Everything Matters! (2009) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit

Write a ridiculously simplified synopsis.

Characters/People edit see section history

• Junior: Junior Thibodeau, son of John and Debbie, brother of Rodney; sometime narrator of the book and burdened with the knowledge of the end of the world, including the how and when.
• Reggie: Reggie Fox, Junior's drinking buddy in Chicago
• Sawyer: Government spook and maybe assassin
• Rodney the brother: Junior's older brother and a baseball prodigy
• Debbie: Junior and Rodney's mother; wife of John Sr.
• Ralph: Add a description of this character.
• Mother
• Reynolds
• Pete
• Green
• Mr. Miller
• Alfredo
• John
• Eric
• Ruby
• Williams
• Snowe
• O'toole
• Clark
• Karen
• Mike
• Ma
• Rachel
• Frank
• Mrs. Collins
• Oscar
• Father - John Sr.
• Uncle Rodney
• Amy
• Mrs. Harris
• Ted Williams

Quotes edit see section history

• “Seek the meaning of sorrow.”

• Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers

• Everything matters not in spite of the end of you and all that you love, but because of it. Everything is all you’ve got—your wife’s lips, your daughter’s eyes, your brother’s heart, your father’s bones and your own grief—and after Everything is nothing. So you were wise to welcome Everything, the good and the bad alike, and cling to it all. Gather it in. Seek the meaning in sorrow and don’t ever ever turn away, not once, from here until the end. Because it is all the same, it is all unfathomable, and it is all infinitely preferable to the one dreadful alternative.

  Highlighted by 70 Kindle customers

• Everything ends, and Everything matters.  

  Highlighted by 53 Kindle customers

• Because even in this last moment there is still Everything, whole galaxies and eons, the sum total of every experience across time, shrunk to the head of a pin, theirs for the asking, right here, right now. And so anything, anything, anything is possible.

  Highlighted by 35 Kindle customers

• This is the key, you have learned—to relinquish control, to relinquish the desire for control. Even in this late drama, to try and control is to go mad. And so you do your best to let it all go.

  Highlighted by 32 Kindle customers

• What it’s about is the slow drift apart that couples do sometimes, like the movement of continents, creeping and intangible. Because it’s so gradual you can go on for years, sometimes, doing all the right things to convince everyone around you, and even yourself, that you are half of a healthy and viable pairing. But the whole time you know, with increasing certainty and clarity, that the relationship is sort of undead. A zombie relationship. And like a zombie it keeps tottering forward, mimicking life, but without warmth, or soul, or even a pulse.

  Highlighted by 27 Kindle customers

• “Of course it matters,” I say quietly. “Everything matters, Junior. Why don’t you get that?”

  Highlighted by 26 Kindle customers

• But what does being an adult teach you, daily, if not how to function in the face of fear?

  Highlighted by 23 Kindle customers

• And I scarce know which part may greater be— What I keep of you, or you rob from me.

  Highlighted by 21 Kindle customers

• Maybe what really bothers me is that guys like Dan never own up to their mistakes, never accept their lives as they are today, with all the accumulated blunders that brought them to this place and time. In some fundamental way they are not really here. They’re in a past that never really existed, or a future that never will exist, even while their bodies are in the present, in this warehouse, loading real packages onto real semis, with real wives and children at home, and very real opportunities for small but meaningful pleasures all around them.

  Highlighted by 21 Kindle customers

• Your expression—eyes closed but not clenched, face perfectly relaxed, tiny mouth agape—is one of perfect neutrality. This is the expression you should wear for all your life, no matter how long or brief it is, so that no one, not even you, will ever know whether you are in ecstasy or anguish.

  Highlighted by 12 Kindle customers

Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Chicago
• Boston
• San Francisco
• Bangor
• Vietnam
• Washington
• Oxfam
• Alonzo
• New Mexico
• Sedona
• California
• Brockton
• New York

First Sentence edit see section history

Series & Lists edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Ron Currie Jr. (Author)

Other Contributors:

1. Gabriella Eftimie (Translator)

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• Amazon.com's Best Books (November 2009: Editors' Picks, #63)
• Alex Awards (January 2010)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 813.6

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Religion & Spirituality › Fiction › Visionary Fiction
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Genre Fiction › Metaphysical
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary

More Books Like This edit see section history