OUR GRAVITY

In Pollux’s LGBTQ+ romance, a young woman finds an unexpected connection with a stranger through poetry—and soon discovers just how far their love can go.

Castor spends her days quietly writing verse and working at her local library. Her favorite section is astronomy, where she enjoys reading about and contemplating the ever-expanding universe. It is there that she first sees Centauri, an astronomy researcher whose goal is to become “the first female director of a national observatory.” Castor, in her shyness, begins leaving poetic notes tucked into various books for Centauri to find. This simple act sparks a deeply meaningful connection between the two that eventually becomes romantic. When their beloved library faces foreclosure, due to lack of funds, the pair work together on an emergency fundraising strategy to try to save the place that means so much to both of them. Centauri offers her expertise to help put on a makeshift planetarium fundraiser, but raising the necessary $75,000 in just one month appears to be a nearly impossible task. To make matters worse, Centauri is soon called across the country to work on a once-in-a-lifetime grant, forcing the pair to again rely on the method of communication that first brought them together: the written word. As Castor struggles to save the library, she begins to wonder if prose will be enough to keep their two souls tethered—and when Centauri’s research team finds “something in the data. Something…off. I mean, really off. Like, statistically impossible, Nobel Prize bait, rewrite-the-intro-paragraphs-of-every-undergrad-textbook level of off,” their future is thrown into doubt like never before.

The vast majority of Pollux’s novel is told from Castor’s point of view (with occasional one-off glimpses into Centauri’s thoughts, which prove to be a bit jarring). Castor is revealed as an eloquent narrator, with verse-like thoughts that often spill out in the notes she writes to Centauri: “Sometimes I imagine the library as a living thing, some dormant beast, and that my presence in this room is an irritation.” So much of the novel focuses on her introspection, in fact, that the events that make up the external plot—the desperate attempt to save the library from shutting down, and Centauri’s long distance grant opportunity—feel like a mere backdrop to an account of Castor’s internal turmoil. Luckily, Pollux has constructed such a complex character that Castor’s thoughts are a compelling and beautiful, if often lonely, place to dwell. She’s a largely empathetic character, pining from afar and struggling with her own vulnerability, even if her sentimental philosophies can sometimes feel a bit dense and overwrought: “What if the universe isn’t expanding, just trying to get away from its own shame?” Readers looking for a brisk plot may want to search elsewhere, but those who enjoy deep, rich character studies will likely revel in Castor’s and Centauri’s deliberately paced romance. Overall, it’s an intimate and haunting look at the emotional intricacies of love, identity, and figuring out one’s place in the universe.

A moving, introspective love story with poetic prose and complex characterization.