Dancing with Gravity by Anene Tressler
Release date: 2010 / 268 pages
Synopsis (from the back cover): Father Whiting is asleep in his own life. As a priest and head of Pastoral Care at a St. Louis hospital, he’s worried he’s not up to the job and believes his secretary is out to sabotage him…
First Sentence: Father Samuel R. Whiting stood at the foot of the hospital bed.
Review: How to review Dancing with Gravity?! On many levels, this novel felt like an extended short story — a compressed character study, a psychological investigation of the inner life of a priest, a narrative propelled not by plot or action but by personality and interior monologue. I think this would be a great text to discuss in a writing class — and possibly in a book club.
The focus of the novel is on Father Whiting, a middle-aged priest who has just returned from six weeks in Italy — at some sort of conference — and is desperate to escape his “normal” life. He is disconnected from nearly everyone around him, lost in a myopic, self-centered morass of his own thoughts. His focus is usually centered on what others might be thinking about him, what he is thinking about others, etc. Even a momentary encounter with a parking attendant sends Whiting wondering about her appearance, what she might think of him, whether or not she is deliberately trying to irritate him, and so on. When he is supposed to be supporting parents with chronically ill children, he is contemplating how much longer he has to listen to them and how much he wishes he were anywhere else. While I felt compassion for his loneliness, Father Whiting exhausted me.
As his one friend bluntly tells him, “You obsess without insight. You dwell on minutiae without contemplating mystery. Sam, you must hold fast to the mystery that brought you to the priesthood. It is a call to accountability as well as vulnerability. You must rise to your vocation.” When I read this passage, I thought, “Exactly! Well said, Jerry!” And I thought, how fortunate we all would be to have a compassionate, yet honest analysis of what most ails us.
Unfortunately, Father Whiting is too self-involved to listen to his friend — even when that friend is focused on him! So, he attempts to escape his life through imagined love affairs that are ill-conceived, unrequited, and a bit irritating to read about. I hoped this novel would be a hero’s journey of sorts, and it was, but the vast majority of the narrative focuses on his “descent into darkness” and so much of the soul searching seems in vain. So, the eventual spiritual awakening is too long in coming and too ineffectual.
So, did I enjoy this novel? I’m afraid I did not… But I do believe readers interested in a psychological character study may be quite satisfied. For more opinions, please check out the other stops on teh book tour.
Interested in winning a free copy? Drop me a comment below and I will choose a lucky winner by the weekend! Be sure to read other reviews on the tour, too — many were much more positive than my own!
Monday, April 4th: Well Read Wife
Wednesday, April 6th: This That and the Other Thing
Thursday, April 7th: Suko’s Notebook
Monday, April 11th: Raging Bibliomania
Wednesday, April 13th: Rundpinne
Tuesday, April 19th: Simply Stacie
Wednesday, April 20th: Day by Day in Our World
Thursday, April 21st: Overstuffed
Monday, April 25th: Book Club Classics!
Wednesday, April 27th: Musings of an All Purpose Monkey
Thursday, April 28th: Book Addiction
This is SO my type of book. Love the deeply psychological studies, deconstructing them for theme/meaning, etc.
I have read several good reviews of this book, so I think I’d like to give it a try. Thanks for the giveaway.
mtakala1 AT yahoo DOT com
I think I would like to read this. Sounds like the type of book that I would read. Have seen good reviews from others that have read it already.
This one is on my Wish List! Please count me in. Thank you!
nfmgirl AT gmail DOT com
Thank you for a thorough and honest analysis of Dancing With Gravity. Father Whiting does sound exhausting!! Thanks so much for being on the tour.
Father Whiting sounds fascinating! Please enter me.