Gravity’s Chain is a novel whose central character has wonderful talents, yet who is fatally flawed.

The original idea for Jack came from reading a biography of Peter Sellers by Alexander Walker. After completing ‘Being There’, Sellers went through a number of suicide threats. He felt he had achieved his greatest work. The underlying message from his cries of help was obvious: what was there left for an artist once his best work is done?

It was that question of what lay beyond the great achievement that drove the development of Jack. In Gravity’s Chain he has, at a young age solved the Holy Grail of modern physics – The Theory of Everything, the grand unification of relativity and quantum theory. It has brought him fame and fortune, but as he says in the book:

What work is there left for me to do? I mean, come on, what do I do as an encore to The Theory of Everything.

Jack fills the void with a reckless cocktail of drugs and woman, but as much as he might hope it brings him happiness, it brings only despair. It is when he returns to his native New Zealand and is forced to face the consequences of his behaviour that he finds some redemption as he begins to take responsibility for his actions.

Although Jack is hardly a sympathetic character at the beginning of the book, he has by the end brought the reader “on board” and in his journey, helped convey the underlying message of his character that we all have to take responsibility for what we do.