A Brief Review of
Everything Matters! A Novel.
Ron Currie, Jr.
Hardback: Viking, 2009.
Buy now: [ Amazon ]
Reviewed by Brittany Sanders.
If you’ve read every book ever written about the end of the world—from the biblical account of Revelation to the sci-fi novels of H. G. Wells and Dean Koontz—you’ve likely never read one like this. What makes Ron Currie’s telling so unique is that, from page one, the destruction of planet Earth (and all its inhabitants) is a foregone conclusion. There is no mounting suspense as alien forms descend from glowing skies; no nuclear holocaust or exploding mushroom clouds; no prophets warning the masses to “repent for the end is near!” The end is a given, an inexorable reality emblazoned in every facet of the book, including the chapters themselves, which are numbered in reverse chronological order so that the reader is quite literally counting down till Doomsday.
It is against this apocalyptic backdrop that the story of one special individual unfolds. Junior Thibodeau is alternately the book’s narrator, protagonist, and Byronic hero. Born with a voice in his head that tells him exactly when, where, and how the world will come to an end, he lives with this knowledge as best he can; which is to say, he struggles along, unsure what (if anything) really matters in his brief existence if the world’s days are numbered anyway.
One would think such a depressing foreknowledge would dampen the story’s intrigue, or at least curtail its entertainment value. On the contrary, Currie somehow laces his book’s many heartbreaking moments with strong doses of wit and humor. For every awful reminder of the approaching end, a twinkle of life’s glorious little idiosyncrasies sneaks up and makes us smile, in spite of ourselves and the world’s impending fate. In spite of both life and death, the known and the unknown, the past and present and all incarnations of the future, Currie urgently whispers that there is meaning in all of it. And to make sure we don’t miss the message, he puts his thesis front and center, complete with exclamation point.
That Currie has an agenda goes without saying. But despite the fact that his message is timely, beautifully rendered, and true, he has difficulty proving his case without the acknowledgment of any spiritual “higher power,” aka God. For a novel about the end of the world, there is decidedly little discussion about what will happen after the inevitable. In case you were wondering, this book has no epilogue. The afterlife is not even an afterthought. “Everything ends, and Everything matters,” Currie writes. “Everything is all you’ve got… and after Everything is nothing.” For all his intelligence and talent as a writer, he apparently sees nothing contradictory in this formula for the meaning of life. “Everything matters!” he proclaims, but if there is truly nothing after this life, then why does he so fervently believe this? If it all ends at The End and there is nothing after that, how does any of it really matter? Meaning cannot define itself, and this is Currie’s great philosophical flaw. Hope for hope’s sake cannot save anyone.
In the book’s final pages, Currie describes a “silhouette thin as God’s alibi.” Based on this and other scant theological references sprinkled throughout the book, it would appear that Junior (and by extension, Currie) feels abandoned by a deity who failed him in his time of greatest need. That he still finds the strength to declare, “Everything matters!” is remarkable, but ultimately futile. For without a Creator, “everything is meaningless.”
C. Christopher Smith is the founding editor of The Englewood Review of Books. He is also author of a number of books, including most recently How the Body of Christ Talks: Recovering the Practice of Conversation in the Church (Brazos Press, 2019). Connect with him online at: C-Christopher-Smith.com
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