We are told not to judge a book by its cover, but the stunning image on the cover of Melanie Joosten’s Gravity Well portrays her compelling protagonists exactly as they are when the novel opens. Eve, distressed and alone, has taken a bus down the coast to Lorne in mid-winter, with a tent and meagre provisions. The reader is aware that something devastating has occurred, and the novel builds to this revelation.

The juxtaposed image, of astronomer, Lotte, in the desert with only a telescope for company, speaks to her solitude. Lotte is preparing to return from South America to Australia after five years, however she hasn’t told anyone about her plans or the tragic reason behind them. Once Lotte and Eve were firm friends, but when they need each other most, they are estranged.

Joosten uses metaphors and allusions to astronomy to explore these characters’ back stories and relationships. Lotte recalls her mother describing interpersonal relationships as a solar system and each person as a planet: ‘Drift too close to another and you risk falling down a planet’s gravity well, being destroyed on its surface; stay too far away and you risk being cut loose, discarded into the ever-growing reaches of outer space.’ Lotte is chasing what she believes was her late mother’s professional dream to be a world-class astronomer, however her pursuit comes at great personal cost. Eve, a sound engineer, wants meaningful work and to create the stable family she never experienced.

Gravity Well is exceptionally written. Joosten’s meditations on friendship, ambition and family life are wise and thought-provoking. She has created fully rounded and credibly flawed characters, with an authorial gaze moving seamlessly between the broad and the telescopic.

Annie Condon