Everything Matters!

Ron Currie Jr.'s first book was titled God is Dead, but his follow-up Everything Matters! is anything but nihilistic. Narrated at different points by the novel's hero Junior, his brain-damaged brother Rodney, his alcoholic mother, his works-hard-for-the-money father, and a chorus of omniscient voices, Everything Matters! tells the story of how Junior sets about living his life after learning in the womb that the world will end by way of an apocalyptic comet when he is thirty-six. Currie explores themes of fate, free will, and the whole point of living as Junior struggles to save the world while getting smacked down by misfortune after heartbreaking misfortune. At times Currie's humor comes off as awkward or campy, and detracts from the emotional trajectory of the novel. When, for example, Currie compares a hallucinatory experience of seeing the world tinged blue with that of watching a James Cameron film, he's sacrificed a potentially powerful sensory description for a cheap one-liner. Yet these instances are rare, and the novel gathers wonderful momentum as it heads into the final section in which Junior is given one more shot at life with the realization that everything matters.