Everything Matters!

A Novel

By: Ron Currie Jr.

Narrated by: Abby Craden, Hillary Huber, Mark Deakins, Lincoln Hoppe, Arthur Morey, Doug Wert

Length: 12 hrs and 59 mins

Publisher's summary

In infancy, Junior Thibodeaux is encoded with a prophesy: A comet will obliterate life on Earth in 36 years. Alone in this knowledge, he comes of age in rural Maine grappling with the question: Does anything I do matter?

While the voice that has accompanied him since conception appraises his choices, Junior's loved ones emerge with parallel stories - his anxious mother; his brother, a cocaine addict turned pro-baseball phenomenon; his exalted father, whose own mortality summons Junior's best and worst instincts; and Amy, the love of Junior's life and a North Star to his journey through romance and heartbreak, drug-addled despair, and superheroic feats that could save humanity. While our recognizable world is transformed into a bizarre nation at endgame, where government agents conspire in subterranean bunkers, preparing citizens for emigration from a doomed planet, Junior's final triumph confounds all expectation, building to an astonishing and deeply moving resolution.

Ron Currie, Jr., gets to the heart of character, and the voices who narrate this uniquely American tour de force leave an indelible, exhilarating impression.

©2009 Ron Currie (P)2009 Penguin

Critic reviews

"Mr. Currie is a startlingly talented writer whose book will pay no heed to ordinary narrative conventions.... He survives the inevitable, apt comparisons to Kurt Vonnegut and writes in a tenderly mordant voice of his own.... Throughout the story there is the sheer delight of Mr. Currie's fresh, joltingly funny imagery.... Above all Everything Matters! radiates writerly confidence. The excitement that drives the reader from page to page is not about the characters. It's about seeing what Mr. Currie will try next." (Janet Maslin, New York Times)

"Currie's novel is extraordinary, a lively narrative that slaloms from the exhilerating to the numinous to the achingly sad, all tied together by the author's sharp, funny voice." (NPR)

"Superb.... Some scenes make you laugh out loud. There are passages of beauty and wicked turns of phrase...marvelously, Currie suffuses his unhappy and disparate characters with salvation." (The Los Angeles Times)

I laughed, I cried, I was left in deep thought

I would feel ashamed if I ignore the profound message this has left me with. I enjoyed the humor, was shaken by the sad parts and am left ruminating on my thoughts since I finished the book. I may not have really cared for the story normally but I had to get through it and then decide. I'm still not sure

Ask yourself: When you know the end, what matters?

The question is asked and answered, but the journey there is not what you expect...

great book

loved this book.. heard it two times... everything does matter.. loved the ending.. recommending this.

Self destruction makes no sense.

Any additional comments?

The concept is great... it's what you do with it that "matters." I did not necessarily like the direction the author took, but otherwise enjoyed the book. Self destruction just makes no sense to me.

slow

This book was long and slow . Horrible

Meh

I had to read this for book club, I found myself setting the reading speed to 2.3x because I was so bored and I wanted to finish.