The Pull of Gravity (review)

Nick Gardner's life is falling apart: his father has become a 395-pound couch potato, his brother hates him, and his best friend from childhood, Scooter, is dying from complications of progeria, a disease that prematurely ages him. Nick himself suffers from high fevers that cause him to hallucinate; during the most recent of these incidents, he climbed a watertower and fell, breaking his leg. His accident, which his father slept through, propels his father to finally take action: he decides to walk the 190 miles to New York City to reclaim his life and health. While he's gone, new girl Jaycee, another friend of Scooter's, convinces Nick that they need to find Scooter's long-gone father and take him a letter from Scooter, as well as return the signed first edition of Of Mice and Men that he left Scooter when he took off. Over the course of the next several weeks, Scooter dies, and Jaycee and Nick take a bus to Albany, where they discover the mystery of Scooter's father but also an unsettling truth about Scooter's mother and Nick's father. There's a lot going on here, and the elements are patched together purposively, intimating that these are the things you need to grow up: the death of a friend, the knowledge that your parents are flawed, a road trip, and a first kiss. Scooter is ennobled by his condition to almost angelic status, especially when a posthumous letter reveals that he orchestrated Nick and Jaycee's whole adventure because he thought they would be perfect together; oddly, other than Nick's status as a hormonal fourteen-year-old with nothing better to do, there's no other indication that he is an adequate match for the quirky Jaycee, who compares him to Lennie from Of Mice and Men—hardly the basis for attraction. The connection to Steinbeck is tenuous at best, with the book more focused on the Burns poem from which Steinbeck's title originated; better use is made of quotations from Yoda, Scooter's hero. Still, the very sentimentalism of the situation, the quest nature of the plot, and the quirkiness of the characters will appeal to many young readers.