Everything Matters! by Ron Currie Jr.

7.5/10 dropps

The world will be ending, but you are already aware of this because you feel it close to your heart and in your gut. Nevermind. That is the reflux you are experiencing from last night’s Whataburger Patty Melt. Though, when that feeling subsides, it will be replaced with another feeling. One that tells you the world is ending tomorrow, or maybe the next day, and if not then, at some point in the future because you had a vision. The source of this vision is not clear to you, but you can speculate that this vision was the result of reading Everything Matters! by Ron Currie Jr.

Published by Penguin, Currie’s novel revolves around the protagonist, Junior Thibodeau, his family, and the omniscient entities who tell Junior of the world’s end. Like a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book (or like this game!), most of the novel is written in the second-person making for a unique reading experience, and is interspersed with chapters from other characters’ perspectives that include Junior’s brother, Rodney, his mother and father, and his grade-school girlfriend, Amy. The end of the world forever looming, these characters face other issues more immediate and more severe: uncertain futures, abuse, addiction, and death. What’s the end of the world when you’re dealing with heavy shit like that?

Broken up into three parts, the first part of the novel introduces the reader to Junior and his family, makes you wonder about them, care about them even, and break your heart a little because you know this is has to end in the fiery crash that will be the end of the world.
Then there is the second part of the novel. Everything that is likable in the first part of the novel is gone. Junior’s character becomes a shell of what he was, and the compelling backstory of the Thibodeau family is largely absent. At times, I felt as if the novel was attempting to be a magician. Big reveals in the plot would be set up with noticeable lifts in the story, only to be followed by a major upset, or vice versa. Even if Criss Angel did the same mindfreak card trick for the same crowd of people, sooner or later it would lose its effect. (Also, it takes a hokey secretive government agency turn that feels fake. Just saying.) Admittedly, I lost interest in the novel, but I continued reading.
So the pressure was riding on the final part, and I am happy to say that it produced. Returning to what worked for the first part of the novel, the characters shine through where before they began to get lost in plot. I’m thinking if the middle section were omitted, the book would be better off, but by the end (which also happens to be THE END), I was happy to have been able to read the book, to meet the characters, and I feel comfortable, soothed in a way by Everything Matters!.

End of the world, come at me bro.
- John David Ellis