Our Tragic Universe: Summary and book reviews of Our Tragic Universe by Scarlett Thomas, plus links to an excerpt from Our Tragic Universe and a biography of Scarlett Thomas.
Our Tragic Universe
by Scarlett Thomas
Hardcover: Sep 2010,
384 pages.
Paperback: May 2011,
384 pages.
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.
Scarlett Thomas has produced something sui generis: a realist metafiction novel. I'd be hard-pressed to think of something quite like it... Thomas' portrayal of Meg's writerly routine and her struggles with the blank page make this a fantastic book for the buried writer in all of us. The book's gentle exploration of generic convention is perfect for someone just beginning to explore literature beyond the purely realist. Its often risky discussions of things like reincarnation or the omega point would please the omnivorous reader who ranges across science, philosophy, and plain old narrative. Book clubs would have a heydey with this one. (Reviewed by Amy Reading).
Library Journal
Few writers can mix science, philosophy, and humor as cleverly as Thomas.
Publishers Weekly
[A] delightfully whimsical novel...[Thomas] dexterously mixes the serious with the humorous.
Kirkus Reviews
[A] freewheeling intellectual journey with no destination. ... For the omnivorous reader who, like Meg, can't get enough of the insights and passions and theories and inner lives of others, Thomas's fifth novel should be an addictive delight.
Jincy Willett, author of Winner of the National Book Award
Thomas brilliantly reminds us that, despite popular representations, many women are actually staying up half the night talking ideas. One feels alone. And then one reads Our Tragic Universe.
Philip Pullman
A delight, not least for the quality of Scarlett Thomas's writing, which is full of a very enjoyable life and energy.
Douglas Coupland
Our Tragic Universe surprised me with where it goes, and in such a terrific way. Scarlett Thomas's prose is so addictive you can't help but fall deeper and deeper under her spell. How does she do it? She is a genius.
For inspiration to write a novel about a novelist trying to write a novel, Scarlett Thomas didn't have to look very far—her own life was the template. Thomas was born in London in 1972. She wrote her first novel at age six and her second one in her early twenties, but literary fame eluded her. She, like her character Meg, turned into a workaday writer, producing three mystery novels: Dead Clever, In Your Face, and Seaside (all three links go to the full text at Google), featuring the sassy sleuth, Lily Pascale, an English professor who just happens to specialize in horror and crime fiction as well as creative writing.
The success of Thomas's genre fiction allowed her to turn to more literary fare, and next she produced what she calls her "postmodern trilogy" (Bright Young Things, Going Out, PopCo) a group of unlinked books that "explore what it means to be trapped in a culture where your identity is defined by...
Viscerally gripping and intellectually engaging, Gods Without Men is, above all, a heartfelt exploration of the search for pattern and meaning in a chaotic universe.
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(1072 words).
Kirkus Reviews
Jincy Willett, author of Winner of the National Book Award
For inspiration to write a novel about a novelist trying to write a novel, Scarlett Thomas didn't have to look very far—her own life was the template. Thomas was born in London in 1972. She wrote her first novel at age six and her second one in her early twenties, but literary fame eluded her. She, like her character Meg, turned into a workaday writer, producing three mystery novels: Dead Clever, In Your Face, and Seaside (all three links go to the full text at Google), featuring the sassy sleuth, Lily Pascale, an English professor who just happens to specialize in horror and crime fiction as well as creative writing.
