Beautiful Gravity

by Martin Hyatt

A 2017 American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book in Literature

A 2017 Lambda Literary Awards finalist

A New York Times Best Book Cover of 2016

One of Electric Literature 's 16 Most Beautiful Book Covers of 2016

Loner Boz Matthews spends his days working at his grandfather's Louisiana highway diner. His only friends are the Pentecostal preacher's anorexic daughter, Meg, and the ghosts of dead movie stars. But when country music outlaws Catty Mills and Kyle Thomas come to town, Boz's world is turned upside-down, leading to an emotionally turbulent and sexually liberating four-way relationship that challenges small-town beliefs and changes lives forever. Beautiful Gravity is a story of broken dreams and haunted Southern nights--a reminder of what it means to be loved and what it means to be set free.

Genres: LGBT, Fiction

224 pages, Paperback

Published October 4, 2016

Reviews

[Laury A. Egan · Rating 5 out of 5]

“They say towns like this don’t exist anymore, but I know that they do because I live here. Noxington is one of those towns where the big stores that sell everything…have yet to be built.” The opening lines of the first chapter lay out a small, hardscrabble Louisiana town where thirty-six-year-old Boz Matthews lives, not completely by choice, but because when he attempts to leave, he feels sick. He is trapped by his anxieties and loneliness, his awareness of his homosexuality, and his feelings of responsibility to his grandfather, who took him in after his mother walked into his family’s burning home and died. As Boz says about himself: “…no matter who I am with or how many people I am around, I never feel like I’m truly with anyone but me.” Boz escapes his claustrophobic existence by watching movies, listening to music, and fantasizing, until his friend Meg, who is chronically suicidal, returns after discharge from a mental hospital. Then, a glamorous, world-worn singer, Catty, arrives with Kyle, an ex-boxer. The four eventually form a fluid nuclear family of sorts, in which each shifts from heterosexuality to homosexuality in a rotation that fulfills unspoken deep needs. Hyatt handles this flexibility with smooth skill, applying an almost post-gay mentality in which his characters exist as themselves rather than as figures with fixed sexualities, a new trend in contemporary literature that should be applauded. Each person is treated with respect and sympathy by the author, an attitude that reflects his own humanity. He has also created a contained physical world for this novel, one more reminiscent of an intimate theater piece, despite the astutely observed backdrop of Noxington. Most action takes place in the diner, where Boz works, and his room above the diner; the tightly enfolding setting seems to amplify the intensity of the relationships.

Although the location is extremely different, there are some similarities between Hyatt’s novel and the work of the South African writer, Damon Galgut, who usually features an outsider, a young man wandering in search of something he can’t define. The characters in "Beautiful Gravity" have all united in one place, however, but the narrator evinces much of the same quiet, tragic solitariness, the quest for meaning and self-understanding. Throughout, Hyatt’s writing is fresh and accomplished, with numerous memorable lines that sizzle with simple and piercing honesty. Boz provides this telling analysis about himself: “Most of us in towns like this stay put. Besides, it’s the only thing I know how to do well. I am excellent at staying.” And as Meg says to Boz, “Your being alive and my desire for death are the only things that make me happy.” Or, as Boz says about his grandfather: “You can’t just leave someone that takes you at a time when there is nothing about you worth having.”

Beautiful Gravity is a blend of bleak realism and uplifting transcendence, of despondency and hopefulness, told tenderly by the narrator. Because of the outstanding success of this novel, Martin Hyatt’s next work will undoubtedly garner major publishing interest. I look forward to reading it!—Laury A. Egan, author of "The Outcast Oracle" and, forthcoming, "Fabulous! An Opera Buffa"

[Justin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hyatt shows us a thoroughly complicated and unexpected love story unfolding in the deep south. Hyatt writing is welcoming and Beautiful Gravity's inclusiveness makes you a part of the simple candor between all of the book's lovers.

[Steven Svymbersky · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the great tradition of Southern gothic writing, this lovely novel combines a sadness and eroticism in a new voice that had me feeling many emotions all at once. It is beautifully written. The characters seem larger than life while also being pitiable. The narrator is unlike most gay characters and his journey unlike any I've ever read. I really want to talk about this book with someone. Read it and give me a call.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've never been so much a person within a work of fiction. To read this work is to become a confidante; a silent and respectful onlooker who must pause to consider how wonderfully expressed this story is. It rings true with its distance and pain; its fright and joy.
Wonderful book of many profound "outsider" insights.

[willowdog · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most original of stories this year. Boz, Catty, Meg and Kyle develop into a family—each holding the other up. Surprised and accomplished ending.

[Leah Powell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Prose is overwrought, characters are underdeveloped, and potentially rich complexities of the plot are left unexplored, but I did appreciate the story overall

[Doug · Rating 3 out of 5]

Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge 2019

Task #9 A book published prior to January 1, 2019 with fewer than 100 reviews on Goodreads

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautiful novel, a stunning, gut-wrenchingly beautiful novel. This is the novel that should have been showered with accolades and praise rather than Hyatt's first novel (beautifully written though it is) and I do not understand why it is so difficult to get hold of a copy - was there a warehouse fire and most copies destroyed? Is it so loved that no one ever resells their copy? Or was the print run so tiny that copies are rarities? The print edition must have been considerably smaller than for 'The Scarecrows Bible' because that novel is easy to come by in the UK were as 'Beautiful Gravity' doesn't appear to have ever been available in book format, but maybe my desire to read it as 'book' just reflects my age.

The synopsis of the novel is more than adequate though while everything it may say is accurate it really tells you nothing of the novel nor of its strengths, the greatest of which is honesty. I believe in Hyatt's characters and settings - I love novels set in that vast country between its major cities. If I was being poetic I would compare Hyatt's writing to James Purdy if striving for more immediate comparisons I would rank it with Vestal MacIntyre's 'Lake Overturn' or Gary Reed's 'Pryor Rendering'. These novels which are so far ahead of twaddle like Donna Tartt's Brobdingnagian novels of trite stupidity and emotional dishonesty which fill the best seller lists that future generations of readers, no matter how few or in what format, will look back with disdain on our current bad taste and lack of judgement.

Anyway read this novel, on Kindle, in print, however you can - it is superb and makes me impatient for Hyatt's next promised work 'Greyhound Country' which by my reckoning has been over seven years (as of November 2023) in gestation - that is not a complaint only an expression of how much I want to read more by this author.