Review: Gravity Let Me Go by Trent Dalton

Trent Dalton's new novel, Gravity Let Me Go, will delight fans of his huge breakout hit, Boy Swallows Universe. Set once again in Dalton's home city of Brisbane, the novel follows crime reporter Noah Cork, who has spent months obsessively writing and thinking about his first book, neglecting his beloved wife and two daughters in the process. 

Now that the book is published Cork is being haunted by his subject, the murdered Tamsin Fellows, and tormented by Tamsin’s killer, still at large, whose cryptic confession forms the basis of his book. Wracked by guilt, teased by doubt, paralysed by fear and blinded by ambition Cork stumbles into the bestseller lists and the public gaze with murderous consequences. 

I must confess, I raced through Gravity Let Me Go, reading it in a couple of sittings. Yes, there is a mystery at the heart of the book - who killed Tamsin Fellows - but Dalton won’t be tied down to a single genre and weaves in and out of his plot with some frankly confessional (and beautiful) riffs on family, marriage, love and then sprinkles a bit of magic over the lot. 

This should mean the book is a discordant mess, but it isn’t. Dalton’s hero, Cork, is a misery guts, his world is falling apart, his wife might or might not be a god, Brisbane itself appears to want to kill him, and his youngest daughter keeps sticking truth pins into him, but the overall effect is somehow upbeat and fun. 

Because, I suspect, the author himself is irrepressibly fun and upbeat. 

Dalton is present in every page of this book. Just as he teased us with autobiographical Easter Eggs in Boy Swallows Universe - his Eli Bell, being part Dalton, part not (I checked to see if he had a missing finger when I met him) - the same goes here. Cork is a writer who finds fame and fortune with a book that centres largely on the crimes and lives of others. Sound familiar? Cork is and isn’t Dalton. And the tease works wonders. This will be this summer’s most talked about books.