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Our Tragic Universe, by Scarlett Thomas
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Can a story save your life?
Meg Carpenter is broke. Her novel is years overdue. Her cell phone is out of minutes. And her moody boyfriend’s only contribution to the household is his sour attitude. So she jumps at the chance to review a pseudoscientific book that promises life everlasting.
But who wants to live forever?
Consulting cosmology and physics, tarot cards, koans (and riddles and jokes), new-age theories of everything, narrative theory, Nietzsche, Baudrillard, and knitting patterns, Meg wends her way through Our Tragic Universe, asking this and many other questions. Does she believe in fairies? In magic? Is she a superbeing? Is she living a storyless story? And what’s the connection between her off-hand suggestion to push a car into a river, a ship in a bottle, a mysterious beast loose on the moor, and the controversial author of The Science of Living Forever?
Smart, entrancing, and boiling over with Thomas’s trademark big ideas, Our Tragic Universe is a book about how relationships are created and destroyed, how we can rewrite our futures (if not our histories), and how stories just might save our lives.
- Sales Rank: #1324290 in Books
- Published on: 2011-05-12
- Released on: 2011-05-12
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .87" w x 5.30" l, .75 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 384 pages
Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best Books of the Month, September 2010: Scarlett Thomas is a nimble writer, joyfully unseating and upholding cozy fiction conventions in Our Tragic Universe as she builds a story around Meg Carpenter, a writer who--as a genre fiction ghostwriter, book reviewer, and writing coach--has immersed herself in every nook and cranny of her craft to keep herself afloat... and to stay at arm's length from the "real" novel she just can't get her head around. The thoughts that consume her in the meantime range widely, touching down on storytelling, magic, coincidence, love, and what it might be like to live forever. (Her wryly observed theory is that it "would be like marrying yourself, with no possibility of a divorce.") In the hands of a less talented writer (and thinker), such a litany could easily devolve into a meandering mess. Not so here: Meg's searching soul is remarkably controlled, making her a protagonist you trust and want to follow, even when--in fact, especially when--you're not entirely sure where she's going. It's always clear that Meg's journey isn't aimless, and you'll be delighted to find--as she does--that the best stories "make someone surprised to see the picture, and even more surprised when they realize they had all the pieces all along." --Anne Bartholomew
From Publishers Weekly
Thomas's delightfully whimsical novel riffs on the premise that ordinary lives stubbornly resist the tidy order that a fiction narrative might impose on them. Meg Carpenter, a young writer living hand-to-mouth in Devon, pens book reviews, science fiction novels, and pseudonymous YA thrillers while the serious literary novel she dabbles at keeps ballooning and shrinking back to the same 43 words. Though Meg reviews New Age titles that lay out organized plans for one's life (and afterlife), her own life is an unruly mess, encompassing a slacker boyfriend and his amusingly dysfunctional family, friends having extramarital affairs, and associates who can't balance their vocations and avocations. Enough propitious coincidences occur to suggest her life might also admit the occasional intrusion of the magical. Thomas (Popco) dexterously mixes the serious with the humorous and provides a cast of characters who come across as credible owing to their recognizable foibles and fallibility.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Like many Booklist reviewers, Meg, the heroine of Thomas’ latest novel (following The End of Mr. Y, 2006), combines book reviewing with novel writing. But Meg has problems that are all her own: her personal life is at a dead end, and she is constantly writing and then deleting her novel while she supports her deadbeat boyfriend, Christopher, and lusts after the local museum director, Rowan. A cast of intriguing characters populates the beachside community where Meg resides, and her interactions with them help buoy Our Tragic Universe as it veers between philosophical monologues and intensely abstract discussions. As in Mr. Y, Thomas continues to wrestle provocatively with the theme of the philosophy of existence, but this time her attempts to address big ideas slow the movement of the story. Still, for readers who enjoy the ideological push and pull of philosophical fiction, Thomas is definitely worth reading. --Heather Paulson
Most helpful customer reviews
36 of 39 people found the following review helpful.
Good for those into philosophy
By Cathe
This was a quirky novel about a woman in a bad relationship writing genre novels when she really wants to write a literary masterpiece. There's a bit of a soap opera with who likes who and who's cheating on who going on with her and her friends, which is kind of fun. I found this novel well-written but didn't really like the way it kept drifting off into philosophical discussions. I'd end up zoning out and then would get back into the book when the actual story continued. I guess I prefer books that keep to story . . . but I liked the writing and characters well enough that I finished the book and found it enjoyable. I think those into philosophy will probably enjoy this book.
68 of 78 people found the following review helpful.
A nod and a wink
By Bob Nolin
With a tongue-in-cheek title such as "Our Tragic Universe," you know you're in for something off the beaten path. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, which is a first-person episodic, mainstream novel. Or is it? Perhaps there's more going on here than meets the eye. For instance, think about this: the protagonist of the story, Meg, sounds an AWFUL lot like the book's author, Scarlett Thomas. They're both writers, teachers, British, mid-thirties, have academic chums...and the book is written in first person. So you keep thinking, hmm, is she talking about herself here? Is this autobiographical? And then there's the conversations throughout about philosophies of writing, about books, about writing a "storyless story" (which makes you think, Hey! This book itself seems to qualify for that. What's going on here?) Normally, I don't enjoy metafictions. But what makes this different from, say, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler (Everyman's Library (Cloth)), is that you don't feel the author is playing headgames at your expense. She seems to be inviting you to play along with her (perhaps a hint is that early on, Meg tells how she loves solving crossword puzzles--the British kind, of course). Suddenly you realize that you are reading--and enjoying--a non-standard, "storyless" novel. Well, it's episodic. So is Deep in the Shade of Paradise: A Novel, which I highly recommend, but wouldn't categorize as breaking the rules, really. It's just a story about a period in these people's lives, told by one of the people, named Meg. If you don't like Meg or her friends, the lack of plot is going to be a problem for you. And if you aren't well-versed in narrative theory, the whole pseudo-metafictional thing may just be a bore for you. But for me, as it happens, I'm reading up on how to write a novel, so I found these conversations very enjoyable. I've read Frank Tippler, and Rupert Sheldrake. I know about the Omega Point (it's the end of the universe), and morphic resonance (it's your dog knowing when you're about to walk in the door, though I have to say my dog doesn't do that.)
I was puzzled by Meg's relationship with Christopher. She's living for seven years with this loser who treats her with no respect. Abuse, is more like it. And we have no clue until near the end of the book as to why Meg ever took up with this schlmiel (he's angular and sexy, whatever that means). But why does she stay with him? She's a very "together" person, she's making a living as a writer, she's quite an admirable person in some ways. She certainly has a good relationship with her dog. So why does it take her SO LONG to deal with it? Another thing that puzzled me was why everyone in the book was having an affair. Is everyone in Britain morally bankrupt? Or is this just some chicklit convention I'm not aware of? Of relationships and such, Meg is mostly mum. We don't really know, often, what her reaction is to an event, such as her boyfriend saying something abusive. She'll just carry on by taking the dog for a walk, and never mentioning the conversation again, or until later. She withholds her thoughts and feelings at odd times, and tells us the backstories of the other characters in a seemingly haphazard way. But she's such a good writer that I'm sure all of this was done on purpose, and I'm not smart enough to get it. I would've enjoyed the book more had it explored the pseudo-science bits more. It seems to be more than psuedo in the book, and yet in the end, we have a "Zeb Ross" ending, where all is explained rationally away (you'll know what I mean when you read the book) at the end by the scientists.
Thomas makes us think about fiction, and how we wish there were meaning in our lives. That things happen for a reason, and that if you work hard and heroically, you will get the girl and vanquish the dragon. We like to think that the Universe is not just some tragic joke. That all can be fixed and have a happy ending in 22 minutes plus commercials. That there are secret powers we know nothing about, and we're all immortal. That we aren't living the lives we see on television, so we jump from bed to bed looking for the right sitcom to live in. Thomas makes you question the assumptions your life is built upon. There's a lot to think about and enjoy here. I'm glad I got a chance to read this, thanks to the Vine program. Thanks, Amazon!
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful.
Not what I expected -- not in a bad way
By Scarlett Brontë
After reading The End of Mr. Y, I thought this was going to have some science fiction elements and be very plot driven, but it turned out to be something completely different. Odd circumstances were set up, but the story never went where I thought it would.
I was going to describe Our Tragic Universe as a character driven novel, but that doesn't seem right, either. This is something completely different.
The characters in this novel discuss storycrafting quite a bit, and one thing that comes up often is the idea of the storyless story. This sounds like an oxymoron, but it's the best way to describe Our Tragic Universe.
That doesn't mean that nothing happens, but it doesn't follow a regular plot outline. Things do happen in the lives of the characters, but not in the formulaic way that we are accustomed to. The main character doesn't have anything that drives her to act. It's more like things happen and she adapts. When I describe it that way, it sounds really boring, but I wasn't bored. I enjoyed the writing and my curiosity about what was going to happen kept me reading.
I've never read a story like this before. It's worth reading just for its uniqueness. I think this is a book that will be discussed in writing classes, I'm just not sure if it will be received as an example of what to do, or what not to do. Either way, I liked it and feel as though I should read it again now that I know what to expect from this peculiar novel.
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