Everything Matters!, filled with astonishing imagery and emotional high points, focuses on the one thing that most of us try to avoid thinking about: death. The work rejects “life is meaningless” defeatist thinking and encourages readers to examine how we use their time before the inevitable happens.
One of the book’s most distinctive features – and there are many – is its risky yet effective collective second-person omniscient narrator, an unidentified “we” speaking directly to Junior Thibodeau (the “you”), the novel’s protagonist. Junior is informed that he is one of the smartest people in the world and that thirty-six years from his birth, on a particular day at a particular time, a meteor will destroy the earth. This knowledge puts everything into question for him. What is meaningful? What can be prevented? What information should be revealed and what should be withheld from loved ones and from society?
The benevolent narrators not only count down as the novel progresses but also advise (to an extent) Junior and reveal the backstory (and fate) of those the young man encounters. These individuals range from a teacher who was a candidate for the doomed Challenger space mission to a triple amputee who wants to blow up a building. At one point, the narrators state they know something that would reassure Junior, but they think it would be best not to do so. Another time, they assure Junior that someone is telling the truth.
The novel also dips into first-person accounts from family members, transcripts from a psychologist, and even a semi-long passage in which Junior’s love interest craves a cigarette while on a plane.
Junior’s brother Rodney stands out as one of the novel’s most interesting and likeable characters. Despite brain problems stemming from a childhood cocaine addiction – Rodney is so cognitively challenged that he needs a personal attendant – he becomes one of the best professional baseball players in history. Meanwhile, a drug- and alcohol-muddled Junior drowns in pointlessness… until the opportunity to help someone arises. The contrast between Rodney and his haunted genius brother, both of them phenoms, makes for engaging interactions.
Even with all its narrative craftiness and time-flipping complexity, Everything Matters! reveals that what makes life worthwhile are the little things: the feel of a lover’s lips, a field of flowers, a pro baseball field. Stop worrying about the future, the book suggests, and appreciate the here and now. Just take everything in! Douglas J. Ogurek ****
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