Customer Reviews

A Change of Gravity

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The dialog in George Higgins' "A Change of Gravity" is the intoxicating element that pulls you through the every day happenings of Ambrose Merrion. The nuances of class were right on. The thought processes of his car dealing father and Danny Hilliard, explaining the structure of power, are truly insightful. Getting past the seemingly trite opening (black, female judge with a basketball playing parent) was the hard part. Higgins' ability to portray the language patterns here, as he did in "Friends of Eddie Coyle", is obscenely lyrical, the beauty of the book. These are real guys talking, exposing the underbelly structure of power. They courted it, they dominated it, it layed them down. They played the game so very well and they were destined to lose. I was enthralled, and took notes. Thank you, Amby and Danny.

George V. Higgins has done it -- captured the life and mores of middle-level politicos in an enthralling, hard-to-put-down book. This _is_ real life writ large ... no plot to speak of, but riveting neverthless. If art holds a mirror up to life, Change of Gravity is polished, silver-backed glass without a flaw..

Beyond the characters, who are even more irresistible than we have come to expect from Higgins, he captures a place, class, times, and moral ambiguities among shifting standards. The dialog is, of course, superb; and, in this book, carries all the burden which Higgins places on it. This is a wonderful novel by any measure.

It's weird to read such raving reviews about a book that I personally hated. As an aspiring writer I wanted to read Higgins because of his use of dialogue. And I do have to say, the book makes excellent use of the dialogue. But there's no story. I can really sit back and admire the craft and all, but all that fancy use of dialogue and back-story is supposed to take us somewhere interesting, if not exciting.

Sure, we got to explore the characters of a couple of men as they developed over 35 years, but they were 35 fairly boring years. Despite the fact that they were in politics but they really lead rather banal lives. Jesus, my life was more interesting that any of the characters in this book!

But, as Stephen King says in his book "On Writing" it's all about the story, and that is what is sadly absent here. There is no story. The entire novel is one huge back-story that ultimately leads us nowhere. Sure, we get interesting characters who say some funny times, but interesting character with great dialogue is not a story. To the one person who wrote a review who said he couldn't put it down I was wondering if that was because he actually never picked it up. The book sucks. I promised myself that I would get through it, but the book punished that decision every single chapter as I was presented with more and more of two people that I didn't particularly care about opining about life.