Everything Matters!

Everything Matters!

Waterville, Maine, native Ron Currie, Jr.’s sophomore effort, Everything Matters!, is not a story about aliens – although it could be. The voice in Junior Thibodeau’s head has told him precisely when the world will end. Lecturing robotically to him as he festers aware in the womb, the funny, supportive, but self-consciously standoffish clairvoyant(s) behind Junior’s genius goes on to narrate the second-person portion of his life story that Currie writes in all three tenses. Currie and his narrators - human and otherwise - give us entry into the lives of Junior's family and friends who live in a community that could very well be Currie's Waterville, Maine (though the author never says it outright). Many of the elements of Currie’s characters – stubborn, brusque, fraternal, reverent, prone to drink – share an often untold quality with the characters of many similar New England communities, their roots practically hidden here in plain view except for their attachment to French surnames. But even greater than this, Currie’s story reminds us of an America that has often done well to mask its strangers, to create a space where the insight provided by an alien voice in one’s head might be better lived out in secret, lived out well, than proffered unto disillusionment: a slight against Currie’s dictum that in spite of the world’s end, Everything Matters!

Currie, Ron, Jr.

Viking Press

2009

English

Book

No

305

New York, New York

http://www.roncurriejr.net/

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