/5
      Gravity Is The Thing is Jaclyn Moriarty's first today into adult fiction. Possibly the YA category is more forgiving of annoying, self-absorbed characters, but I found myself puzzled as to why this book received such favorable advanced publicity. Several thin story lines were jumbled together (missing brother, perfect/lousy husband, self-help literature, spoiled/cute child). I kept reading, hoping these lines would successfully merge together, but came away unsatisfied. However, I can imagine this as another made-for-television movie.
    • 3/5
      Abigail (“Abi”) Sorensen was just turning 16 when her beloved brother Robert, recently diagnosed with M.S., disappeared. She and her parents were devastated, and it changed the course of their lives. The parents eventually got divorced and Abi became obsessed with loss and the pursuit of some kind of closure, going down every self-help road she could find. One of the most enduring was a mysterious book she had been receiving chapter by chapter continuously since that fateful year called “The Guidebook.”When the story opens Abi is now 35 with a four-year-old son named Oscar. She manages the “Happiness Cafe” in Sydney, Australia and has just accepted an offer for an all-expenses-paid trip for a weekend retreat “Where you will Learn the Truth about The Guidebook.” She joined twenty-six others for activities led by a man named Wilbur, who encouraged them to “let go” and free their minds, with the ultimate goal of flying - whether metaphorical or actual was unclear to the participants. At the conclusion of the weekend, they were invited to continue the “lessons” at Wilbur’s apartment in Sydney on a weekly basis.As the story goes back and forth in time, we read, interspersed throughout, the chapters that were sent to the recipients over the years, as well as excerpts from the "yearly thoughts" they were encouraged to send in return to the authors of "The Guidebook." In the present, we accompany Abi in her ceaseless efforts, via self-help books, to find answers in her life, or even happiness.At one point Abi says:“The Guidebook was absurdity: inexplicable, inscrutable; and so was my brother being gone. Hence, the two must be connected. That is why I never cancelled my subscription: a part of me never stopped believing that, eventually, the one mystery would unravel the other.”I would certainly agree about her assessment of “The Guidebook” and in fact, I found the content of the Guidebook chapters to be annoying as well as absurd. Abi was also very annoying, but she had psychological “issues” that explained her. She blamed herself for Robert’s disappearance, as well as for the disappearance of others in her life - boyfriends, friends, a husband . . . but her self-obsession was grating. Her son Oscar was a horrible kid with anger management issues to which she seemed oblivious. In fact, all the characters, including Wilbur, had “issues” which explained in part why the adults continued to participate in the weekly sessions.I didn’t really like the book at all until the end, when some explanations were provided and some of the protagonists found a way to be rid of their constraints at last. But it didn’t make reading it feel worthwhile to me. I thought there was too much in the book that was extraneous to the main story and could have been eliminated, and too much in the main story that was absurd and irritating.