Everything Matters!

by Ron Currie Jr.

Book Overview

"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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0143117513
• ISBN13: 9780143117513
• Release Date: July 2010
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.67 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.4"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Incredible and Haunting

I wish I could go back in time, not unlike the lead character, and erase this book from my mind just so I could read it again for the first time. This book manages to do something VERY few can - ask deep and thought provoking spiritual questions and do it in a way that's not condescending, overly simplistic, or just plain annoying (I'm talking to you Conversations with God and the Five People You Meet in Heaven!) I love how it was set up, the countdown style of breaking up the chapters, and the insights that are given by the beings who are never identified but who are seemingly running the show. Slightly scifi-ish elements really added a lot, and though it is generally a dark, serious book, there are some well-placed elements of humor and lightness that really put it over the top. What a writer!

It's a wonderful life

I worried through the entirety of my pregnancy. How, I fretted, could I bring a child into this world? How could I protect him? What did he have to look forward to but melting ice caps, tsunamis, wild fires, genocide, floods, hurricanes, drought, war, war, war, serial killers, crazed gunmen in schools, bullies, etc. Now that I am a parent, I realize I can't protect him from these things. I can only protect him from what I can control, and even then I am often left powerless. We will do as we wish, we humans. Ron Currie's daring, humorous, poignant, heart-wrenching, and, ultimately, joyful second novel, Everything Matters! also addresses the question of how can one bring a child into a troubled world. Most importantly, though, it follows the life of Junior, who not only knows how he will end, but knows how the world will end as well. It is from there, his foreknowledge, that we witness the choices he makes in his life--when does he choose to give up and when does he choose to push beyond his limits. When does he choose to live and accept all of the beauty that life has to offer him even though he knows it will one day be taken away. Yes, on the surface this is a book about mass destruction, but it's not about hopelessness. Rather, it's about what we wake up and choose to do each day--put one foot ahead of the other and move forward even though we know that one day we will cease to be. We are all brave to live, to choose to live. Some books you read to be entertained, others to learn something, and some you read to change your life. Everything Matters! was all of these books for me. I finished it just as my two-year-old was waking up from his nap. I was crying as I picked him up from his crib, not because I was sad, but because I was so happy and grateful that he was alive in this beautiful world where everything matters.

Sad, moving, uplifting and full of IMAGINATION!! A great read.

EVERYTHING MATTERS has an intriguing idea and an unexpected but affecting execution of that idea. Junior Thibodeau is born having already spent his time in utero being spoken to by some kind of outside intelligence. That intelligence has kept Junior from strangling himself on his mother's cord AND he has given Junior a little secret: the exact time and date that a comet will strike the earth, obliterating all life. The voice continues to be with Junior all his life, guiding him to some extent, giving him knowledge about others around him that he otherwise wouldn't have, berating him when it's needed...and serving as a reminder that everything everyone is concerning themselves with will come to an end when Junior reaches his late thirties. How does someone deal with such a terrifying knowledge? It makes Junior into a fearful and serious little boy (who grows to become "the fourth most intelligent person to have ever lived). Yet most of the book simply shows us the lives of Junior, his older brother Ronald, his father, his mother and his girlfriend Amy. In fact, the narrative of the book bounces around to all these characters, who all have their chances to speak in the first person. And occasionally, we hear from the "voice" which speaks in a "royal we" manner...as though it represents a committee. "We're sorry to tell you this, Junior" or "We know this is hard for you to hear." Author Ron Currie spends half of the book telling the lives of these people, their foibles (and there are plenty, particularly with substance abuse), their little triumphs and their fears. The "end of the world" is barely in the background...and only Junior knows. He works to live a normal life...but for him, that "normalcy" is primarily through his relationship with his beloved Amy. But when he finally tells her his big secret, their relationship takes a bad turn, and the book becomes more about "the end of the world." The novel turns into something of science fiction piece, with various huge scientific endeavors and even some massive government conspiracies. These parts are in many ways the least interesting. We find the large-scale logistics of what is going on in the world at large to be sketchily presented and many of those details are difficult to believe. The role of the government is particularly vapid, and I really was not interested in conspiracy theories and paranoia about "big brother." What I DID absolutely, thoroughly enjoy was the story of these main characters. Because of his position in society and the voices that guide him, Junior is in a position to make choices about the future and to help people he might not otherwise have been able to. But every choice has a consequence that's unintended. Every thwarting of a series of events has an ironic outcome. While the title of the book trumpets EVERYTHING MATTERS (which, ultimately is what the author seems to want the point of the book to be)...I found it to be a thoughtful, touching me

Stunning, inspiring, haunting, and beautiful all at once

Ron Currie Jr's "Everything Matters" rivals "The Road" as the best serious fiction of this decade. I'd place it along side "The Road" and "Stranger in a Strange Land" as some of the most memorable fiction of the last 50 years. Normally when I write reviews, I'll post both highs and lows, even for great books. With "Everything Matters" I'm at a loss to find a single criticism. Currie's writing is simple yet powerful. There's nothing extra that doesn't need to be there, nothing ever feels forced or contrived. His story is full of deeply real characters, each of whom is instantly believable and recognizable. And while the story is told from multiple points of view of an ensemble cast, there are no extraneous characters to distract. The lead character Junior is burdened from before birth with the absolute proven knowledge of the date and manner of the end of life on earth, coming soon in under 40 years. This knowledge has been imparted to him by some alien or otherworldly consciousness while he was still a fetus. This consciousness continues to communicate with Junior through his life. And the story is told from the points of view of Junior, his girlfriend Amy, his cocaine addict turned baseball star brother Rodney, the "alien" consciousness, and occasionally his father. Through Junior's struggles with his foreknowledge of the "destroyer of worlds" we're forced to consider questions about what does matter in our lives. Nothing? If the world is ending in under 40 years taking all life with it, do friendships matter, does love and family matter, does addiction matter, does death tomorrow versus a week from now matter. Junior and his family make mistakes. They love, they lose. They act out of desperate love, they destroy that which they love most. They're just like so many of us feel, with their intensity dials cranked up to 11. Ultimately Junior concludes, as the title suggests, even in the loss of everything, yes, everything matters. It is indeed better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. It's better to make the world a better place, if only for a year or a day, than to give up hope. While not as grueling or hopeless as "The Road" the same intensity of love between Junior and his girlfriend Amy, and with his family, is present as between father and son in "The Road." Likewise as both deal with "end of the world as we know it" - or worse - the comparison seems right. And despite my earlier comparison to "Stranger in a Strange Land" and the presence of an alien intelligence, "Everything Matters" is not science fiction. Like "stranger", Junior's story deals with isolation, in his case the isolation of being the only person amongst billions to know for sure when the world will end. It deals loving when you feel different. And ultimately, I found the conclusion of "Everything Matters" to be much more rewarding than "stranger" which I see as a great yet flawed work. It's rare for me to feel inspired by fiction. "everything matter

Stunning and remarkable novel

Each and every one of us walks around with our own personal sword of Damocles dangling over our heads, which we do our darnedest to forget. This book tackles the question of how we would react if we could ignore no longer the looming end of our existence. The protagonist, Junior, is singled out (for unnamed reasons) to receive the wisdom and prognostications of some omniscient entity or entities (God? Aliens? We are never told). Chief among the information given to Junior is the news that the Earth would be struck and destroyed by a large comet 36 years after his birth. The novel follows the story of Junior's life from multiple perspectives: the omniscient entity, Junior's mother, brother, girlfriend, father (who is the book's most sympathetic and heroic figure), and Junior himself. Most of the plot centers around Junior's desperate fight against destiny. Without spoiling crucial aspects of the plot, I will say that at first I wished it had ended differently. I kept thinking about the book, though, throughout the night, and the next day, and the day after. I returned to it and read the final few chapters again. And, slowly, I began to appreciate the point uttered quite bluntly by the author on the last page yet which remains so terribly, terribly hard to accept: "...that there is no escape and never was, that from the moment two cells combined to become one they were doomed." The beauty of this novel is that the author somehow manages to convey both the depressing and inescapable reality of our doom as well as the simultaneous truth we are also given the gift of life and the unspeakable beauty and joy that entails--and where everything *does* matter. I am a voracious reader and read several books a week, of all genres. Most books I enjoy in a somewhat detached and absent-minded way. A very few move me to tears and stay with me well after I have finished reading them-- Cormac McCarthy's "The Road," "The Book Thief," "The Lovely Bones," "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time," "White Noise," and "A Prayer for Owen Meany," to name a few. This novel is another such book for me.