"Startlingly talented . . . he survives the inevitable, apt comparisons to Kurt Vonnegut and writes in a tenderly mordant voice all his own." -Janet Maslin, The New York Times In this novel rich in character, Junior Thibodeau grows up in rural Maine in a time of Atari, baseball cards, pop Catholicism, and cocaine. He also knows something no one else knows-neither his exalted parents, nor his baseball-savant brother, nor the love of his life (she doesn't believe him anyway): The world will end when he is thirty-six. While Junior searches for meaning in a doomed world, his loved ones tell an all-American family saga of fathers and sons, blinding romance, lost love, and reconciliation-culminating in one final triumph that reconfigures the universe. A tour de force of storytelling, Everything Matters! is a genre-bending potpourri of alternative history, sci-fi, and the great American tale in the tradition of John Irving and Margaret Atwood. "Mr. Currie is a startlingly talented writer whose book will pay no heed to ordinary narrative conventions.... He survives the inevitable, apt comparisons to Kurt Vonnegut and writes in a tenderly mordant voice of his own.... Throughout the story there is the sheer delight of Mr. Currie's fresh, joltingly funny imagery.... Above all "Everything Matters!" radiates writerly confidence. The excitement that drives the reader from page to page is not about the characters. It's about seeing what Mr. Currie will try next." --Janet Maslin, New York Times "Currie's novel is extraordinary, a lively narrative that slaloms from the exhilerating to the numinous to the achingly sad, all tied together by the author's sharp, funny voice." --NPR "Superb. . . Some scenes make you laugh out loud. There are passages of beauty and wicked turns of phrase. . . marvelously, Currie suffuses his unhappy and disparate characters with salvation." --The Los Angeles Times "A hyperbolic adventure story that's got the international intrigue of a Le Carré thriller and the deep humor of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest." --TimeOut New York " Everything Matters! contains both a declaration of the possibilities of narrative fiction and, above all, a defense of good old-fashioned human resilience in the face of petty distraction and profound horror." --The Village Voice "There's something refreshingly youthful about Currie's eagerness to call out big existential questions that most of us have grown too embarrassed or cynical to ask. . . there's nothing predictable about this story, despite its firm ending date, and Currie repeatedly upends our expectations. . . He's writing for the Slaughterhouse-Five  kids (you know who you are), people who respond to that quirky mix of dark humor, moral imperative and science fiction."  --The Washington Post  Ron Currie  is the author of the novels  Everything Matters! ,  Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles,  and The One-Eyed Man , and the story collection  God Is Dead , which was the winner of the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Award. Currie received the Addison M. Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His books have been translated into fifteen languages. He lives in Portland, Maine. In Utero; Infancy 97 First, enjoy this time! Never again will you bear so little responsibilityfor your own survival. Soon you will have to take in food and disposeof your own waste, learn the difference between night and day and acquirethe skill of sleeping. You will need to strengthen the muscles necessaryto sustain high–volume keening for long intervals. You will haveto master the involuntary coos and facial twitches which are the foundationof infantile cuteness, to ensure that those charged with caringfor you continue to provide food and clean linen. You will need to flexyour arms and legs, loll your head to strengthen the neck, crawl, staggerto your feet, then walk. Soon after you must learn to run, share,swing a bat and hold a pencil, love, weep, read, tie your shoelaces, bathe,and die. There is much to learn and do, and little time; suffice it to saythat you should be aware of the trials ahead so that you may appreciatethe effortless liquid dream of gestation while it occurs, rather thanonly in hindsight. For now, all you need to do is grow. There is one significant exception to this. You may have noticed thatyou share the womb with other objects. The most obvious and importantof these is the fleshy tether attached to your abdomen, known asthe umbilical cord. It is, quite literally, your lifeline, providing blood,nutrients, and vital antibodies, among other things. Already it haswrapped twice around your neck, and while this may not seem to you,who does not yet breathe, to be particularly dangerous or untoward, itcan imperil your entry into the world. We will not lie—it could killyou. Now, be calm. You should remain as still as possible throughoutthe rest of your gestation. While this will do nothing about the entanglementsalready