Everything Matters!: A Novel
"Startlingly talented . . . he survives the inevitable, apt comparisons to Kurt Vonnegut and writes in a tenderly mordant voice all his own." -Janet Maslin, The New York Times
In this novel rich in character, Junior Thibodeau grows up in rural Maine in a time of Atari, baseball cards, pop Catholicism, and cocaine. He also knows something no one else knows-neither his exalted parents, nor his baseball-savant brother, nor the love of his life (she doesn't believe him anyway): The world will end when he is thirty-six. While Junior searches for meaning in a doomed world, his loved ones tell an all-American family saga of fathers and sons, blinding romance, lost love, and reconciliation-culminating in one final triumph that reconfigures the universe. A tour de force of storytelling, Everything Matters! is a genre-bending potpourri of alternative history, sci-fi, and the great American tale in the tradition of John Irving and Margaret Atwood.
In this novel rich in character, Junior Thibodeau grows up in rural Maine in a time of Atari, baseball cards, pop Catholicism, and cocaine. He also knows something no one else knows-neither his exalted parents, nor his baseball-savant brother, nor the love of his life (she doesn't believe him anyway): The world will end when he is thirty-six. While Junior searches for meaning in a doomed world, his loved ones tell an all-American family saga of fathers and sons, blinding romance, lost love, and reconciliation-culminating in one final triumph that reconfigures the universe. A tour de force of storytelling, Everything Matters! is a genre-bending potpourri of alternative history, sci-fi, and the great American tale in the tradition of John Irving and Margaret Atwood.
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Community Reviews
[b:Everything Matters!|6184241|Everything Matters!|Ron Currie Jr.|https:d.gr-assets.com/books/1347445018s/6184241.jpg|6364388] was an unique take on idea of does everything or anything we do really matter. Unique in the sense that the protagonist, Junior, already knows the exact day the world will end upon his birth through a mysterious voice which follows him through his life, but not unique in its idea of our general wonder of the universe and existentialism.
It is written in somewhat of a short story format, with each chapter appearing in a specific character’s voice from Junior’s life, all strung together to create a progressing timeline for the characters' development and overall story. This change of voice is great in moving the narrative along as it adds in more complex emotions to the story in which the main character is a self destructing, though justifiable misanthrope. There are three parts to the novel, and although the second part tended to drip in the realms of repetition of the events we already understood and seeming to skim over the aspects that should have been further explained, part one really drew me into the story and part three kept me on the edge of my seat until the end.
It’s an engaging read filled with clever and compelling writing and character depth and managed to present a deep meaning in how everything does in fact matter, without coming across as preachy or moral-based.
It is written in somewhat of a short story format, with each chapter appearing in a specific character’s voice from Junior’s life, all strung together to create a progressing timeline for the characters' development and overall story. This change of voice is great in moving the narrative along as it adds in more complex emotions to the story in which the main character is a self destructing, though justifiable misanthrope. There are three parts to the novel, and although the second part tended to drip in the realms of repetition of the events we already understood and seeming to skim over the aspects that should have been further explained, part one really drew me into the story and part three kept me on the edge of my seat until the end.
It’s an engaging read filled with clever and compelling writing and character depth and managed to present a deep meaning in how everything does in fact matter, without coming across as preachy or moral-based.
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