Against Gravity

by Farnoosh Moshiri

Set in Houston in the mid-1980s, Against Gravity is a harrowing story of three lives colliding? Madison Kirby, an angry, dying intellectual; Ric Cardinal, a social worker dedicated to helping others... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0143035681
• ISBN13: 9780143035688
• Release Date: December 2005
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Length: 308 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.2" x 7.1"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Finding Yourself in Texas

Farnoosh Moshiri's latest novel is a new take on one immigrant's life in a strange new land and she ultimately gives a vivid portrayal of Everyman's journey. Using the backdrop of Texas, it is touching and beautifully written novel. Told in simple, but effecting prose, she weaves an intricate tale of three seemingly disparate people, but whose lives are connected by the tragedy that has touched each of them. She has chosen to craft the book in three sections, with each main character telling their own story. Madison is a bitter, dying man. Roya is a struggling immigrant writer and mother. Ric is a social worker, who befriends both of them and falls in love with Roya. The complication this presents for Madison's character is the main thrust of the plot, as he too desires Roya, but with Ms. Moshiri's strong voice, this feels organic to the novel and not a mere plot device. In truth, it is each character's own story that is gripping and draws you in. You are at once pulled into the pathetic world of the dying Madison, who even if unlikable, holds your interest. The reader is then drawn into the engaging story of Roya who is forced to flee her country with her young daughter. Her story is also, in a sense, a coming-of-age story as she attempts to find herself and must do so in a foreign land. Finally, Ric has his own interesting background and demons to deal with. Thematically, his story is one of death; and that is what truly meshes their stories together, but ultimately it is a story of hope and transcending tragedy.

THANK YOU

hello ms. moshiri, i have just read the last line of "against gravity" and want to thank you from the depths of my soul for not giving up writing when the publishers said "no." thank you for giving the gift of your light. your book moves me so very much. i went to college in suny oneonta and in 1993, the last year of college, my best friend and i were on a road trip somewhere near albany and we got into a car accident. my friend was killed instantly. i spent some time in a wheelchair. i am well now. i relate so deeply to this story of loss and longing, of struggle and determination, and of triumph. i am very much drawn to your voice and vision of the immigrant experience in america. the intense dichotomy that is america. the world of haves and have-nots colliding over and over again until a faint light illuminates the bitter-sweet truth of human existence. you are a very visual and minimalist writer. thank you for being a part of the human race.

Like a feather floating in the sky

Ezzat Goushegir, Playwright, Teaching at DePaul University Gracefully honest and skillfully written, Against Gravity by Farnoosh Moshiri centers on the lives of three main characters - Madison, Roya, and Ric - who are seeking to find hope and meaning in life. With a plethora of rich experiences, the core of the novel dialectically revolves around the opposing forces of love and loss, life and death, and floating and gravity. The synthesis is the text, whose words permeate the very marrow of the reader's bones. Moshiri's characters in Against Gravity, like her other novels, are concerned with the permanent feeling of imprisonment in a world wherein the horror of living constantly haunts them. "We are all refugees in a way. Many of us, many Americans, live worse than refugees." P152 Like Moshiri herself, - whose craft of thinking and writing is digging and exploring the deepest part of human existence -, her fictional characters have also the immediate, urgent need to struggle against sinking, to free themselves from the complexity of conditions, and mystification of reasons. Altering the cast of characters, the lives of the main characters interweave together in the most diverse ways, in both content and style. In each sequence of historical moments, they face many "what if" questions, which lead them toward this conclusion: no matter if it is right or wrong, it is a relative matter. Moshiri touches upon the fundamental social problems of today's civilization: loneliness, distrust, disattachment, displacement, isolation, alienation, lack of balance, lack of human touch, lack of tenderness and love. "We lie down together in our suspended cage, straining to hear that lonely Child." P201 In their motherless and fatherless society, all the characters suffer the loss of loved ones. Lack of emotional support in a ruthless society leads Roya to conclude: "In America almost everything is a deal." P175 Moshiri, generously lends her own rich experiences in life to the newly born characters, allows them to speak their minds, narrate their stories in a unique, distinctive voice, and creating a land within a land which can be more real than the reality itself. Like characters in Akutagawa's story "In a Grove," none of the characters repeat the same sequences twice. Timely in content, meticulously structured and organic in the narrative voice, Against Gravity has many layers to be discovered for future reviewers.

Redemption through suffering? Not always. It needs selflessness too.

Moshiri's latest published novel is a tale of suffering. Three characters tell their stories in three chapters. Each one has a completely different background and experience. But now, all are somehow related to one another. The common thread between them is that all three have been suffering through their lives. But what makes the redemption of two of the characters possible, and the third one impossible, is what the necessary element in any case of redemption is: selflessness and compassion. Moshiri makes her point of contrast in her characters by the way they view themselves and the world they live in. The two American characters mirror the American society. One sees only himself. Everything in the world is valued on the basis of what benefit it has to him. It doesn't matter if he is highly educated or ignorant since he is not using his knowledge to make the world a better place by helping others. He is only thinking of himself. The other one is a selfless, compassionate man. He has seen the world and knows what his country's government has been doing and continues to do around the world: supporting exploiters, dictators and death squads. He is suffering from his experiences and also from his domestic problems. But he manages to redeem himself by acts of selflessness and compassion. The third character, a victim of everything that is wrong in this world finds redemption in her sacrifice and sufferings. All three characters try to free themselves from the gravity. But only those who are compassionate can win "Against Gravity".

Creativity and the Crisis of the American Male

Farnoosh Moshiri's "Against Gravity" takes readers into the life-problems posed by our globalizing culture. In the novel, we meet an array of differently-displaced personalities. Moshiri combines the dramatic and dialogic sensibility of a playwright, the profundity of characterization of the literary fiction writer, and a poetic appreciation of image and metaphor to bring the voices of Madison Kirby, Roya Saraabi and Ric Cardenal to life in her text. Interspersed within and between their portraitures, the hues of other characters complete the canvas. Marlina Haas, physician, young Bobby Palomo, restaurant worker, and Tala, daughter of Roya add to the composition, selectively revealing aspects of themselves in a tableau where light struggles against gravity. Moshiri writes perceptively on the crisis of the North American male in "Against Gravity". Madison Kirby confronts the reader with the taut bleakness of a great soul in decline, revealing an abiding desire for love, life, connectedness: a desire frustrated through intoxication, cynical intellect, and self-hatred. Facing death, Madison desires life, objectified at the expense of dark, beautiful Roya. Ricardo Cardenal's colloquial vignettes convey deep personal tragedies. Sharing with Madison a disillusioned idealism, Ric resists cynicism. To cope, he combines weakly perceived personal needs with a strong social responsibility, failing in personal relationships until Roya. In her, he recognizes the possibility, finally, of commitment, intimacy and family. Moshiri's character Bobby Mandola sounds the depths of the male's crisis. The childhood disappearance of Bobby's gangster father reverberates in a confused and self-destructive young adult. Gender, identity and perspective baffle Bobby, contributing to persistent immaturity. Roya, an Iranian displaced into a global U.S. megapolis, struggles for recovery/wholeness. The other characters conduct similar struggles. Roya's losses, of husband, friends and country, evade expression in her attempt at memoir. Ric advises her to write fiction. In adopting English, western writers Conrad and Nabokov confronted major challenges, but Roya confronts even greater ones. At close, "Against Gravity" addresses the ultimate problem all face, creativity, in a writerly manner: " `Could I ever make up such stories?' The young writer sighs and steps out of Dawn's courtyard."