Review: Everything Matters! by Ron Currie

Imagine if you were born knowing the exact date and time that the world is going to end. Right from the beginning, it was an unquestioned fact that no matter what you do, there is nothing you can do to stop it. How would you live your life? Would it still matter?

Ron Currie argues that it would, in his novel 'Everything Matters!', which circles around main character Junior Thibodeau. The story cleverly opens with a Voice, which the reader can take to be whichever overarching deity he or she would prefer, communicating with him from the moment of conception. This voice stays with him throughout his life, initially describing his family circumstances to him before he's even aware as a singular entity, and occasionally showing up as a commentator. The conversation is never two-sided, and through this convention the author allows the reader to take a step back from the craziness that Junior's path becomes and evaluate the circumstances more calmly.

Junior is, understandably, a darkly serious child from early childhood. He lives with his secret in silence until his adolescence, when he decides to tell his longtime girlfriend the truth. This one step begins a long downward spiral that Junior can never seem to pull himself out of.

WARNING! PLOT REVELATIONS!

Frankly, this is where the book began to unravel for me. After awhile, the events that Junior experience become first a bit tiresome, and then increasingly ridiculous. He randomly meets a severely handicapped man who convinces him to go along in blowing up a major city building. He gets kidnapped and put in a foreign prison for seven years by the US govt in order to coerce him into helping scientists find a way to thwart the comet that is hurtling towards the earth. His father is diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, and (this was really the deal-breaking section for me) the government enables him to basically take over a lab so he can come up with a secret formula that will be shipped anonymously and cure the uncurable-by-world-renound-doctors cancer (yet he doesn't share this secret formula with anyone, so anyone else with the cancer will still die - nice). His former girlfriend finally believes him, only to be killed in a robbery. THEN, as if all that weren't enough, The Voices take pity on him and allow him to start his life over again, picking any version of his life he would like, so the final few chapters are a redo of a much better version of his life, but the world still ends as scheduled anyway.

END PLOT SECRET SECTION!

The reason that all the aforementioned plot points bother me, since I'm willing to accept the fact the the world is ending and that this person hears the voices in his head, etc, etc, but not the other fantastical portions of the book. The answer is simple - they felt incongruous. I could have accepted some of them, but they kept coming, and coming, and the quality of the connection between me as reader and Junior, which had been pretty great at first, was severely eroded. Not only were the twists odd, but they happened joltingly, and involved jumps of years into the future, with chapters on other people woven in that still maintained a connection with *those* characters, so I was left actually liking and feeling more bonded to the minor characters than the main one. It was very disappointing.

The final section of the book with Junior's newly chosen reality were very nice, almost like a short story, but it's obvious that the end is still coming, because they are still numbered in a countdown fashion rather than in the usual way. Plus, after going through the entire first three quarters of the book, it seemed a little choose-your-own-adventure-ish and not very organic, almost like the author couldn't decide what to do, so he did both ways. The last few chapters are very poignant and uplifting, yet still very sad because I couldn't help but imagine my own family in the same position.

I understand that what Currie was really trying to do is to show that, even though Junior's choices didn't seem to matter, because the ending was going to be the same regardless, it was what happened in the middle that was important, like that old cliche about playing the game. The idea was great, and I really liked the alternative numbering of the chapters. If the novel hadn't started veering wildly from event to event, I would have been very pleased. As it was, it was interesting enough to keep my attention, but mainly because I wanted to know how it all ended, not because I was enjoying the characters anymore.

Rating: three stars. Great beginning, OK ending, everything else could have been tighter and more realistic.

Review: The Weight of Heaven, by Thrity Umrigar

Umrigar, who lived in India for the first twenty years of her life, brings the culture to amazing relief in her new novel, The Weight of Heaven.

Frank and Ellie are deep in grief over the sudden loss of their young son when Frank's boss offers what, to Ellie, seems to be a dream escape - a chance to live and work in India for a year. Frank would be the head of his company's operations, which involve the harvesting of plants that have been found to treat diabetes, and they both would be away from their empty home, the neighborhood children who had been their son's friends, the pity and silence of their friends, and their also-despondent families.

Idealistic Ellie immediately falls in love with India, and becomes deeply involved with social services in the town, making friends and settling into what she increasingly thinks of as her real home. Frank, on the other hand, begins to lose his ideals as he fights with the townspeople over the plants, which were officially sold to the company by the Indian government but have belonged to the villages as their sole sources of income for generations. The angry villagers, who had once been self-employed, are now impoverished employees of a multinational company, become increasingly angry and violent as they struggle against the company and the village upper-class, who work as nightmarish 'security' officers in the plant; to them, Frank is the symbol of their poverty, unfair government action, and white American occupational colonialism. Thus, while Ellie is uplifted by her experiences, Frank is continually beaten even further down.

The one bright spot for Frank is Ramesh, the son of the couple's on-site servants, an alcoholic man and his guilt-ridden wife. Ramesh becomes Frank's surrogate son, and increasingly the fanatical focus of his life. While Ellie talks of remaining in India forever, Frank feverishly dreams of stealing Ramesh away to America, and resuming his family life, whatever the cost.

This book is *fantastic*. The novel jumps in soon after the child's death, without detailing what happened, and immediately the swarm of sorrow and guilt and anger surrounds the reader and carries her into the story. The tale jumps around in time, always leaving hints to questions about things past and future but never quite answering either until the last quarter of the book. At that point, all the answers come in a flood, like a tidal wave rushing the characters to the final, horrible climax.

The narritive includes chapters told by Ramesh's parents, detailing his mother's hopes for her son's future and his father's burning anger and guilt that continally drive him to the bottle. Their love for their son is real, and simple, in stark contrast to Frank's increasingly insane designs to possess him. The contrasts in this novel, in fact, provide much of the drama: Frank vs. Ellie, rich vs. poor, Indian vs. American, worker vs. corporation, cultural imperialism vs. traditional villages, delusion vs. reality, and finally, ultimately, right vs. wrong.

The final chapters of the book took me almost completely by surprise. It's no secret from the way the story progresses that something untoward is going to happen, but the actual event is completely different from what I had thought was coming. The horror brings reality too late into sharp focus, and the brief final chapter is like a knife to the soul.

Rating: five out of five stars. Simply, horrendously, brilliant.

Review: Firefly Lane, by Kristin Hannah

Firefly Lane begins as the story of two girls, one, Kate, an unpopular child from an idyllic family, the other, Tully, the daughter of drug addicted hippie. The two meet in their early teens when Tully's mother moves the two of them into the house across the street from Kate, and a horrific night brings the two girls together into a friendship that lasts through their adult years.

This story reminded me of a mishmosh of several others, Beaches and The Best of Friends (by Sara James and Ginger Mauney, very good nonfiction, you should check it out) most strongly. Fortunately, it has taken the best of those stories, making it an enjoyable read regardless.

The characters go through their ups and downs, with Tully always looking for the love and attention that she lacked as a child, and Kate finally snagging the man she loves, but even with their entirely different lives, a very strong competition for essentially the same things prevails. While each has what she has always dreamed of, reality is of course a messier picture than that they had carried in their heads, and each also years for some of what the other has. Jealousy sparks terrible fights and actions, but when SPOLIER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT Kate is shockingly diagnosed with cancer and life is boiled down to essentials, their true connection is, as always, right there. END SPOILER ALERT
There were several things to like about this book. First, the characters were likable, even at their worst, so I had no problem rooting for either of them, and they were well-constructed enough that even at their worst, they were forgiveable. Second, when Kate and Tully had problems, either together or separately, they seemed like real issues rather than things constructed to create drama where none exists. Third, because the characters are so different, there's enough material there so that any reader could find something to relate to.

I found few drawbacks, but the most notable one was the abovementioned spoiler matter. It was so sudden, and so fast, and honestly seemed a little below the ending these characters could have had. I don't think the author had to resort to such dire, tearjerking emotional blackmail, but there it was, and even though it seemed a little out of step with the rest of the novel, it worked enough not to be a story-trasher.

All in all, it was a good light read. If you're looking for something meaty or deep, this isn't the book for you, but it's still an easy, fun, mildly-guilty-pleasure read.

Rating: four stars. Fun, moderately light, relaxing, enjoyable chick lit.